Map a problem you are close to

Look at where this edition's builders started. Two teenagers found calorie logging too slow, so they built a camera shortcut and later sold the company. A student in Ghana watched flood warnings arrive too late for her community, so she built an app that routes people out early. A 17-year-old noticed mathematicians had an unfinished list, so he wrote a program and finished it.

None of them started with a business plan. They started with a clear sighting of a gap, close enough to touch.

Most of us walk past problems every day without recording them. Ideas feel obvious after someone else builds them. The skill is catching one while it is still just an annoyance, and pinning it down before it slips away.

That is what this challenge practises. A gap map is a one-page way to turn a vague complaint into something you could actually act on.

Draw four boxes.

Box one: who feels it. Name a real person you know, not a market. Your grandad, your teammate, the school office.

Box two: what is missing today. Describe the clumsy workaround they use right now. The workaround is proof the problem is real.

Box three: why now. What changed recently that makes this solvable, a new tool, a new rule, cheaper hardware? Gaps that have survived for decades usually have a hidden reason.

Box four: the first small build. The smallest thing you could make this month to test the idea. A paper sketch of one screen counts. A checklist counts.

Then run the only test that matters at this stage: show the map to the person in box one and watch their face. If they lean in, you have found something. If they shrug, you have saved yourself a month.

■