Capacity

Not a shortage of will or money, but a shortage of the people and time to do the work.

Ed. 1

EnergyProblem 0002

The constraint on the energy transition moved from manufacturing to administration, and no tooling followed it. Projects sit in interconnection queues longer than they took to design, studies are redone by hand each time the queue ahead reshuffles, and developers cannot see where they stand or what would move them. Most of the capacity that enters the queue is eventually withdrawn, often after years of waiting.

Who lives with itIndependent power producers · utility interconnection teams · the financiers whose models assume a connection date

Why nowLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's latest queue analysis counts roughly 8,200 active projects representing over two terawatts of generation and storage, a median wait from request to operation of more than five years, and about three quarters of the capacity that requested connection between 2000 and 2020 later withdrawn.

Why it matters · the JudgeA queueing and document problem wearing an engineering costume, exactly the kind that goes unsolved because no single party owns both ends of it. Faster paperwork is the cheapest capacity available anywhere on the grid.

Inspired by reporting from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A funded startup to make a dent in

LinkedIn Send to someone

Solve it →Full problem

Ed. 1

Enterprise AIProblem 0009

The tooling that would protect a small firm assumes somebody to run it: a console to watch, alerts to triage, a policy to maintain. A twelve-person company has none of those, and a serious incident can threaten the business itself. What is missing is not awareness (owners know) but anything that works without an operator.

Who lives with itOwner-managed firms and their one technical person · the larger customers whose supply chain runs through them · insurers pricing cyber cover

Why nowAn ENISA survey of small and medium enterprises, carried out during the pandemic, found that around nine in ten expected serious harm to their business within a week of a cyber incident and that over half believed it would likely end the business, against a backdrop of low security budgets and a lack of in-house cyber skills.

Why it matters · the JudgeAn existential risk to the firms that make up the overwhelming majority of businesses, where the binding constraint is operator time rather than money or intent. Security that needs nobody to watch it is a different product from the one being sold.

Inspired by reporting from ENISA (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity)

A side project to make a dent in

LinkedIn Send to someone

Solve it →Full problem

Ed. 1

WorkProblem 0010

We can now say with some precision which occupations generative AI reaches first, how that varies by country, and that the exposure falls hardest on clerical and administrative work done mostly by women. What does not exist is the other half: a route from an exposed role into an adjacent one that uses the same accumulated judgment. Retraining is too often offered as courses unrelated to what the person already knows how to do.

Who lives with itClerical, administrative and business support workers · employers holding the institutional knowledge in those roles · public employment services

Why nowThe ILO finds 29% of female-dominated occupations carry exposure to generative AI against 16% of male-dominated ones, with exposure reaching around 41% of jobs in high-income countries versus 11% in low-income ones, and women more exposed than men in 88% of the countries analysed.

Why it matters · the JudgeThe measurement is done and the response is missing, which is an unusually clear place to build. Mapping what an exposed role actually contains onto roles needing those same capabilities is a matching problem, and matching problems are tractable.

Inspired by reporting from International Labour Organization

A side project to make a dent in

LinkedIn Send to someone

Solve it →Full problem

The same Radar runs in your context. What you see here is the World Radar, free. Tune it to your market and it listens to the sectors, themes and geographies you set, landing every find in your portfolio, graded: that's the Team plan. Tune it to your company and it listens to your innovation agenda and to your own people: that's Enterprise. Both are private to you: nothing they find is ever published.

What the Radar finds, in your inbox. Subscribe →

3 problems. Pick one.Bring a problem

Capacity

Grid connection backlog Energy developers are blocked by paperwork, not engineering

Undefended small firms Small firms face enterprise attacks without a security team

No AI-exposure offramp Workers can't move out of the roles AI reaches first