A couple of weeks ago I posted “bad research is worse than no research at all” on Twitter. Some thoughts, like that one, fit perfectly well in 140 characters. And it seems like a useful one too. And true.
The reasons for that statement seem pretty obvious to me. Better to know what you don’t know than to make business decisions based on false information and false conclusions. If the focus group said red is better than green, nobody dares to argue for green. Even if green is really better, and the focus group was off, distorted by one very articulate and engaging green hater. Red it is.
Seth Godin gave a great example on his blog a few days ago. He called it Learning from bad graphs and weak analysis. He takes some business charts and analysis from the New York Times and shows why it doesn’t actually show what it is supposed to show.
(Image: istockphoto.com)
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[…] came across an interesting blog post from Tim Berry on Bad Research. Tim argues that it’s “Better to know what you don’t know than to make business […]
“The Kindle has managed to offend exactly the right people in exactly the right ways. It’s not as boring as it could be, it excites passions and it has created a cadre of insanely loyal evangelists who are buying them by the handful to give as gifts.”
If you’re marketing, you’re going to irritate someone. Otherwise you’re only moving furniture.