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Customer Development

> just getting started with agile learn the essentials at agile2024, what is customer development.

Customer development is a four-step framework, originally identified by Steve Blank, to discover and validate that you have identified a need(s) that customers have built the right product to satisfy that customer’s need(s), tested the correct methods for acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources in the organization to meet the demand for the product. The framework provides a way to use a scientific approach to validate assumptions about your product and business.

The four steps of the framework are:

• Customer discovery – Understand customers and their needs that you may be able to satisfy.
• Customer validation – You have a product that will satisfy your customer’s needs.
• Company creation – You determine whether your product will satisfy all the customers’ needs
• Company building – You can grow your organization in order to support the demand for your product.

The Lean Startup approach combines customer development, which is helpful when you don’t know the problem, and agile development, which is helpful when you don’t know the solution. Both approaches provide ways to iteratively validate assumptions and learn through feedback.

The first step of customer development, customer discovery, is the part of the framework that plays the biggest part in Lean Startup and has also been shortened to “discovery” by some in the agile community. Customer discovery helps you determine whether you understand the need you are trying to satisfy and whether you are satisfying the right need.

Customer discovery can be described as: 1. Identify the need.

You may not always immediately know the actual need you are trying to satisfy. In some cases, you start with a solution (product idea), at which point you need to work backward to figure out the need you are really trying to satisfy.

2. Hypothesize potential solutions.

Once you have an understanding of the true need, hypothesize a potential solution. If you were initially handed a solution to deliver, you can include that as a candidate, but you may find that the need you’re satisfying requires a completely different solution.

3. Identify assumptions.

Identify assumptions that are central to your hypothesized solution, including assumptions about

• Business environment
• Dependencies
• Minimum requirements for a solution
• Change management required

A helpful way to identify assumptions is to ask, “What must be true for this solution to be effective?”

4. Validate assumptions.

Talk to customers and gather data to validate your assumptions and test your solution. There are many different ways you can go about validating assumptions.

5. Start delivering.

Once you feel you have validated a sufficient number of assumptions, start delivering a minimal, yet viable, solution and get frequent feedback from your customers on whether the solution meets their needs.

6. Constantly reevaluate your solution.

Constantly reevaluate your solution to make sure it is still worthwhile based on new information that comes to light. Regularly ask whether you should commit to, transform, or kill the solution.

Also Known As

While not completely interchangeable as terms, close analogs to customer development at least with respect to the intended outcome, are the ideas of discovery, and Lean UX.

Expected Benefits

The primary benefits to customer development are that it provides a team with an approach to take to validate assumptions, and it provides a way to go about determining whether the team is delivering the right thing.

Common Pitfalls

The most common pitfall related to customer development is that teams do not use it. Instead, they fall in love with their product (the solution) without understanding which, if any, needs it satisfies. The result is a product without a market, or with a smaller market than anticipated and potential business issues.

When Applicable

Customer development was initially described in the context of technology startups, however, the idea of building a shared understanding of customers and their needs prior to creating a product is applicable to all businesses and can even be applied to more established organizations that seek to introduce new products.

The approach to validating assumptions described as customer development can also be used in internal product situations, however, the team in those cases knows there is a problem to solve, they just may not have clearly stated it or fully assessed whether the problem is worth solving.

In new product development settings, customer development is especially helpful to determine if there is a problem that needs to be solved and whether there is a product idea that can solve that problem in a valuable manner.

2005: Steve Blank introduces the concept of customer development in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. This book is based on actions he saw several start-ups take to launch products.

2011: Customer development sees a much broader audience when Eric Ries describes it as a key piece of Lean Startup (in conjunction with agile software development) in his book The Lean Startup

Further Reading

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development  By Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

The Four Steps to the Epiphany  by Steve Blank

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses  by Eric Ries

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A complete guide to customer research — with templates

What makes your product great? What problems does it solve? People will look to you — the product manager — as the expert on these questions. But you know that the answers are not based solely on your own opinions and experience. The most important input often comes from somewhere else: customers.

Understanding customers is integral to developing a lovable product . As a product manager, you will want to explore everything from your users' demographics to their inner motivations and struggles. This process of sussing out their needs and challenges is called customer research.

