About

Dave's Research Co. was founded in Porto, in 2020.

In 2010, I began building research programs into product and design teams in San Francisco.

I was not very good, at first. I could produce research, but I did not see how the work fit into a product context. A few years of research into research became The Researcher's Journey, and that meta-investigation culminated in the worldwide workshops and distributed data collection of the Research Skills Framework.

I came to find that great research does very little, on its own, to change the course of product teams and their work. It is at times necessary, and never sufficient.

The interesting problems — and the ones that keep recurring — fall outside the scope of research itself. To see more work at the product strategy level, I began to consult independently as Dave's Research Company. I work with a handful of clients each year, often through word of mouth, and leave a trail of what I am learning in a Monday newsletter called The Product Game.

My work pulls on an academic background of cognitive science and HCI, adult learning in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (currently at brown belt, training no-gi), wide-ranging reading, and the architect Christopher Alexander's structural approach to complexity.

As an independent consultant, the work is never guaranteed, but I cherish the tradeoff: flexibility. Each year I take time for a 4–6 week craft sabbatical like the wine harvest, sake season, or a very long walk.

Talk and Workshop Index:

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