Research

From a recent conversation with a Temple University advertising professor here in Philadelphia I learned that many people are scared by the term "research." As a life-long researcher and market research professional I'm not scared by it at all.

Research is merely the systematic asking and answering of questions. The important concept here is "systematic." It's not random. For example, if it was cloudy out and looked like rain you wanted to know if you should carry an umbrella during the day's activity. You might wish to look out the window and see if (1) others are carrying umbrellas and (2) cars are driving around with their window wipers on. If one of these conditions are met, you might conclude that it is raining.

This is something I would do but it's not research. It's simply a practical way of reducing my risk of getting wet. If more people looked out the window the better off the world would be.

Research would be asking the following question--"To what extent does umbrella carrying predict that it is actually raining?"--then carrying out a carefully designed research study to measure the extent to which umbrella carrying behavior predicts "rainyness." The study would have a design, data collection, data analysis, and report with recommendation phases.

A somewhat simplistic and silly example but I think you get the point. When I lived in another city the late news used to pose a questions to their listeners and then ask them to call one number with a "yes" response and another number with a "no" answer. Then at the end of the newscast they would give the tallies. The killer was the disclaimer: "This is not scientific, just a way of find out what you think." Well, I hate to tell them, if it's not scientific, it's not a way to find out what people think. Oh well.

Anyway, we entrepreneurs need to know about research for at least two reasons. We will need to conduct some research ourselves some day and (2) we'll need to be able to read and evaluate research studies others do.

But don't be scared by the term. It's really an important field of endeavor. It won't do everything and often it is relied on to do too much. And the new economy has changed the way research has to be done. But that's the subject of a later post.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. And go read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.