Conducting customer research is complex and dynamic work, where your curiosity is a tremendous asset. To plan, gather, and analyze feedback, product managers use a wide variety of methods — qualitative, quantitative, and a mix of both. You can take a highly sophisticated approach to this, but many times effective customer research entails talking to customers and using simple tools or templates to analyze their feedback.

In this guide, you will learn the fundamentals of conducting primary research so you can better understand the folks you are trying to help. You can try seven customer research templates to help you experiment with different methods and save time in the research process.

Engage a community and analyze feedback in Aha! Ideas. Start a free trial .

With Aha! Ideas , you can host live empathy sessions with your customers to learn more about their need and preferences.

Why should you do customer research?

Customer research is an essential component of product strategy — alongside competitor analysis , market research, and overall business needs. The insights you glean from meeting and surveying customers help to shape your strategic initiatives , ensuring that your team is poised to deliver what people really want from your product.

A key reason to perform customer research is to gain new perspectives on your product. Your customers may tell you things you never realized — hidden problems, unique ways of completing tasks, and even alternate use cases. What you believe matters most about your product may not even be on your customers' radar.

Let's say your product has a reporting feature with low usage . Your team decides to give the reporting interface a major upgrade. You spend the time and resources to build these updates — only to scratch your head when there is no uptick in usage. What went wrong?

If you breezed past talking to your customers, it is possible that the interface was not the factor keeping them from engaging. Maybe they prefer to use a separate reporting tool — in which case, an integration capability would have been a much more valuable feature to build.

Customer research helps you avoid spending time solving proble ms that do not exist — and highlights the ones that are real and deserving of your attention. This way, you know where to focus your efforts for the best chance of making your customers happy and meeting business goals.

How much customer feedback is the right amount?

The short answer? It depends. Your specific goals, the scope of your research, and the stage of your product's development all play a role. Here are some things to keep in mind when determining the right amount of customer feedback to collect:

Understand your goals Are you looking to validate a new product idea or improve an existing product? Do you need to better understand customer pain points or gather usability insights? These answers will shape your product development goals and dictate the depth and breadth of feedback required.

Define your sample size Consider the size of your target audience and customer base. In some cases, a smaller sample size can provide valuable insights, especially if you are conducting in-depth qualitative research . For quantitative research, a larger sample size might be necessary to ensure statistical relevancy.

Ensure diversity of perspective Aim for variety in your feedback pool. Different demographic groups, usage patterns, and customer segments can provide a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs and preferences.

Include a mix of feedback channels Analyzing feedback from different channels can provide unique perspectives and insights. Experiment with a variety of feedback methods and channels — such as releasing surveys, conducting interviews , and reviewing your social media and customer support interactions.

Consider resource constraints Think about the time, budget, and staff you have available for collecting and analyzing feedback. Balance the scope of your research with what you can realistically manage.

Remember, customer feedback is often collected in iterations. Start with a small group of users for early insights, then expand your feedback pool as you make improvements. Each iteration helps you refine your product and strategy.

And while quantity matters, the quality of feedback is crucial. Sometimes a few detailed, insightful responses can be more valuable than a large number of superficial ones.

Primary vs. secondary customer research

Product managers will use both primary and secondary customer research to gather information. Briefly, the difference is:

Primary customer research refers to gathering your own data and feedback firsthand via interviews, focus groups, surveys, and other methods.

Secondary customer research refers to findings gleaned from external sources like analyst reports and third-party surveys.

Both types can be valuable, but when it comes to your goals as a product manager, primary research is superior. While secondary research will help you understand demographics and broader trends, primary research allows you to drill down into the details of your specific product and target audience.

Your customers' own experiences are invaluable and one of the surest signals to creating a lovable product. For this guide, we will focus on the fundamentals of conducting primary research.

How do product managers gather customer feedback?

How do product managers come up with new ideas for a product?

How to conduct customer research

On a basic level, customer research entails reaching out to current or potential customers and gathering feedback from them via direct conversations or more indirect methods (like online surveys). Advanced tools such as product analytics and idea management software can certainly augment your approach — but are not necessary to get started.

