From Data to Decision: Making Expansion Research Actually Useful
Research that does not change a decision is overhead. The discipline is designing the analysis backwards from the choice the client actually faces.
A great deal of expansion research is thorough, well-presented, and quietly ignored. The usual failure is not analytical quality. It is that the work was never designed around the decision it was meant to inform.
Design backwards from the decision
Before commissioning analysis, it is worth stating the decision plainly: what is being chosen, by whom, by when, and on what criteria. Research designed against that statement tends to be smaller, sharper, and far more likely to be used.
Carry the uncertainty into the recommendation
Decisions are made under uncertainty. Presenting a single answer without its sensitivities hides the very thing a decision-maker needs. A recommendation that states its key assumptions, and what would change the conclusion, is more useful than one that projects false confidence.
Written by the CIC research team.
Discuss this with us