Research Methods. How to research anything?

The entrepreneurship requires a lot of research and meta-research. To ask the right questions and find an answer to them, we have to perform research. There are three methods which we observe in probably all the researches more or less. Those are:

• Actions research — entrepreneurial learning
• Semiotics — finding meaning
• Ethnography — integral to user service design.

Action research

Action learning is a theory of knowledge in which a manager or entrepreneur learns by reflecting on actions being taken in solving a real organizational problem with peers of similar position also experiencing challenging situations.

The action research comprises of those stages:

1. Planning to initiate change;

2. Implementing the change (acting) and observing the process of implementation and consequences;

3. Reflecting on processes of change and re-planning;

4. Acting and observing;

5. Reflecting.

This might sound over-complicated; however, it illustrates the process of learning. From the very childhood, we are eager to explore and research the things that we do not know, and later in life, we will encounter some uncertainty. Having a good plan does not necessarily work in that case because it might be that due to difficulty, we do not take into account some essential things in our plan. Executing a plan and reflecting upon that will enable you to make some conclusions on the observations you made while executing. After that, you would be able to come up with the revised and hopefully better plan.

In the startup world, as I have observed, this cycle is done unconsciously. You cannot be 100% sure whether your solution will work out or not if you didn`t try. After trying, you will most probably encounter some problems that you have not even considered as problems on your way. That is where you have to make correct conclusions and move forward. I am working as a CTO in a startup. Although we are having our product working correctly and solving problems of the clients, sometimes we are experiencing uncertainty in different fields. Research is required before making any changes. But sometimes, the study has to be done the hard way — changing something and observing the results.

Semiotics

What semiotics means? As a methodology, semiotics provides the creation, extraction, and communication of meaning. Meta-functions of semiotics are:

1. Ideational — to represent aspects of the experiential world;
2. Interpersonal — to project the relations between the producer of a sign and its receiver;
3. Textual — to form internally and externally understood cohesive texts and symbols.

For me, semiotics, was something new to pay attention to. I was already doing that before, but also unconsciously. During this lecture, I recalled the book of Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” as he talked about all the biases humans are incorporating in their meaning generation. Understanding how to extract meaning from the observations and action research is something entrepreneurs have to master. Without proper extraction of meaning, the conclusions will be biased, and therefore the action on it will be biased and not as efficient as it could be.

The research methods topic was useful for me, as I am the optimizer and innovator inside. I do observe all the processes I do, and if I see some deficiencies, I do try to optimize it or at least think how it can be improved theoretically. In practice, it is usually more complicated, but at the core, the right critical thinking will never be bad for you.