Follow these steps to conduct your own primary customer research:

1. Define your objective Outline your research goals and determine what it is you really want to learn. For example, your objective could be to learn broadly about your customers' business goals or gain a deeper understanding of their experience with a specific feature set.

2. Decide which customers to contact Your objectives will help you decide who to speak with — especially if your product caters to a diverse group of customers. Think about current and potential customers and form a list of people to reach out to.

3. Prepare If you are leading an interview or focus group, meet with your product teammates to prepare your questions. Keep in mind you may need to coordinate with other team members who want to sit in on discussions. If you are conducting a survey, build it — then decide how and when to distribute it.

4. Start your research Conduct your interviews or hit "send" on your survey When talking directly with customers, remember to listen more than you speak. Ask meaningful follow-up questions to encourage deeper thinking and discussion.

5. Analyze, summarize, and share your findings Look for trends in the feedback you received. What did customers agree on? What were the most popular ideas or recurring pain points? Find common threads and share the findings with your team. Together, you can discuss and prioritize the customer ideas that support your overall goals — and promote those ideas to your product roadmap .

6. Repeat Customer research is an ongoing part of product management. You will need to collect feedback from many customers to make informed product decisions. And with every new product launch or major release, you may need to start fresh with a new objective and customer set.

Because it is ongoing, it helps to keep all of your customer research organized. You want to be clear on how your findings will inform the features you develop. For example, the Research tab in Aha! helps you collect whiteboards, interview notes, and ideas right on feature cards.

Editor's note: Although the video below still shows core functionality within Aha! software, some of the interface might be out of date. View our knowledge base for the most updated insights into Aha! software.

Related: 35+ customer questions for product innovation

Get started with customer research templates

Customer research templates offer a simple way to start discovering who your audience really is and what matters to them. Using templates helps you add much-needed structure to your customer research process. Below, you will find an assortment of templates to try — from planning to interviews, surveys, and summarizing your findings.

Aha! software customer interview template

Customer research planning template, customer interview notes template.

Customer survey template

Customer feedback poll template

Customer focus group discussion template, customer research presentation template.

This customer interview template is a great one to start with. It is a guided template with helpful prompts and instructions in each section. This makes it simple to plan your conversations with customers so you can get the most out of each interview. It is available in Aha! software — which gives you a central place to document and organize your findings.

Start using this template now

This planning template helps you define your objectives, identify which customers to talk to, and prepare for your research session. It includes sections for customer profiles (personas, segments, and companies) to add context to your research group.

An interview template will keep your notes organized during conversations with customers. It will also help you guide the flow of the interview and note any takeaways or action items to proceed with after the session ends. Feel free to customize the discussion questions to match your objective.

Customer research survey template

Customer surveys allow you to gather insights from more people in less time — with the added benefit of built-in reporting via online survey tools. This template will help you learn how to design an effective customer research survey and plan the demographic, use case, and customer satisfaction questions that you want to ask. It includes a blend of question types for both fixed and open-ended responses.

Polls offer a simple way to incorporate a quantitative component into your qualitative research. For example, you can quickly gauge the group's opinion on an idea by inserting a poll in an online focus group or empathy session . This template will help you jot down ideas for future polls.

Similar to the customer interview template, this focus group template will help you structure your session. It emphasizes a well-planned agenda over note-taking — encouraging you to be present in the discussion when you are facilitating a focus group. You can always record the focus group session to revisit later and take detailed notes.

After you have conducted your research, showcase your findings. Sharing results with your team makes customer research even more impactful — customer opinions matter at every level of the business and every stage of the product development process . This template will help you convey your top takeaways in a presentation.

Customer research has long been a core tenet of product management — and will continue to be. Templates like these will help you streamline your research process so you can focus on interacting with your audience and distilling insights from what they share.

When you are ready for a more comprehensive solution beyond simple templates, give idea management software like Aha! Ideas a try. With Aha! Ideas, you can crowdsource feedback via ideas portals, engage your community with empathy sessions, and analyze trends at the individual, organization, and segment levels. This helps you prioritize customer feedback with ease and promote the ideas that support your business goals directly to your product roadmap. (Note that you can use Aha! Ideas as a standalone tool, but many of its features are also available on Aha! Roadmaps . This makes it a great choice for teams seeking an all-encompassing product development solution.)

