Good research needs to start with a good question. Without a clear question to guide inquiry, research will end up churning and pursuing leads that may be interesting but that don't contribute to finding a solution.
The question doesn't need necessarily to be precise; as Erika Hall puts it, an early question might be "We need to understand what other people think about x." But as the question become further refined, the research will become more targeted and therefore more useful.
Related
- spend-more-time-in-the-problem-space - Don't move to quickly to defining solutions, as there's a lot of value in developing deep understanding of the problem and refining the question.
- garbage-in-garbage-out
