Summary
Researchers use our work to drive organizational action, by closing knowledge gaps, clarifying user needs, or identifying opportunities. But the extent of that action is often limited. We frequently want our research to be about strategy, but that's not how organizations usually work. Our stakeholders want tactical research on tight timelines. By contrast, Peter highlights a different, and distinctive, approach to making strategic impact: considering research as a form of "robust action," work that solves specific problems while visibly expanding the organization's field of future possibility. Peter gives examples of work he’s done in this fashion at Intel, Autodesk, and Airtable, and provides some guiding principles to help make our work more valuable.
Key Insights
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User research’s unique value is expanding future organizational possibilities, not just solving immediate issues.
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Intel’s 1998 ethnographic research predicted mobile phones would rival PCs but the company failed to act, illustrating missed strategic opportunities.
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Airtable’s 2021 usability study challenged core company assumptions, triggering a company-wide push towards simplicity amid growth pressures.
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Researchers must balance tackling ‘right here’ problems with advancing longer-term strategic goals to maximize impact.
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Robust action, inspired by chess grandmasters, means preserving organizational flexibility and opening multiple future opportunities.
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Cross-functional collaboration with finance, design, and engineering is critical for research to gain traction inside organizations.
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Individual contributors can influence major strategic directions by identifying tractable research problems linked to bigger goals.
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Incremental innovations, like Intel’s silicon-on-demand and Autodesk’s AutoCAD Trace, can seed transformative change over time.
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Understanding organizational DNA, narratives, leadership concerns, and ecosystem dynamics enhances research relevance and uptake.
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Intuition guides selecting research problems with potential for broader impact, though explicit methods to do so are lacking.
Notable Quotes
"Nobody actually cares that we’re better researchers. The question should be, what makes us distinctive."
"Our research should meet short-term objectives while preserving and expanding our organization’s long-term flexibility."
"Intel’s 1998 research showed cell phones would compete with personal computers, but Intel did nothing."
"Sometimes making a terrible first big change is successful if it allows the next person to improve it."
"The best chess players act early to preserve flexibility and open up possibility, not by seeing far ahead."
"If I can help make big opportunities obvious to the organization, then I will try to do that."
"Most researchers are unequipped to handle grand organizational challenges but can still influence them from within."
"Embrace your insights community beyond just researchers—finance, design, CTO’s office—allies matter."
"Right here problems are what you’re asked to solve now, but solving them with bigger goals in mind changes everything."
"Organizations are better at making something better than at doing something new."
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