Discover exactly what your customers want. Start a free Aha! Ideas trial today.

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Customer Research

What is customer research.

Customer research is conducted so as to identify customer segments, needs, and behaviors. It can be carried out as part of market research, user research, or design research. Even so, it always focuses on researching current or potential customers of a specific brand or product in order to identify unmet customer needs and/or opportunities for business growth.

Customer research can focus on simple demographics of an existing or potential customer group (such as age, gender, and income level). Indeed, these considerations are vital determinants of a product’s target audience. However, such research also often seeks to understand various behaviors and motivators —factors which place a product’s use and potential on a higher level of study. Thus, the goal of such research is to expose clear details about who is—or will be—using a product as well as the reasons behind their doing so and how they go about using it (including the contextual areas of “where” and “when”). Customer research may be conducted via a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic field studies. It also commonly involves doing desk research of online reviews, forums, and social media to explore what customers are saying about a product.

While customer research is usually conducted as part of a design project, it is also often conducted in other departments of an organization. In some cases, customer research is part of marketing—for instance, to ensure that marketing campaigns have the right focus. In other cases, it can be carried out as part of concept development or ideation so as to identify opportunities for future products, services, or features. In any case, such research is an essential ingredient in keeping the end users in clear sight long before the end of any design phase.

Literature on Customer Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Customer Research

Take a deep dive into Customer Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

All open-source articles on Customer Research

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Customer Development Process 101- The Product Manager Guide

Are you wondering what the customer development process is? Would you like to know how a product manager can use it to deliver products that customers love?

If so, keep on reading, because that’s exactly what we’re diving into in this article.

• The customer development framework helps teams validate product ideas and build products that solve customers’ problems.
• It was developed by Steve Blank and popularized by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup.
• In the Customer Discovery phase, the team identifies problems, comes up with solutions, tests them, and assesses their potential to generate revenue.
• The aim of the Customer Validation stage is to develop a differentiation strategy and the sales funnel and to close the first deals.
• The focus of the Customer Creation process is on the marketing strategy : the choice of the target market, positioning , product launch , and demand generation.
• Finally, in the Company Building phase, the business grows into a mature company. This involves expanding the customer base and developing dedicated departments and teams.
• Customer development allows organizations to save money and time because they only develop well-tested ideas. It also removes emotions and bias from the decision-making process. Finally, it helps teams to achieve the product-market fit faster.
• The main downside of customer development is the time it takes. It considerably delays the product launch . Teams also need to be aware that it’s an ongoing process requiring constant commitment and discipline.
• Teams from across the organization should be involved in the process. It’s not limited to the product or the marketing team .
• The best time to incorporate the customer development process is when you start working on the product. However, you can also apply it to established products.
• Implementing the process in later-stage companies can be more difficult because of resistance to change and risk aversion. Nevertheless, they can use it effectively to develop new products or improve the existing ones.
• Overall, it allows organizations, both start-ups and mature ones, to avoid the feature fallacy trap and build products their customers love.

What is the customer development process?

The Customer Development Process is used to validate a product idea and verify if it satisfies the needs of the customer.

The process consists of 4 steps and takes place between the Business Model Design and Agile Engineering in the Lean Startup methodology.

It is a very valuable framework that can help start-ups build products that meet customer needs and are viable from a business standpoint.

A brief history of the customer development process

The customer development concept goes back to the 1990s. It was first described as a comprehensive framework by Steve Blank in his 2005 book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win .

The method gained a lot of recognition after the publication of The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Ries believes that the Customer development process is an essential part of product development within the lean startup strategy.

Blank, together with Bob Dorf authored another well-known book, The Startup Owner’s Manual . That’s where he introduced the Customer Development Manifesto outlining the main tenets of the method.

What are some of them?

• Pair customer development with agile development.
• Failure is an integral part of the search.
• Make continuous iterations and pivots.
• Design experiments and tests to validate your hypotheses.
• Fast decision-making, cycle time, speed, and tempo.

