We are often more certain than the evidence really allows.
More quotesA blank square on a market map can be an opportunity. It can also be the chalk outline left by six dead business models.
White space makes strategists giddy because absence resembles ownership. Nobody offers this subscription tier! Nobody serves that region! Nobody has built the obvious feature!
Possibly because support costs eat the tier alive. Possibly because the region has twelve customers and one of them is a goat. Possibly because three competitors built the feature, watched everybody ignore it and removed it before you arrived with your immaculate axes.
Do the archaeology. Who tried? What blocked adoption? Which constraint has genuinely changed for us? Technology moves. Regulation shifts. A new route to market can turn yesterday’s graveyard into useful land. Bring evidence that this time the soil is different.
The best clue is often an awkward substitute. Customers are stitching tools together, paying specialists or tolerating a dreadful workaround. Existing effort shows that the problem already collects rent. Enthusiasm in an interview is cheaper.
Then ask people to switch, pay or persist in a real test. Compliments about the concept buy nothing in the real world.
Opportunity and barrenness look identical from a helicopter. Land before commissioning the visitor centre.