Get to know the facts! While it is always valuable to ‘Get Out of the Building’, you should not underestimate the insights you can get from doing desk research. In some cases certain customer data is already available.

If you have an idea of the characteristics of the target group that is experiencing a certain problem, you can get an idea of the size of this group by doing some extensive desk research. 

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Some other great types of desk research are to take a ‘Picnic in the Graveyard’ and to discover what people are asking about.

Picnic in the Graveyard

One type of desk research is to investigate the biggest failures in your industry and understand the reasons behind them. This is called Picnic in the Graveyard. The aim is to not repeat the same mistakes and use already existing learnings to improve your own solution.

It fits perfectly alongside a competitor analysis. Don’t limit yourself to current approaches but look also at past initiatives that were not successful.

Search Engine Research

Investigate whether people are actively looking for an answer to their problem. It is all about testing if your are working on a problem is worth solving. It will help you to avoid losing time working on a itch that doesn’t really trigger people to look for a solution.