What are the steps involved in the customer development process?

The customer development process consists of four main steps: Customer Discovery, Customer Validation, Customer Creation, and Company Building.

Customer development process #1: Customer discovery

The customer discovery process starts by identifying and testing user problems.

Next, the team comes up with potential solutions, be they individual features or whole business models, and tests them to ensure they actually solve the problems.

How is it done?

In-app surveys , prototype testing , and A/B experiments are some of the ways to collect customer feedback at this stage.

Finally, the team needs to verify whether the customer would actually be happy to pay for the solution they’ve come up with.

Customer development process #2: Customer validation

At the Customer Validation stage, the team focuses on developing a scalable sales funnel. This is to ensure that the product can be profitable in the long run.

Developing a product differentiation strategy is also a part of the process at this stage.

The sales team should aim to close the first deals with new customers.

Customer development process #3: Customer creation

The customer creation stage is all about marketing .

At this stage, the team chooses the market to target, sets goals and decides on the success criteria. They also refine their positioning strategy and prepare for the product launch.

They also work on a demand generation strategy to implement once the product is out.

Customer development process #4: Company building

During the Company Building phase, the business grows from a start-up into a mature company.

This means growing the mainstream customer base product base.

Scaling up usually requires changes to the organizational structure. What was originally done by one multidisciplinary product team , may need to be divided between specialist departments like marketing or sales.

New departments, like product ops , may be needed to make the communication and collaboration between these effects.

The transformation usually requires bringing in new talent with adequate skills that the original core team may not have. It may also be time for some team members to move on if their personal goals are no longer aligned with those of the organization.

Benefits of using a customer development process

How can the customer development process benefit your product organization? Let’s look at a few advantages.

Saves time and money in the long run through testing before building

To start with, customer development can save you considerable resources.

A lot of money and time can be wasted on developing unnecessary features that don’t bring any value to the customer. The customer development process will help you avoid falling into the trap .

This is because it forces you to validate ideas before developing them and make sure this is what your customers really need, and not what they or you think they need.

Removes biases and focuses on solutions for real potential customers

We all have been involved in pet projects that were driven by emotions or personal ambitions rather than sound judgment or empirical evidence. They should have never been allowed beyond the concept stage and yet somehow they were.

Customer development can save your teams that frustration.

Because it is a rigorous testing process, it takes time – the time we need to distance ourselves from our ideas and look at them in an objective way.

Such distance and enough data make it easier to drop ideas based on wrong assumptions in favor of solutions that really serve our customers.

Achieves product-market fit faster

The time you invest in customer discovery and idea validation will paradoxically help you achieve product-market fit faster.

Thanks to the validation process, you are able to release an MVP that is much closer to what your customers need and are ready to pay for.

Once the product is out, you can use PMF surveys to further refine your fit.

The negative side of the customer development process

Despite the clear benefits of the framework, customer development has some downsides you need to be aware of.

It will take longer to go from concept to market

As we’ve mentioned, the customer discovery process can be time-consuming. You come up with ideas, validate them, and go back to the drawing board when they fail.

Consequently, it takes much longer to move from the concept stage to the product launch , so it makes you go against the start-up mantra of going fast and disrupting things.

However, remember, that ultimately, such thorough validation helps you save money and develop products that deliver genuine value to customers.

It’s not a once-in-a-lifetime kind of deal

Another thing to bear in mind is that customer discovery never ends. If you decide to start using it with your team, you need to commit to it in the long run.

The market and customer needs and habits are in a continuous flow. As nothing is constant, the discovery process can never stop. Otherwise, you are going to lose the advantages of using the framework that you may have gained in the earlier stages.

It’s not a negative side as such because it forces you to keep looking for ways to improve your product through incremental innovation , but this is something you need to bear in mind when you start.

Related: Watch our Product Drive replay session from Teresa Torres on Product Discovery

Which teams should implement the customer development process

Product and marketing teams play a key role in the customer development process. They are in charge of the market and customer research and come up with the differentiation and positioning strategies.

However, customer development requires a wider range of skills and expertise.

