Glossary
The words we use, and exactly what we mean by them.
Some of these terms are borrowed from investing and science. Here is how each one applies to a business and its records.
Opportunity ID (OID)
Modven’s ten-business-day diagnostic. One export of existing records comes back with the three to five opportunities worth testing, each sized as a dollar range with an evidence profile and a stop condition, or a plain answer that none hold up. $500, credited against a build.
Opportunity DNA
The structure found under every win in more than twenty ventures and innovation projects: an assumption, a signal that tests it, an alpha that sizes the gap, a holdout that confirms it, and a mechanism that captures it.
Assumption
A belief the business runs on, written down with a number and a range before any data is opened. The first step of the opportunity DNA: name it.
Signal
Evidence in a company’s own records that confirms, contradicts, or reveals an assumption. The second step: find it.
Alpha
Borrowed from investing. In a business, value you can size from your own records that competitors have not captured, with a named reason it survived. The third step: size it.
Holdout
A stretch of historical records set aside before the search. A finding must appear in the searched period and hold in the holdout to remain a candidate. The fourth step: prove it.
Mechanism
What gets built to capture an alpha: a pricing engine, an agent-run workflow, a forecast, a product line, a new market, or a new company. The fifth step: build it.
Stop condition
A written, measurable rule agreed before a build starts that states what result ends the work. It caps the downside and makes stopping a matter of evidence rather than opinion.
Size of prize
The value of an opportunity in three layers. Observed: visible in the records. Addressable: the part the business’s levers can reach. Capturable: what a mechanism can realistically take.
Pricing leakage
The gap between the price a business intended to charge and the price it collected, usually through discounts, exceptions, and unbilled extras that no single person notices.
Graph engineering
Building a mechanism as a graph of small, single-purpose steps (nodes) and the information passed between them (edges), so each step can be tested, replaced, and read by a person.
See them in use. Field notes · The operating system · The field guide
Start here
Where do you suspect the value is hiding? Tell us your hunch. Ten days later it comes back with numbers on it.
10 business days · $500, credited against any build