Research Is Only Finished When Someone Acts on It

Start from the decision, not the data

The best research briefs I worked on began with a question someone actually had to answer. Should we enter this market? Which competitor is moving into our space? Is this pricing still right? When the decision is clear, it tells you which data matters and which is just interesting.

When a brief starts with "tell us everything about this market", the result is usually long, accurate and unused.

Put the recommendation first

Stakeholders are busy. If the recommendation sits on page twenty, most of them will never reach it. I try to lead with what I think should happen and why, and let the supporting analysis follow for anyone who wants to check it.

This also forces me to commit. A report that never recommends anything is easy to write and easy to ignore.

Show your confidence honestly

Secondary data, field reports and purchased research all have gaps. Pretending otherwise damages trust the first time a number turns out to be wrong. Saying plainly which findings are solid and which are estimates helps people decide how much weight to put on each one.

Stay close to the people who use it

Research gets better when the analyst hears how it was used. Which part changed someone's mind? Which part was skipped? Keeping that conversation going is how a research function becomes part of strategy instead of a service that produces documents on request.

Why this led me to product

Moving into product management at IBM felt like a natural next step. Product work is research that has to end in something built. Joining the Curious PM cohort pushed that one step further: using AI to go from insight to a working product much faster than before.