The Industrial Research Podcast Chris Woods

The full blog post is available here.
You can reach me via twitter @mcwoods or via LinkedIn
So far, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve introduced the research roadmap process and described the first phase in detail, working out how to create a vision of the future and how global trends can affect and help predict that. In the second phase we showed how these visions of the future can be translated into open questions. We even saw how these open questions resolve themselves into three basic types of problems:
Problems that are already solved
Where there are one or more solutions possible
Where there is no solution at all
In this episode we are going to cover how we structure our empirical research, our experiment designs, to address those cases where there are multiple solutions or the rare instances when there are no solutions at all. Then we are going to show how this all feeds into the research roadmap process.
 
 

The last three posts focused on predicting the future. That is only one part of The Research Roadmap. It is time to get back to the research and see how predicting the future fits into the Roadmap Process.
You can find a much more detailed, written version of the podcast on my blog here:
https://mcwoods.online/industrialresearch/podcast/episode/2020/04/17/Back-to-the-research-roadmapl.html
Please feel free to reach out to me, you can find me on twitter, or even on linked in!
 

The last of 3 parts on predicting the future. We crunch down an entire industry of futurists and their practices into 6 steps, 6 little nuggets of awesomeness. We introduce the 6 step funnel.
A blog post, upon which this article is based is available here:
https://mcwoods.online/industrialresearch/podcast/episode/2020/04/11/Predicting-the-Future-Part-3-The-Funnel.html
The show contains a couple of cameos by my two sons, Ben 8 and Matthew 7 - it is Spring Break.

In the last episode I covered how future prediction, is, to a degree, possible but I didn’t get the chance to explain how. There is, in fact, a whole industry dedicated to predicting the future. They call themselves “Futurists” or “Futurologists”. In this episode we delve into the Futurology Industry and extract the "Golden Nuggets of Awesomeness" we need. We use these to help us understand trend prediction.
Read all about the episode on the Industrial Research Blog. Including links to the H.G Wells predictions, more background on the Futurologist and links to Rohit's book "Non-Obvious Mega Trends".
 

Meet 4 people who successfully predicted the future…. In the last episode I outlined the Research Roadmap Process, the first phase of the process is predicting the future. That is a huge task, in fact, some may say it is impossible, particularly in these trying times. As I record this episode most of the world is coping with the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The world today looks very different to what it did just 1 month ago. But predicting the future, at least to some degree does appear to be possible. Let’s find out how together.
Additional Notes available on the official Podcast site:
https://mcwoods.online/industrialresearch/podcast/episode/2020/03/26/Predicting-the-Future-Part-1.html
 

Link to Additional Notes

Structuring your research is hard, working out what you should research, why and how is tough. In this episode I explore research methods, and show how you can structure your research to answer these questions. So, when boss asks “Why have you spent my money on this experiment?” you can answer with confidence.
Along the way we see how Edison structured his research, and how he addressed issues his competitor in England, Swan was suffering with.
To support this episode is long read blog post on my website, complete with a diagram explaining the research roadmap process. Please check this out. The diagram will help.
 
What methods and processes do you use to structure your research? – Let me know on Twitter @mcwoods.
 PS: If you can hear the train the background drop me a line on Twitter @mcwoods and let me know!