In this solo monologue, business designer Donna Brown outlines three major, often‑overlooked problems with conventional market‑research practices. First, she argues that comparing product prices across wildly different offerings (e.g., $9 Udemy courses versus $300,000 master‑classes) is like comparing apples, oranges, cherries and pears – it can mislead entrepreneurs about what they can realistically charge and demoralize them. Second, she warns that discovering a market gap does not automatically mean it’s the right opportunity for the researcher; personal fit, skill set, and desire must be evaluated before deciding to fill the gap. Third, she champions innovation that arises when no precedent exists, using Henry Ford’s “faster horse” anecdote and the evolution of everyday technologies (PayPal, ATMs, fax machines) to illustrate that breakthroughs often come from creating something people didn’t yet know they wanted. Throughout, Brown emphasizes the need for discernment, personal alignment, and openness to the possibility that a lack of existing market data can be a positive sign.
Chapters
Boy, am I gonna get in trouble today. Okay, there's a fatal flaw in market research. I think there are probably 2 or 3, and nobody ever talks about it. And everybody tells you to spend a bunch of time searching for things and, you know, doing all your market research and seeing where there's a gap in the market and filling the gap in the market and doing your price research and And there I have several issues with that that I am going to share with you now. Number one, when you're doing market research about products that other people offer, so we're going to start with something easy. So let's just say you can find, you know, how to do digital marketing courses, or you can find I don't know how to build an online business or how to design websites. You can find all these different courses. And so you're doing your research and you're looking for, you know, what you had. You had a thought in mind. You have an idea in mind, not only of what it is you want to offer, but more or less the price range you would like to offer it at. Right. And the kind of work that you feel that you're capable of and the kind of value that you feel that you can deliver your clients. So what happens? You start Googling these keyword searches and you hit on things like Udemy and all these other platforms. So you can find courses that are $9.99 or $19.99 and courses that— and then you can go sort of the top end and you can find courses that are $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 digital marketing, You know, one big mastermind can be $300,000 to work with some of the best in the field. So where does that leave you? Like, does it even— is it really helpful? I guess it's helpful to see what other people are doing and to take comfort in the fact that there are other products out there. But it's kind of like comparing, you know, apples and oranges and cherries and pears. It's who are you amongst all of those people? You need a lot of discernment. To understand who, what those actual courses are offering. Are they everything they are? They're racked up to be, and are they everything that they promise? And are they more than they promise? Are you offering actually more than more value than what you've been promising? It's really, I think, I think it's really important to take the time to sort of understand. Who these people are and what these offers are. And so market research there can be very demoralizing, right? You can think, oh, I should be charging like 100 times as much, or how could I ever charge that much for what I'm doing now? But you could also say, how could I ever charge that little? I would, you know, I couldn't even go to Starbucks on that amount of money. So that's one thing I think can be a little bit misleading and disheartening. Ah, and then there are good researchers. I know that I'm really good at research and I'm really good at finding things and I'm really good at finding out things in general. And so if you're good at that, you can find a gap in the market, right? These famous gaps in the market that will tell you, um, you know, and you'll see that there's something there You'll see that there's a product or an offering that isn't there, and there is this gap, and it's an opportunity for sure. But what no market research will ever tell you—ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever—is should you be filling that gap in the market? Maybe it's not for you, and just because it's there and just because you could do it doesn't mean you should do it. Again, you need to really use your own discernment. As to whether it's really meant for you or not. No matter what the trends are, no matter what, you know, your business coach told you, no matter what the article in Forbes or Entrepreneur or wherever it is that you read told you or suggested is the next big thing, it has to be the next big thing for you too, or it has to be that gap in the marketplace that goes, oh my God, that would be amazing, I would love to do that. So beware and be wary of market gaps. They are opportunities, but they have to be the right opportunity for you, and you can always say no and pass it on to somebody who really actually would be perfect for it. You don't need to keep— they'll find it sooner or later anyways, but, and just think of how happy they'll be if you, if you say, listen, I had this great idea for you. Then there's innovation. We all know the famous quote by Henry Ford, which is probably not very precise, but it's more or less, if I had asked what people wanted, really wanted, they would have said they want a faster horse. Nobody would have told him that they wanted a car, right? And he also met with a lot of flak and pushback at the beginning, and there was a lot of scandal and how horrible these things were. And to a certain extent they are, but can you imagine now not having cars in our lives? It'd be pretty interesting, right? So again, that space for innovation, that really creative space where you can see something, you can see the possibility of something. You know, at one— now we take PayPal for granted. At one point it didn't exist. We take ATMs for granted. They didn't exist. We take all kinds of things that are just such a normal, you know, such a, you know, integrated part of our lives for granted. And, you know, at one time they weren't there. And some of the things that we think are so fundamental now will disappear. Look at the fax machine, the dreaded fax machine. I think people have fax functions just as kind of a leftover. It's like, well, most people use it for scanning and printing. It's like, oh, we'll just leave the fax there anyways. It doesn't make much difference to us, and they kind of leave it as a leftover, whereas before that's why people bought it. So don't be afraid if you don't find anything, if you find nothing at all in your market research that talks about what you want to do the way you want to do it. That could be the best thing that ever happened to you. I'm Donna Brown, business designer, and this is The Business Design Studio, and that's my thought for the day.
