The Mission-Driven Innovator’s Guide to Market Research
Welcome to our second newsletter sharing best practices for accelerating mission-driven innovation. Lots of newsletters provide relevant news and information in this space. This is not one of them. At BMNT, we are focused on what to do and how to do it. This will help you get things done inside large organizations.
This week is about market research, a broad term for collecting and analyzing information about capabilities within a market. It is used to make informed decisions about how the government’s needs can be met by commercial products and services. Traditionally, this is done through general notices (to signal government intent), requests for information (to solicit organized responses to specific questions), and industry days (to exchange information).
At BMNT, we take a novel, problem-centric approach to market research, so we can learn more about the underlying need (and desired outcome) while researching solutions and building coalitions of the right experts to create new capabilities.
You can take a page from our approach. Here are three tips you should know:
Understand your goal
Innovation starts with a problem
Talk to evangelists, not salespeople
Most of our customers are used to working with the same specific partners. As a result, the customers’ view of the solution pathways is often narrow. These traditional partners are large vendors with a long history of working with the government. They are familiar with the traditional way of doing things, yet often share government biases. Such partners are great for efficiently doing the same thing over and over, but not for adapting quickly to the changing business and security environment we find ourselves in today.
Let’s dive in!
Avoid common mistakes
To best leverage commercial products and services, you first need to make sure you don’t make a few of the most common mistakes:
Not having a clear goal. Are you buying a solution as quickly as possible, or learning how other organizations solve similar problems?
Putting solutions ahead of understanding problems. This doesn’t mean you ignore specific technology. You just look at it through the lens of a well-scoped problem by interviewing key stakeholders. By doing so, you learn more about your constraints, find inspiration, and gain possible solution pathways. You accelerate problem-solving.
Talk to the wrong people in a company. The products of today were developed years ago. You want to learn about the capabilities of tomorrow, which are in the mind of a technical expert, not the head of federal sales.
So, here’s what to do:
Understand your goal
First, have a clear goal in mind before you begin. Are you:
Buying a solution to meet an urgent deadline or need?
Learning how other government or commercial organizations solve similar problems?
Understanding enough about a problem to be helpful to your boss?
Providing a top level perspective of the “market” or comparisons of various markets?
Communicating different elements of the problem to break solution bias?
Understanding the risk and opportunity of a market and a specific solution?
Without a clear purpose, your market research will quickly create data, and possibly connections, that are simply off target.
Innovation starts with a problem
Second, scope the problem you’re trying to solve. This helps to build an accurate coalition of experts outside the defense industrial base. Each expert will understand a different dimension of the problem, and can speak to emerging trends in that area. This helps to avoid committing to solutions based on incomplete knowledge of the technical landscape.
For example, to explore ways to translate defense critical languages, Google Translate’s product manager walked our customer, a Department of Defense combat support organization, through their approach to neural networks. Their emphasis on smaller data sets with specific technical language changed DOD’s approach to exploring machine translation to complement their limited set of interpreters. Traditionally, DOD would release a request for information, and the responses would be limited to the usual suspects of government contracting.
In another example, we brought together the Office of Naval Research and Defense Logistics Agency to jointly explore additive manufacturing. By carefully scoping the actual problems constraining DLA’s mission – including 2D to 3D file conversion, generating manufacturing data, secure data transmission, quality control and parts certification, and more – the team was able to narrow its focus to next-generation 3D scanning, geometric search capabilities, and printer management and security. This quickly led to a new acquisition pathway and follow-on engagement with key stakeholders in the Army, Marine Corps, and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Evangelists, not sales
Third, engage technical experts (Founders, CTOs, VP of Product), not those selling a product. Nothing against the latter, but they’re selling today’s features, not tomorrow’s inventions. They also don’t fully understand the tradeoffs and lessons learned creating the product in the first place.
For example, to help explain large network defense, Visa’s Chief Information Officer explained to Cyber Command how Visa defends more than $8 trillion in online financial transactions each year. Several of the strategies and tools were immediately applicable to the way CYBERCOM approached passive network defense — a challenge they thought was unique, until they met the world’s second largest card payment organization.
That’s it!
Thanks for reading.
Reply to let us know what you found most helpful this week. We’d love to hear from you!
See you next month.
Brian Miller, VP @ BMNT
P.S. Go Deeper
For more ways to rise above the status quo:
EIX: Government Organizations Must Innovate Like Entrepreneurs
Defense News: Want to innovate for DoD? Pay close attention to Ukraine
Defense One: Want More Innovation? Get Out of Your Office and Talk to People
Product Mastery Now podcast: Building more innovation organizations with Sabra Horne
Marine Corps Times: Tech whizzes and CEOs find homes in Corps’ new Reserve innovation unit
PR Newswire: Accelerating Global Defense Logistics New DLA contract marks BMNT Inc.'s fourth with the combat support agency
Defense & Aerospace Daily Podcast: Real innovation is more than just tech
The Realignment Podcast: Driving Battlefield Innovation from Afghanistan & Iraq to Ukraine and Beyond with Pete Newell
PR Newswire: Fostering Innovation in the Air Force
The Common Mission Project: The Value of Getting out of the Classroom