{"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__organizational_management","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"organizational_management","title":"Risk-tiered delegated approval for routine operational requests","opportunity_summary":"Test whether a uniform senior-approval gate is causing material delay, abandonment, or idle capacity for low-risk operational work, and, only if that attribution holds, evaluate a bounded delegated path with audit, escalation, expiry, and rollback controls.","adopter_authorizer":"The governance body that owns the approval policy, with concurrence from finance, compliance, security, legal, and worker representatives where protected interests are implicated.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Recovering delayed or abandoned operational work could create meaningful value and free senior attention, but the packet provides no observed request volume, attributable delay, abandonment rate, or value at stake."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Requesters and approvers have plausible reasons to want a faster routine path, but the candidate contains no interviews, demand signals, complaints, sponsorship commitments, or evidence that affected stakeholders prioritize this problem."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"Changing the authority threshold could outperform automation or added reviewer capacity when the coarse approval rule is causal, but the packet explicitly leaves that attribution unresolved against workflow friction, substantive review, request quality, and scarcity."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The combination of risk tiers, delegated signers, audit, escalation, and expiry is coherent, but prior art is unsearched and the packet supplies no basis for judging whether the mechanism is distinctive."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A one-unit path using eligibility rules, delegated signers, logs, audits, and routing appears implementable with ordinary governance and workflow capabilities, although reliable risk classification and available logging remain unverified."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The policy-owning governance body is identified and the pilot is bounded and reversible, but adoption may require concurrence from several control owners and worker representatives whose approval has not been established."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate names baseline, rival explanations, measurable queue and completion outcomes, protected-outcome checks, and separate problem and intervention falsifiers; data availability, matching quality, and detection of rare harms remain uncertain."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":3,"rationale":"Audit, exception escalation, exclusions, expiry, and immediate rollback provide a meaningful protective backstop, but the packet does not establish that classification and monitoring will detect rare or systematically underclassified harms."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The policy pattern could be repeated across request classes and units, but each expansion may require local risk ceilings, control-owner approval, training, audit capacity, and safeguards against gaming and downstream congestion."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"A bounded retrospective queue-stage analysis for one unit and one candidate request class, comparing low-risk cases with matched baseline cases and testing whether the senior-approval stage predicts delay, abandonment, or idle resources.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Usable request timestamps and disposition records already exist.","The analysis requires limited analyst, process-owner, and control-owner time.","No new enterprise data platform or prospective deployment is included."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Design and configure a 60-day pilot for one reversible, low-value, low-risk request class, including eligibility rules, authority documentation, workflow changes, logging, audit design, training, compliance review, and evaluation preparation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing workflow software can be configured rather than replaced.","Only one unit and request class are included.","Legal, compliance, security, finance, and worker-review needs are limited but nontrivial.","No major integration or remediation of deficient source records is required."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Operate and evaluate the bounded 60-day pilot, including delegated-review labor, random audits, monitoring, matched outcome analysis, incident handling, and rollback readiness.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Pilot volume is modest.","Delegated signers use existing staff capacity.","No serious incident triggers a prolonged investigation.","Startup configuration and policy-design work are accounted for separately."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Maintain one-unit production operation for the initial request class, including delegated review, audit sampling, access and rule administration, reporting, training refreshes, incident review, and periodic threshold reassessment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The scope remains limited to one unit and request class.","Existing software and control functions are reused.","Request volume, audit intensity, and incident rates are presently unknown.","Expansion across units or regulated request classes would require a new estimate."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate specifies recognizable symptoms and a falsifiable mechanism, but every prevalence and attribution statement is a hypothesis without observed queue, abandonment, or capacity evidence."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The packet identifies the approval-policy governance body as decision authority and names the control owners whose concurrence may be required."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"It distinctly claims that risk-tiered delegation will improve eligible-case completion or cycle time relative to the uniform gate without unacceptable protected-outcome deterioration, and separates this from automation or added-capacity explanations."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A one-unit retrospective queue-stage analysis can safely compare matched cases and falsify the problem claim before any live policy change."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet supplies exclusions, audit, expiry, and rollback protections, but actual authorization, reliable risk separation, signer competence, segregation of duties, and adequate rare-harm monitoring have not been established."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposed initial scope is bounded to one unit, one low-value and low-risk request class, and 60 days, permitting broad resource bands under explicit assumptions despite unknown volume and systems complexity."}},"blocking_evidence":["Queue-stage timestamps and case dispositions showing whether the uniform senior-approval stage materially contributes to delay, abandonment, or idle capacity after accounting for substantive review, request quality, reviewer capacity, and genuine scarcity.","Evidence that the proposed low-risk class can be classified reliably without systematic underclassification, request splitting, or loss of segregation of duties.","Baseline measures and monitoring definitions for protected outcomes, equitable access, downstream review burden, gaming, and serious incidents.","Confirmation that the policy-owning governance body and implicated control owners have authority and willingness to authorize the bounded pilot."],"next_evidence_step":"Conduct a retrospective analysis of one proposed request class in one unit using queue-stage timestamps and dispositions; compare low-risk requests exposed to the senior-approval stage with matched cases having different routing or approval duration, and stop if the gate is not associated with material incremental delay, abandonment, or recoverable idle capacity after rival explanations are examined.","research_questions":["What share of total cycle time and abandonment is attributable specifically to the senior-approval stage rather than substantive expert review, poor request quality, handoffs, understaffing, or resource scarcity?","Can eligibility rules distinguish routine low-risk cases from consequential cases with acceptable misclassification rates and resistance to request splitting?","Which protected outcomes and equity measures can be observed promptly, and which rare harms require longer follow-up than a 60-day pilot?","Do delegated signers have sufficient competence, independence, capacity, and protection from pressure while preserving segregation of duties?","Would automation, simplified documentation, or added reviewer capacity recover similar value without changing decision authority?","Which governance and control owners must concur, and what evidence would they require to authorize and later continue the pilot?","What prior implementations or established practices resemble risk-tiered delegated approval, and what incremental claim, if any, remains after prior-art review?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["The packet is closed-book and supplies no external evidence of prevalence, stakeholder demand, realized impact, prior art, or market size.","All queue symptoms, abandonment effects, and recoverable value are hypotheses rather than observations.","Cost bands depend heavily on request volume, data quality, workflow configurability, required control reviews, audit intensity, and organizational scale.","A short pilot may be unable to detect rare protected-outcome failures or longer-term gaming.","The proposal's value depends on isolating a coarse authority wedge from ordinary workflow friction, substantive oversight, and genuine scarcity."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior-art status is explicitly UNSEARCHED. No conclusion is made about novelty, prevalence, existing risk-tiered delegation practices, comparable internal-control designs, or competitive alternatives."}