01 · Purpose
Professional early-stage decision support
The standard supports work commonly performed in senior product discovery, venture building, structured venture screening, and enterprise innovation review.
It provides a consistent basis for assessing an opportunity before significant execution or investment.
02 · Method
What the standard does
Actwise helps turn an early-stage opportunity into an evaluable proposition, assess its strength, compare it with relevant peers, test the supporting evidence, and identify the most useful next action.
Missing evidence is not invented, unsupported claims are not treated as facts, and contradictions are not silently repaired.
03 · Shape
Shape the opportunity
A submission identifies the problem, target customer, proposed solution, reason the opportunity is timely, and its industry, category, and stage.
Where relevant, the submission should distinguish the economic buyer from the user, payer, beneficiary, operator, or risk bearer, and describe the initial market wedge and expected distribution path.
The problem, customer, solution, and timing should describe one coherent opportunity. Assumptions should be distinguishable from established facts.
04 · Assess
Evaluate the opportunity
Each opportunity is assessed across seven commercial lenses.
| Lens | What it assesses |
|---|---|
| Problem urgency | The importance, frequency, cost, or time sensitivity of the problem |
| Customer clarity | The clarity and coherence of the customer, buyer, user, payer, and beneficiary |
| Unique insight | The strength of the insight beyond an obvious or generic solution |
| Distribution | The credibility of the path to reaching and converting customers |
| Market size | The potential to support a sufficiently valuable business |
| Timing | Whether market, technology, regulation, or behaviour supports action now |
| Moat potential | The potential to develop durable advantage over time |
Each lens is scored from 0 to 100. The overall score is the arithmetic mean of the seven lens scores.
The overall score is one part of the evaluation profile and is not interpreted in isolation.
05 · Compare
Compare the opportunity
A lens score shows the absolute strength of that part of the opportunity. A lens percentile shows its relative position among relevant peers.
A moderate score may still rank highly when the capability is difficult for most early-stage opportunities.
Standing bands
Standing describes how distinctive the complete seven-lens profile is relative to relevant peers.
| Standing percentile | Standing band |
|---|---|
| Below the 25th percentile | Common peer pattern |
| 25th–84th percentile | Moderately distinctive |
| 85th percentile and above | Outlier profile |
Standing measures profile shape, not opportunity quality by itself. It should be interpreted with the overall score, lens scores, confidence, evidence quality, and recommended direction.
06 · Verify
Test the evidence
Actwise checks whether the submitted scoring and reasoning are supported by the opportunity as described.
The review considers whether claims are grounded, customer roles are coherent, rationales match the submission, and future aspirations are separated from present evidence. It also checks for contradictions between the solution, business model, distribution path, operating model, and claimed moat.
Evidence quality and integrity determine the official review route.
Official result
The opportunity is coherent enough to evaluate. Important assumptions may remain unproven, and the result may include confidence or benchmark caveats.
Clarification required
Material information is missing, inconsistent, contradictory, or unsupported. Clarification is required before a reliable official result can be completed.
Deeper review
The opportunity is coherent, but stronger interpretation may improve the reliability of the result. Deeper review does not invent missing evidence.
07 · Focus
Identify the limiting focus
The evaluation identifies the strongest and weakest positions in the seven-lens profile.
The weakest absolute lens is the lowest-scoring part of the opportunity. The limiting relative lens is the part that compares least favourably with relevant peers. They may be the same lens or different lenses.
The coach focus and recommended next step address the factor most likely to change the decision.
08 · Direction
Determine the direction
An official evaluation recommends one of four directions based on the overall score.
| Direction | Overall-score band | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Proceed to validation | 70–100 | The opportunity is strong enough to justify targeted evidence gathering |
| Test the key assumption | 55–69 | Progress depends on resolving one or more critical uncertainties |
| Refine before committing | 40–54 | The opportunity needs clearer definition or a stronger thesis |
| Deprioritize for now | Below 40 | The opportunity is not strong enough to justify further work in its current form |
Clarification required is a review route, not a recommended direction.
A direction to proceed is not a final investment, build, or launch decision. It means the opportunity has earned the next evidence-producing step.
09 · Advance
Define the next evidence
The next step should be narrow, measurable, and directly relevant to the direction and limiting focus.
It may test buyer authority and budget, problem frequency, partner incentives, economic value, operational feasibility, or whether early integrations, data, and workflow adoption can create durable advantage.
The purpose is not to create more activity. It is to reduce the uncertainty most likely to change the decision.
10 · Output
Official evaluation output
An official evaluation presents:
- overall score and recommended direction;
- standing percentile and band;
- confidence;
- lens scores and percentiles;
- leading and limiting lens highlights;
- interpretation, rationale, and coach focus;
- recommended next step;
- any caveat required for interpretation.
11 · Reliability
Confidence
Confidence describes how well the evaluation is supported by the information available.
High confidence does not mean the opportunity will succeed. It means the result is supported by the available evidence.
12 · Context
Benchmarking
Actwise compares each opportunity with relevant peers to provide relative context alongside absolute scores.
Benchmarking supports judgement. It does not replace it.
13 · Protection
Privacy
What is not retained
The full idea brief is not retained after evaluation.
What is retained
Evaluation metadata and derived comparison data required to provide results, support benchmarking, and maintain service integrity.
Ideas are not shown to other users or added to a public idea library.
14 · Boundaries
Limitations
The evaluation is designed to improve the quality of the next decision. It does not make the final commitment decision.