For over a year now I have been running a course with Mike Imms about how to generate research insights. Most of those who attend the course are researchers who are used to being briefed by clients to find insights. Some of those on the course are research managers and insights managers who know they need insights but aren't sure how to find them.  When I ran the course in Romania I even had creatives and media people coming along to learn as well!  There's something very peculiar about insights - people really struggle to find a definition of what an insight actually is. Even clients who want them can't always explain what they want. And there's a strong suspicion that the insight word is being attached to any old research finding. I want to make a T shirt which says That's not an insight that's an observation!  So one of the first things we have to do is to help people develop a working definition. Then we can go on to explain how to increase the strike rates of insights.

 I don't have time here to give you chapter and verse. But what I can do is to tell you that insights come in two ways - when knowledge changes its form. And when knowledge changes its carrier - when it moves between people.  The reason clients continue to use research companies as intermediaries is that when clients brief researchers and when researchers talk to respondents - knowledge changes form and the research project moves between carriers. Insights come out of relationship exchanges. Once you know that simple truth you know where insights shoal and can start to develop methods for catching them. If this hypothesis is true then there are 6 separate stages in the research process where insights emerge. Typically we find that no one is getting insights from more than a couple of them.So for most people there are huge gains to be made.

What if you have no money for research? No problem. The principle remains the same. Insights come out of exchanges. So work with other people not away from them. Talk to users of the product. Talk to non users. Have the users talk to the non users. Or find a middle group and have each side try to recruit them. And when you have insights remember they have sell by dates. Every insight disappears eventually when everybody believes it to be a self evident truth. So when you get an insight - implement it fast before you lost the advantage and it fades.