Step 2: Research (Phase II)
It's time to dig deep and find golden nuggets. Based on their research agenda, the team conducts their research and captures results. Check out what this may look like.
Gabriele Bacher
Team Coach
Sabine Schoen
Team Coach
1. Purpose
After the Kick-off Workshop, the team has a clear picture of what's their research focus, which questions they want to answer and how to do so. Each team member got tasks and started research to gather fresh and surprising insights. Depending on the research focus the research might concentrate on certain key areas. The following table gives you a first impression of what research in these areas may look like:
Research Area | Methods (Examples) | Result format |
Customer & users |
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Market structure & dynamics |
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Technology |
| Short technology reports with implications to business lines |
Competitive landscape |
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Partnerships |
| List of partners for research, sales, merger & acquisitions and don't forget the start-up cosmos |
Data & resources |
| List of available data pools incl. quality criteria and other resources that have a unique character |
Organisational strengths and weaknesses |
| SWOT analysis |
Research can be almost meaningless if we are not able to gather fresh and (sometimes) surprising insights. A simple list of competitors with name, website, number of employees and annual revenue of last fiscal year is a good start, but we don't learn that much for our projects. If we were able to get valid information, why our No. 1 competitors failed in their innovative "direct-to-consumer" marketing campaigns, inspiration will come instantly.
2. Duration
5 weeks
3. Key Activities
Set up the research: The research starts with the Kick-off Workshop. The team comes together to get familiar with the project charter, collect open questions and define the research agenda (research questions, methods, output format, etc.) for the following weeks. The team plans and maybe already starts the preparation of some research activities together like defining guidelines, templates or interviewees. Furthermore, if necessary, the team gets an introduction to research methods and how to conduct them (like interviewing techniques) by the Team Coach oder a Research Expert.
Conduct research: The team conducts their research according their agenda and captures results (sound, pictures, videos, reports). Depending on their focus they may interview customers according to their interview guideline, conduct DIY activities, have expert talks and do desk research. Find further examples for activities in this phase for Exploring Customers & Users, Exploring Competitors Exploring Markets on our subpages. In a review workshop, they share intermediary results in the project team by presenting their findings. They reflect and adapt their research agenda together with their Team Coach for the second iteration.
4. Participants
5. Tools & Materials
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