I first reached out to Jake Burghardt after reading what must have been eight or ten of his articles. I told him that if he ever wrote a book, I wanted to be the first to know. Well, that book Stop Wasting Research is here and it’s easily my favorite business book of 2025.
Jake’s book addresses something that’s been quietly plaguing research teams for years: we’re sitting on a goldmine of insights that rarely get used beyond their initial presentation. This interview digs into why that happens and, more importantly, what we can do about it.
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The Problem: What Is Research Waste?
Before we can solve the problem, we need to define it. Jake takes what he calls a “big tent approach” to research—not just UX research or market research, but anything following a structured research process. This includes work done by data scientists, designers, PMs, and anyone else conducting systematic inquiry.
Within that research, Jake defines insights as “statements backed with evidence from research that are written to influence product planning.” These can be fundamental truths about customers or specific problems to solve.
Research waste, then, is all the insights that don’t get picked up. Maybe they didn’t reach the right audience because a researcher was siloed. Maybe stakeholders agreed with the findings but were too overwhelmed to add them to their backlog. Maybe the timing was just off.
The key realisation: just because research didn’t land immediately doesn’t mean its value is gone. Many insights can influence multiple teams but only reach one or two. The question becomes: how do we activate that latent value?
The Three Root Causes
Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, Jake structures his book around three root causes of research waste. Understanding which one (or combination) is affecting your organization helps you choose the right interventions.
1. Preparation
Different research streams in an organization create an assembly line of individual studies. But there’s much more we could do to prepare our knowledge for long-term use rather than just the moment of the study readout.
Think about it: most research conversations focus on optimizing the study process and that immediate presentation. But what happens after? How do we prepare insights to be useful in future planning decisions across the long haul of product development?
2. Motivation
People often see research as optional or momentary—we learned this, we did something with it (or didn’t), and that’s that. How can we change those motivation structures so researchers see the long-term value of their work, and so stakeholders are motivated to seek out and use existing research?
3. Integration
You can nail preparation and motivation, but if research doesn’t show up when decisions are being made, it won’t have impact. This isn’t just about having a repository—findability isn’t enough. We need strategic touchpoints that push research out and integrate it into planning processes.
As Jake puts it: “We have to find ways to integrate it and push it out there.”
Beyond the Repository Myth
One of the most refreshing aspects of Jake’s thinking is his pragmatic view of research repositories. The industry has long operated under a “build it and they will come” mentality—invest in the perfect repository with exhaustive metadata and sophisticated search, and people will magically start using old research.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
Jake argues we need to work backwards from the impacts we want to have. Where do you actually want research to show up? Monthly business reviews? Design specifications? Specific team roadmaps? Get crisp about those high-value touchpoints, then build your information structures and practices to inject insights at those moments.
“We can’t be everywhere and do everything,” Jake notes. “We have to put on PM hats and prioritize hard—where would research make the biggest difference and how can we get it there?”
It’s Not About “A Seat at the Table”
Another common refrain in the research community is the quest for “a seat at the table.” But as Jake and I discussed, there isn’t just one table. There are dozens of tables, and we can’t be at all of them all the time.
More importantly, it’s not about an individual researcher’s seat at the table—it’s about the collective of researchers contributing to something larger. It’s about creating multiple touchpoints where research can influence decisions, not just hoping for an invitation to the right meeting.
This requires thinking in service design terms: what are the key moments where research could add value? How do we design systems that surface the right insights at those moments?
Three Ways to Get Started
When I asked Jake for his top recommendations for someone wanting to stop wasting research in their organization, he offered three concrete starting points:
1. Look Back and Map What You Have
Take time to review past research and recognize the problem. Talk to other researchers in your organization—find them wherever they are (UX, market research, data science, design). Start mapping what’s already available. You don’t need fancy tools for this; it’s a mindset shift first and foremost.
2. Connect Around Your Studies
When planning a new study, identify three things other folks in your organization might already know something about. Ask: “Does anybody have existing research on this?” Turn study plans into a new kind of research report that says “here’s what we already know” before building to “here’s what we’re going to learn.” Carry that through to your final reporting too.
3. Activate Past Insights in Current Work
Every time you activate insights from a current study, plan to go back and activate relevant past insights for the teams you’re talking to. Check in with stakeholders: “You said you were going to do this based on that previous research—what’s going on?” This breaks the bounds of time-based research units and keeps conversations alive beyond the immediate study window.
These changes won’t add significant time to your work, but they can dramatically increase your impact.
This Isn’t Just for Big Teams
A common objection Jake hears: “I’m at a startup, this doesn’t apply to me” or “We don’t have enough research yet to worry about this.”
His response? The earlier you start, the better positioned you’ll be. When you only have a small volume of research, you can organize it quickly and establish good practices. Wait until you have 55 studies, and the task becomes exponentially harder (like organizing a tea collection that’s gotten out of hand).
More importantly, even small teams can benefit from connecting the dots across research. If you have one data scientist, one UX researcher, and one market researcher, there’s still opportunity to build bridges and increase visibility.
The pain of research waste grows with volume, but the solutions are accessible at any scale.
The Strategic Research Ladder
Everyone wants to do strategic research. It’s become almost trendy to say so. But as Jake points out, when you’re a first researcher or part of a small team, you don’t get there immediately.
Here’s the insight that resonates: you don’t need permission to start building strategic understanding. When answering rapid, tactical questions, add layers that address higher-level concerns. Those additions might not have immediate impact, but they build up over time.
Before you know it, you have strategic standing. When it comes time to provide input to the next round of goals, you have something meaningful to say about many of them—not because you did one big strategic study, but because you’ve been systematically elevating your research questions and connecting insights over time.
Strategic research doesn’t have to be a separate category of work. It can be woven into everything you do.
The Long Game
Perhaps the most important takeaway from my conversation with Jake is this: stopping research waste isn’t a one-and-done initiative. It’s not about finding the perfect tool or implementing one brilliant process change.
It’s long-term change management work that requires persistence and patience.
Start by finding champions and easy wins. Show value in specific, concrete ways. Publicize success stories. Build community around research use. Keep experimenting.
As Jake puts it, the book offers “a menu of possibilities” rather than a single recipe. Your organization needs to figure out which root causes matter most and which interventions make sense for your context.
The goal isn’t to reach 100% research utilization or to inform every decision with research. It’s to get more of the most important decisions informed by the wealth of insights you’ve already generated.
You can find Jake Burghardt on LinkedIn or learn more about his work at integrating research.com. Stop Wasting Research is available from Rosenfeld Media and other major booksellers.
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