Gucci Doesn't Solve a Problem
What problem does Gucci solve? Nobody needs a $2,400 bag. There is no functional problem that a Gucci product addresses that a $50 bag from a department store doesn't handle equally well. The leather holds your things. The zipper zips. The strap goes over your shoulder.
Gucci exists because people want to signal status. They want to communicate their social position. They want to feel like they belong to a certain class. These are cultural desires. They are real and they are powerful enough to build a multi-billion dollar company. But they are not problems in any traditional business sense.
If you're doing an opportunity assessment and you only look for problems to solve, you miss the entire luxury industry. You miss fashion. You miss entertainment. You miss sports. You miss every business built on desire rather than necessity.
The NFL Doesn't Solve a Problem
American football solves nothing. Nobody needs to watch 22 people chase a ball for three hours on a Sunday. There is no pain point being addressed. There is no inefficiency being optimized. There is no workflow being improved.
The NFL is a $20 billion a year business built entirely on cultural desire. People want entertainment. They want tribal belonging. They want something to care about with their friends and family. They want the emotional highs of watching their team win and the shared suffering of watching them lose.
None of these are problems. All of them are enormous business opportunities. The opportunity assessment framework that says find a problem to solve would never produce the NFL. It would never produce the music industry, the film industry, or the gaming industry either. These are desire industries. They exist because humans want things beyond what they need.
Monster Energy Doesn't Solve a Problem
You could argue Monster solves the problem of being tired. But caffeine pills solve that problem for a fraction of the cost. Coffee solves that problem. Monster's success has almost nothing to do with caffeine delivery. It's about identity. The matte black can, the claw logo, the association with MMA and motocross. People buy Monster because of what it represents, not because they calculated the most efficient way to consume caffeine.
The desire that Monster fills is identity expression. Holding a Monster says something about who you are. That desire is worth $7 billion in annual revenue. A problem solving framework would say just drink coffee. A desire framework explains why Monster exists and why it's massive.
The iPhone: Second Order Opportunity
The original iPhone is an interesting case because it sits between problem solving and desire creation. Nobody was walking around in 2006 saying I wish my phone, my iPod, and my internet browser were one device. That problem didn't exist in people's minds because they didn't know the solution was possible.
Steve Jobs didn't find a problem. He saw an opportunity to give people something they would want once they saw it. The iPhone created a desire that didn't exist before the product existed. People saw it on stage and immediately understood they needed it, even though five minutes earlier they had no idea it could exist.
You could call this second order problem solving. The first order problem, making phone calls, was already solved. The second order opportunity, combining communication, music, and internet into one beautiful device, wasn't a problem anyone was articulating. It was a convenience and a desire that Apple identified and created a product around.
The best opportunity assessments look beyond first order problems. They look at what people would want if they knew it was possible. That requires imagination and creative intuition, not just market research and customer interviews.
How to Assess Opportunities Beyond Problems
The traditional opportunity assessment asks what problem exists and how can we solve it better than the competition. This is valid for B2B software, healthcare, logistics, and infrastructure. Real problems with real pain points that people will pay to eliminate.
But there is a second type of opportunity assessment that most business frameworks ignore. What do people desire that nobody is giving them? What cultural need is unmet? What identity do people want to express that no current product lets them express?
Raising Cane's works because people desire great chicken fingers in a simple, reliable format. That's a desire, not a problem. Starbucks worked because people desired a comfortable third place to exist between home and work. Minecraft works because people desire a calm, creative world to explore. None of these started with a problem statement. They started with an understanding of what people want.
When you're assessing business opportunities, don't limit yourself to problems. Look at desires. Look at cultural gaps. Look at identities people want to express but can't. Look at experiences people want to have but nobody is offering. The biggest businesses in the world are built on giving people what they want, and what people want goes far beyond what they need.