(21) Magic element: BUSINESS.

“The Story of the Magic 3 and the Earth” is prepared to introduce you to more types of Researchers, because Researchers are not only in academic circles (namely, the university). There are many Researchers in business and in all sorts of organisations (e.g. lobbying organisations, think tanks, international organisations) and in many different fields (e.g. electricity, food industry). So, we are many and we are different and I would like to invite you further to get to know us better

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In this post, I will briefly remind/introduce you about Research and the Magic element, called: Business. This neat scheme, presented by a consultancy company here, is well illustrating the phases at which Research in Business is applied.  It describes few general phases of how a business is organized and at which phases Research is needed. Moreover, what Research instruments (methods) someone needs to apply to find out for example how to promote their business on the market .

As you can see, Research is needed at many phases of a business setup, varying from methods that find the demands for a certain product (customers’ opinion); to what marketing strategy is best to apply when promoting a certain product (marketing research); what are the strengthens and weakness of that product or business compared to other competitors (SWOT Analysis), etc.

Figure 1. Business Research methods and phases.

Business Research is indispensable to business development. Without it, it would be very difficult to know who are the best fitted customers/users and how to please and maintain them for the growth of a startup, company, business strategy of an organisation.

Now, let us listen from first-hand professional about how Research works in business practice. This is Researchista’s invitee, Mr. Mark Lewis, who works as a Business Analyst at APG, Netherlands (one of the largest pension funds in the world): “I think Research is really important for business”. Listen below to what Mark has to share with us about the role of Research in his area.

In my story, Business is associated with fire, because it requires immediate solution and attention, unlike policy (air) it does not necessary involve much bureaucracy, instead requires speedy reactions {all is relative, of course…}.

With love for Research,