Far from being the measure of disgrace it once was, failure now seems to be a sort of badge of honor. But underlying many popular Silicon Valley failure clichés is entrepreneurs’ belief that “starting companies these days is akin to doing research in the past” — as if we don’t need research when the opportunity to fail is so readily available.
Somewhere along the way, it got to be uncool to reduce one’s risk of failure.
Part of this may be because the risk of failure is dramatically lower than it used to be. But another reason is that many people don’t actually understand what research is, and have somehow conflated concepts like “rapid prototyping,” “lean startup,” “minimal viable product,” and “[insert] other smart-sounding thing to do” with avoiding research.
That kind of thinking might be fine for entrepreneurs focusing only on their personal risk and fear of failure, but it has real financial, cultural, and opportunity costs for businesses. (The opportunity cost includes all the needs that go unmet because they didn’t happen to occur to a lone entrepreneur or narrowly focused team.)
// Dude, it’s even tougher inside agency environments where research and prototyping is not guaranteed to be part of the process. Yeah, there’s guerilla research, paper and quick-digi prototyping. But it’s rarely ‘enough’. //
Research is not about whether people “like” or don’t like something. No business should ever use the word “like.” Like is not a design word and has nothing to do with any business goal. It’s just a reported mental attitude with no necessary connection to behavior. (Same thing with “hate”: I may hate The Newsroom, but I still watch it. Why? The better to hate it.)
In market research, this is known as the difference between “declared preference” — the fruit of focus groups — and “revealed preference” or reality.
Yet focus groups are not research; they’re research theater. They tell us very little about how real people behave in the real world. The brilliant sociologist and father of focus groups Robert K. Merton later lamented their misuse in replacing research: “Even when the subjects are well selected, focus groups are supposed to be merely the source of ideas that need to be researched.”
When the research focuses on what people actually do (watch cat videos) rather than what they wish they did (produce cinema-quality home movies) it actually expands possibilities. But a common concern and excuse for not doing research is that it will limit creative possibilities to only those articulated by the target users, leaving designers devising a faster horse (lame) rather than a flying car (rad).
Worse than being limited by potential customers’ imaginations is being limited by one’s own — especially if most business leaders admit they’re not going to be the next Steve Jobs. But why should they have to imagine how the world works, when it’s possible to find out through research? Their imagination is then better spent on designing the solution.
Still, no one should do any sort of research just to tick a box or CYA (cover your ass) — that’s worse than doing no research at all. If your heart tells you to build what’s in your head, and there’s no one else you need to convince, go forth, my friend, and build that dream.
Wandering Wandering Star 