· Research

ACTIVITY 02.10.00 · 3 MIN READ

Research, gathered.

In context: Stage 02 · Discover · sub-stage 02.10

The point where a hunch gives way to evidence about the buyer, the market and the IP around it.

— TL;DR

The Research sub-stage of Discover gathers the facts before you commit: who buys, what the market looks like, where the IP boundaries sit, and what stakeholders actually want. Find out cheaply now, so the decisions downstream rest on evidence rather than assumption.

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What the Research sub-stage is

This is where Discover gets disciplined. Research is the gathering of evidence about the buyer, the market and the IP landscape before anyone commits time or money to a direction. The job is not to confirm what you already hoped. It is to go looking for the things that could be true, write them down honestly, and let what you find shape the brief rather than the other way round.

For the £149 proofing box, this is the sub-stage where I stopped guessing. Dan and Anna Hartley were sure home bakers wanted reliable proofing, but sure is not the same as proven. We worked through who the buyer really was, what the Sourdough School audience expected, and what the UKCA and BS EN routes would demand. Gathering that evidence in Stockport, before any concept, is what kept the later work honest.

What’s in this sub-stage

Seven activities take the Research sub-stage from a blank page to a body of evidence you can design against. Work them roughly in order.

Identify your value goals

Set out plainly what good looks like for this product before you go gathering evidence.

Understand industry

Map the sector you are entering: the players, the norms and how products like yours get sold.

Customer persona

Build a sharp picture of the person who buys, so every later decision has someone to answer to.

Market context enquiry

Test where the product sits on price, demand and competition before you build anything.

Explore IP landscape

Check what already exists and where the patent and design boundaries sit, early and cheaply.

Interview stakeholders

Talk to the people with a stake in the outcome and capture what they actually need.

Run idea brainstorm

Open up directions against the evidence you have gathered, before narrowing in later stages.

How it fits the bigger picture

Research is part of Stage 02 Discover. It turns a raw idea into grounded evidence about the buyer, the market and the IP, and that evidence is what Stage 03 Innovate then works with. Gather it well here and the ideation stage has real constraints to push against; skip it and Innovate ends up inventing in the dark.

What it can do

It replaces opinion with evidence on the things that matter most early: who the buyer is, what the market will bear, and where the IP boundaries sit. Done well, it gives every later stage a factual footing and surfaces the dealbreakers while they are still cheap to act on.

What it can’t do

It can’t make the decision for you; that comes later, once the evidence is weighed. And it can’t guarantee a market. Research narrows the risk and sharpens the questions, but the product still has to earn its place when it reaches real buyers.

See the full 10-stage process →

Try it yourself

Don’t try to tackle all seven activities at once. Pick the first one below, Identify your value goals, and work just that on your own idea before moving down the list.

Or run the guided version. The Free Sprint covers the early stages; deeper research tools sit in the paid ladder. Start the Free Sprint →

— First in Research → Identify your value goals