Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship

Top-down research will not help you validate an unmet need - that is what bottom-up research is for.

Here are just some of the ways that top-down research can help you:

• prepare for your customer conversations,
• validate and confirm observations,
• check assumptions and cognitive bias about value propositions or customers,
• understand your target industry,
• connect product to market
• describe your customers

When researching this way for the first time, there can be an overwhelming number of possibilities and sources of information to consult - and it is a good idea to check multiple sources for this type of research.

Once you understand the type of information available and how to efficiently locate it, checking multiple sources will become easier and faster.