"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

My apologies for the length of time since my last correspondence and
thanks to those of you who reminded me about this. I guess it is a
“thought of the MONTH” right now given my schedule! Thus, this one is a
bit long to make up for the length of time 🙂 …..

Every year I interact with MEM students on various research projects.
And every year I am VERY surprised at the difficulty that students have
in conducting research, even some of our best students who think they
are doing very well! In this case I am not talking laboratory research,
but rather “paper research” – the gathering and analysis of information.
In today’s information age, everyone can Google a topic and find some
information related to their key words. However, finding the best, most
appropriate and highest quality information is a different story. In
addition, analyzing that information is another important issue. There
is not much I can say to teach you in this short blog about conducting
high quality research. I can only strongly encourage you to think deeply
about any research project you undertake and consider the various ways
to find information and to analyze it before utilizing it in a report or
presenting it for a project. Google, although it is a great way to
start, it is only one quick, superficial way to search for information.
You should get to know the library databases and how to utilize them
while you are here. The point is not to become an expert in a specific
set of databases that Duke’s library may have, but rather to develop the
skills and processes to conduct research no matter what databases you
have access to.

These skills will be extremely valuable in the future. When your
supervisor comes and asks you about a particular topic of which you know
very little, this set of skills will make you an “instant expert” and a
very valuable employee. Of course, I am using the term “expert” loosely,
but as they say, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
What I mean is, many times employers will be searching for new
information and new areas. If you are the employee that can quickly
gather and assess information about such areas, you will be seen as very
knowledgeable and a great resource. But not if you are only relying on a
simple Google search. This research can be divided into four major
components: Objective/Strategy (or “define the problem”), Data
Gathering, Analysis, & Insights. Thoughts on each are below (thanks to
Professor Holmes for his ideas here!):

OBJECTIVE/STRATEGY – DEFINING THE PROBLEM
A ship with no heading is sure to reach its destination. Far too many
people begin research without having a clear objective or without
understanding the problem they are trying to solve. Approach research
just as you would any project. What question are you trying to answer?
What time budget is the research worth? What resources do you plan to
employ? How will you know when you are finished? Are you trying to be
comprehensive or simply pull representative, best-effort information
with the time allowed? Once you know your objective, plot a strategy for
conducting the research. Objective implies WHERE you want to go where
strategy is about HOW you will get there.

DATA GATHERING
Continuing from the strategy development phase, map out a very short
plan of how you plan to achieve the objective. There are essentially 4
quadrants of conducting research, so determine how much time you want to
invest in each quadrant (where you may omit certain quadrants altogether):

– Secondary-Internal: Secondary research which your
customer/organization already has on file

– Primary-Internal: Interviewing or surveying your customer/organization
for their ideas

– Secondary-External: Secondary research found outside of your
customer/organization (e.g., on the Web and other resources)

– Primary-External: Often the most important and least used quadrant, it
involves interviewing or surveying experts outside of your
customer/organization.

Many times the secondary external investigation will be you “bread and
butter” so I want to expand on this area. The process can be time
consuming and tedious. This is why most people do not do it very well.
(Side note: Similarly, the primary external category is very difficult
because it usually involved cold calls but that is a blog for a
different time). So I recommend:

1. Start with a simple search using key words you know (Google of course)

2. Use MANY different permutations of key words you have in mind and
examine the results

3. REFINE YOUR KEY WORDS – carefully read the documents and web info
that you gather and find those that are directly relevant for your
needs. Determine new key words from these documents and REPEAT the steps
above.

4. After determining the best key words from this process, it is time to
really expand your search activities. Start with the electronic
databases at whatever virtual library you have access to. Generally,
your company, your university via alumni benefits, and public libraries
will provide you access to databases. This step is nontrivial! It takes
many attempts to find the best databases and the best way to search
these databases, even when you have the right key words.

5. Expand your search by looking for professional societies and trade
organizations in the topic and going directly to their web sites to look
for information. This is also a good way to find experts for primary
research.

6. You should now have a set of documents that is truly rich in the
information you need. But there is one more step (with multiple
iterations) that you should go through before moving to the Analysis and
Insights stages of the research. While reading the documents you have
collected, evaluate the references within those documents and determine
which are relevant to your project and collect them too. Many will not
be found in a simple key word search and you must find them based on
their title, author, etc. Of course, you can then do this again and
again in a “branching tree” manner so that you collect several
generations of documents (that is, look into the references of the new
documents and then the references of the second generation documents and
so on).

7. Now you are finally ready to conduct the analysis and develop
insights! Remember that in the data gathering phase of the work, you are
developing a library of relevant material for your OR for your
boss/colleagues. It provides supporting data for any conclusions that
will be made. But it is only valuable if it is directly relevant to the
project! Providing a big stack of material that is peripheral to the
project or has relevant material hidden deep in the documents is not
very valuable for anyone.

ANALYSIS
Use tools you have learned in your engineering, marketing, and strategy
classes to turn data into information that can be consumed by your
customer. Data gathering creates pages of information about competitors.
Analysis creates a matrix showing how various competitors compare based
upon certain factors of importance, for example.

INSIGHTS
Many people can be trained to gather data. Most engineers can provide
thoughtful analysis. Few people can turn analysis into insights.
Continuing the competitive intelligence example, insights involve
consuming the competitive matrix and determining which competitor is the
one that should be watched most closely and why. Insights are about
absorbing information and analysis and delivering strategic comments
that answer the question that is driving the research in the first
place. Better yet, insights anticipate the next step in the process and
answer it!

In summary, learn how to manage, absorb and utilize information well in
todays “information age” and you will be more valuable to your organization.