{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__literature_literary_theory","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"literature_literary_theory","title":"Competency-Preserving Flexibility in Graduate Literature Reading Lists","opportunity_summary":"Replace some fixed canonical-title requirements with protected coverage floors, a retained common core, and rubric-governed flexible slots. The mechanism could recover scarce reading capacity without expanding workload, but the packet provides no local evidence that title quotas bind, that excluded works are suitable substitutes, or that the redesign improves outcomes without weakening shared competence or fairness.","adopter_authorizer":"The formally empowered graduate curriculum committee, subject to institutional assessment rules and documented consultation with affected students and faculty.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Recovering reading slots could improve relevance, representation, and pedagogical value while reducing low-yield compulsory work. However, the frequency, magnitude, and distribution of the alleged displacement are unsupported hypotheses, and the immediate scope is one graduate program."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate names recurring substitution petitions and displaced reading time only as unmeasured hypotheses. It supplies no demonstrated student demand, faculty sponsorship, committee interest, or willingness to adopt."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Unlike supplementary electives, the proposal releases mandatory slots while holding total workload and protected coverage constant. Its advantage remains conditional on feasible substitutions actually delivering equivalent competence and common-reference value."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The mechanism composition is specific, but prior art is explicitly unsearched. The packet cannot establish distinctiveness relative to flexible-list, competency-based, petition, or canon-reform practices."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A committee can define a common core, coverage floor, substitution rubric, monitoring rules, expiry, and rollback without novel technology. Implementability is reduced by unresolved measurement instruments, decision margins, review capacity, and grading-consistency procedures."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The proposal identifies a formally empowered curriculum committee, institutional review constraints, consultation, bounded exclusions, and restoration authority. Actual authorization and stakeholder willingness have not been demonstrated."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate provides separate problem and intervention falsifiers and a comparison concept, but no local observations, operational measures, sample assumptions, threshold owners, or preset margins needed for an executable evaluation."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"A retained common core, protected coverage, unchanged workload, published rubric, subgroup monitoring, halt conditions, expiry, and restoration of the prior list directly limit competence, inequity, fragmentation, and workload risks. Their effectiveness is not yet evidenced."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The coverage-floor and flexible-slot framework could be reused across programs, but title equivalence, disciplinary coordination, representation, assessment, and faculty-review capacity require substantial local judgment and may limit consistent replication."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"An 8-to-12-week audit of one graduate program covering list histories, fixed and optional slot counts, petition records, competency mappings, displaced-work examples, available workload indicators, and interviews or structured consultation; includes analysis and a go/no-go report but no live curriculum change.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["One program supplies accessible records and staff time.","The audit uses existing administrative and assessment data rather than commissioning new longitudinal measurement.","Faculty, student, data-governance, and coordination labor are included as resource-equivalent cost."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design of a one-program pilot protocol, including the protected coverage floor, retained common core, substitution rubric, measures, subgroup analysis, approval workflow, decision margins, consent or review requirements, and rollback procedures.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The audit finds a material allocation problem and plausible substitutes.","Existing curriculum and assessment systems can support the protocol with limited modification.","No major legal, accreditation, archive-access, or software procurement requirement emerges."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Operation and evaluation of one consenting cohort under the same total reading-slot limit, with a randomized or credible matched comparison, faculty review, student support, outcome collection, consistency checks, subgroup monitoring, and independent analysis.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A sufficiently comparable cohort or matched historical group is available.","The program can protect students from degree-progress and grading harm.","The band includes faculty replacement time, evaluation labor, administration, data handling, and rollback readiness."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Ongoing operation within one program after authorization, including substitution review, rubric maintenance, student advising, monitoring of competence and equity, complaints handling, periodic list review, and reporting.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The number of substitution requests remains manageable.","Monitoring can rely substantially on existing assessments and governance meetings.","The intervention does not trigger continuing large-scale accreditation or cross-institution coordination work."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"Finite reading slots and displaced alternatives form a recognizable problem structure, but every target-domain observation about binding quotas, recurring petitions, excluded relevant works, and low-yield titles is explicitly hypothetical and lacks local support."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate identifies the formally empowered graduate curriculum committee as decision authority, subject to institutional rules and documented student consultation."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"Holding total slots and protected coverage constant while allowing rubric-approved substitutions is distinguishable from the inherited fixed list and the supplementary-text rival, with prespecified benefit and protection outcomes capable of falsifying it."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A one-program records audit can safely compare fixed requirements, substitution requests, excluded alternatives, competency mappings, and available outcomes before any live deployment, and can falsify the claimed allocation wedge."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"No categorical stop is identified: formal authority, consultation, retained common readings, workload limits, monitoring, halt conditions, and restoration are specified. Substitutability, inequity, and measurement risks must still be resolved before a live pilot."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate bounds a one-program cohort and identifies review activities, but instruments, sample size, comparison availability, review volume, staff capacity, approval requirements, and decision margins are unspecified, so implementation resources remain provisional."}},"blocking_evidence":["Local evidence that fixed-title requirements actually bind finite reading capacity and exclude relevant works rather than merely coexist with them.","Evidence that at least some feasible substitutes satisfy the same historical, formal, theoretical, and cross-course coordination purposes as particular fixed titles.","Operational measures and decision margins for learning, relevance, workload, representation, common-reference competence, grading consistency, inequity, and administrative burden.","Evidence that advising and substitution approval can operate without systematically favoring well-advised students or easier texts.","Confirmation of curriculum authority, institutional review requirements, faculty capacity, student protections, and a feasible comparison group.","A bounded prior-art review clarifying whether the contribution is an intervention, mechanism composition, or analytical framing."],"next_evidence_step":"Conduct an 8-to-12-week retrospective audit in one program with no curriculum change. Compare fixed-title slots against approved or denied substitution petitions and excluded optional works mapped to the same stated competencies; examine available workload and assessment records for fixed titles versus feasible substitutes. Treat the problem as unsupported if no relevant works are displaced, competency-equivalent substitutes cannot be identified, or fixed titles show sufficient distinctive contribution to justify their slot cost; proceed only to pilot-protocol design if a material wedge survives those tests.","research_questions":["How many finite mandatory slots are occupied by fixed titles, and what relevant works or learning activities are demonstrably displaced?","Which competencies and cross-course coordination benefits require specific shared titles, and which can be met by approved substitutes?","Do fixed titles outperform feasible substitutes on prespecified learning, workload, relevance, representation, and common-reference outcomes?","Would flexible approvals create unequal advising access, rubric gaming, easier-text selection, grading inconsistency, or excessive faculty-review burden?","What comparison design, measures, subgroup analyses, decision margins, and restoration triggers would make a subsequent pilot credible and safe?","How does the proposed mechanism differ from existing flexible-list, competency-based, petition, and canon-reform practices?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["All claims about local reading-list practices, displaced works, petitions, student workload, and title-level outcomes are hypotheses in the sealed packet.","Problem prevalence, affected population size, realized impact, stakeholder demand, and willingness to authorize are unmeasured.","Literary and coordination value may be title-specific, contested, delayed, and poorly captured by easily tested outcomes.","Prior art and world novelty are unmeasured.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based only on the stated one-program scope, not verified prices or staffing data.","The earliest horizon assumes timely record access, faculty participation, student consultation, and institutional review."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No conclusion is made about novelty, prevalence, market size, realized effectiveness, or existing comparable practices. The candidate declares prior art unsearched, so distinctiveness remains provisional pending external research."}