SVBWhen I stepped into the design research function at SVB, I inherited a legacy research practice from the Innovation Team that had developed some very bad research habits. Despite none of the original researchers still being there, they had trained designers, strategists, and business development teams to believe these problematic approaches were best practices. The challenge was particularly delicate: I needed to undo these bad habits without bad-mouthing former colleagues, especially since the output of the old work seemed plausible to the untrained eye and had already been used to make business decisions.
I began by conducting a thorough audit of past research plans and reports to understand exactly what needed to change. From there, I created new guidelines and updated templates that reflected research best practices. Rather than upending everything at once, I took a collaborative approach, running workshops with designers, strategists, and the business development team to demonstrate proper research methods and explain the delta between the old methods and how we would work together going forward. I remained flexible with methodologies, understanding there are always tradeoffs, and incorporated as much of the existing process as possible while strategically swapping in research best practices for the bad habits they'd grown accustomed to.
The results were significant. After collaboratively working on a couple of quick innovation investigation projects, the business development team and other key stakeholders saw the value of the process shift and methodological rigor. They developed more trust in the data we were collecting and felt more confident making high-stakes investments in the directions we recommended. Over nine months, we completed four major innovation investigations that influenced approximately $1.5M in product investment decisions. Business development and strategy leaders became much easier to loop into our projects once they realized we weren't wasting their time—a clear signal that the rebuilt research practice had earned credibility across the organization.
