Packaging Research

Sometimes you arrive late to the party.  I had another minor epiphany this week that I should have had years ago.

I’ve been struggling with how to do more forward looking research.  Ideally, my work is supposed to be balanced between reactive requests for information and proactive prognosticating on the future of technology.  The majority of my time, however, is spent being reactive.  It’s actually kind of difficult to do the forward looking work.  By the time I clear out time to research and write a white paper, I often have another three requests which pull me mentally away from thinking about the future.  The distraction creates inefficiency because by the time I’m able to return to the white paper, I have to mentally review the nuances of the topic that I was going to write about. 

The solution, which I should have thought of long before now, is a blog.  Blogs are of lengths that are reasonably fast to produce while still infusing commentary and insight.  And in many cases, the topics I’d like to cover may not lend themselves to the length and rigor reserved for a white paper.   I’m not sure why I haven’t thought about it before now (especially since I do quite a bit of research on social media).  A new colleague in a similar position in another area of the company actually pointed out the solution to me.  Packaging up my intellectual epiphanies and information discoveries in small chunks makes perfect sense for the future oriented work I should be doing.