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How to Tune In When Everyone's Tuning Out
We’ve reached a strange inflection point in marketing and innovation. On one hand, we’ve never seen more content, more campaigns, more...

Paul Peterson
May 30, 20253 min read


Sometimes Product Needs Insight Before It Needs Research
Most product teams aren’t starved for data. They’ve got usage dashboards, survey tools, helpdesk logs, and analytics stacks. And in many...

Paul Peterson
May 21, 20253 min read


The High Price of Getting It Almost Right
When we talk about product failure in tech, we tend to picture the big blowups. The high-profile launches that crater on impact. The...

Paul Peterson
May 18, 20253 min read


Future-Proofing is Great. Until the Future Doesn't Cooperate.
Spend enough time in strategy sessions and it comes up sooner or later: We need to future-proof this. It’s well-intentioned. Smart, even....

Paul Peterson
May 9, 20252 min read


“Wait. What?” The Spark Behind Real Innovation
We like to think of innovation as a process: structured, sequenced, neatly mapped. But more often, it begins with a glitch in the matrix....

Paul Peterson
Apr 30, 20252 min read


What if Fear Is the Real Reason You’re Stuck?
What if the real reason your innovation efforts stall has nothing to do with strategy? Nothing to do with budget. Nothing to do with...

Paul Peterson
Apr 24, 20252 min read


“Product Owner?” That’s Cute.
Somewhere along the winding road of Agile transformation and Silicon Valley job title inflation, we decided to start calling people...

Paul Peterson
Apr 18, 20253 min read


Be Bold or Be Boring
We work with product teams every day who want to build what’s next. They want to stand out, be different. They want to grow. But too...

Paul Peterson
Apr 8, 20253 min read


Creating a Culture of Innovation—with Catalytic Customers at the Core
A few years ago, we sat across the table from a product executive at a fast-scaling SaaS company. Their roadmap was...

Paul Peterson
Apr 2, 20254 min read


How to Develop More Effective User Stories
In Agile product development, User Stories are a cornerstone for delivering features that delight users and drive business growth. But...

Paul Peterson
Mar 28, 20253 min read


Leveraging Catalytic Customers to Reach the Mainstream
When a product team talks about “the mainstream,” it’s usually in vague terms: a future state where growth is steady, retention is high,...

Paul Peterson
Mar 26, 20254 min read


The Research Bottleneck Is Slowing Your Best Ideas
In fast-moving product organizations, timely decision-making is often the difference between momentum and missed opportunity. Too...

Paul Peterson
Mar 24, 20253 min read


Designing for Real People in a Synthetic Age
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in product development—powering everything from personalization engines to...

Paul Peterson
Mar 23, 20253 min read


The Best Experience Insights Don’t Come from Surveys
Innovating experiences starts with understanding how people actually use what you’ve built. Experience innovation gets discussed a lot....

Paul Peterson
Mar 20, 20253 min read


How Insights Teams Can Become the Innovation Engine Product Teams Need
Innovation is often seen as the domain of product teams whose charter is to develop, refine, and launch offerings that drive competitive...

Paul Peterson
Mar 19, 20253 min read


Why the best ideas often fail in testing (and how to change that).
Many product managers and their research colleagues have a love-hate relationship with concept testing. When done well, it can flag weak...

Paul Peterson
Mar 16, 20253 min read


The Collapse of Traditional Market Research—and What Comes Next
Market research is in crisis. Response rates are plummeting. Fraud is rampant. AI-generated survey responses are muddying data. Consumers...

Paul Peterson
Mar 4, 20254 min read


Integrating Catalytic Customer Insights into Segmentation and Persona Development
For seasoned insights professionals, segmentation and persona development are foundational tools—part of the baseline repertoire we draw...

Paul Peterson
Mar 3, 20253 min read


Hey, Insights Folks: Getting a Seat at the Table Isn't Enough
We get it. As insights professionals ourselves, we understand the challenges you face every day. You’re not just battling data overload,...

Paul Peterson
Mar 1, 20253 min read


Subscription Fatigue Is Real
Why You’re Losing Customers to Your Own Business Model The promise of subscriptions once felt like a revolution—a steady revenue stream...

Paul Peterson
Feb 25, 20253 min read
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