That’s why all teams taking part in the development process, like the sales, engineering, and development teams, should also be involved.

The sales team may be able to provide lots of insights into the customer pain points, while the engineers need to be there to verify the technical viability of proposed solutions and build them.

When is the right time to start the customer development process

Ideally, you want to implement the customer development process from the very beginning. The sooner you start using it, to more money and time you will save, and the sooner you will reach the product-market fit .

However, it’s never too late to incorporate it into your product development. How you do it depends on what stage the organization is at.

Applying the concept of customer development to later-stage companies

The more established the company is, the more challenging it becomes to implement customer development.

Big players may be reluctant to challenge the status quo and change the way they go about product development because the stakes are much higher.

However, even the most successful companies can benefit from applying the framework.

For example, they can still use customer discovery to keep track of the needs of customers and validate new product ideas.

If applied to existing products that already have a good market fit, customer validation can help to expand the customer base and scale.

This includes international expansion. Customer development will be crucial for successful product internationalization .

Regardless of the stage you’re at, the framework will help you avoid the feature fallacy trap and build products that your customers love.

Successful companies use the customer development process

Are you curious how industry-leading companies have used the customer development process to build successful products? Let’s look at two examples: Buffer and Dropbox.

Buffer- testing before building

Buffer is an app that helps users manage their social media accounts. They’ve developed a robust customer development process that allows them to understand user motivations and identify their needs.

How do they do it?

To start with, Buffer uses Twitter to collect customer feedback and recruit beta testers in no time.

They also use in-app experiences and experiments to validate their ideas. Check out the fake door tests they’ve run to test the demand for their new functionality and different pricing plans.

Dropbox- solving a problem customer’s didn’t realize they had

For Dropbox, one of the first cloud storage services, the challenge was to identify the best ways to market its revolutionary product.

Customer Development allowed them to single out the word of mouth as the most efficient and cost-effective way to attract early adopters.

The process also helped them discover the minimum functionality that would provide enough value to paying customers and they built their MVP around those features.

The product development process can help you discover the needs of your customers, find the right niche, and come up with a design for a product that is easy to scale.

If you would like to learn how Userpilot can help you at different stages of product development, hit the link to book a demo !

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• A Game-Changing Business Development Strategy to Achieve Consistent Growth

Your business development strategy can be key to the success or failure of your firm. In this post, we’ll explore how to create a strategy and associated plan that can propel an individual, a practice or an entire firm to new levels of growth and profitability.

Business Development Defined

Business development (BD) is the process used to identify, nurture and acquire new clients and business opportunities to drive growth and profitability. A business development strategy is a document that describes the strategy you will use to accomplish that goal.

The scope of business development can vary a lot from organization to organization. Consider the model professional services organizations use to get new business shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The three stages of the business development funnel

The first two stages of the model, Attract Prospects and Build Engagement, are traditional marketing functions. The final stage, Turn Opportunities into Clients, is a traditional sales function. In its traditional role, business development would be looking for new channels of distribution or marketing partners.

But roles are changing and naming conventions evolve. In today’s world many firms refer to the entire marketing and sales process as business development. We know, it can be confusing. So let’s sort it out a bit.

Business Development vs. Marketing

Marketing is the process of determining which products and services you will offer to which target audiences, at what price. It also addresses how you will position and promote your firm and its offerings in the competitive marketplace. The result of all this activity should be an increasing awareness of your firm among your target audience — and a stronger flow of qualified leads and opportunities.

Download the Business Development Guide

Historically, business development has been a subset of the marketing function that was focused on acquiring new marketing or distribution relationships and channels. While this role still exists in many companies, the business development title has become interchangeable with many marketing and sales functions.  

Business Development vs. Sales

Sales is the task of converting leads or opportunities into new clients. Business development is a broader term that encompasses many activities beyond the sales function. And while there is some overlap, most traditional BD roles are only lightly involved in closing new clients.  

Business development is often confused with sales. This is not too surprising because many people who are clearly in sales have taken to using the title of Business Developer . Presumably this is done because the organization believes that the BD designation avoids the stigma sometimes associated with sales.

Nowhere is this practice more prevalent than in professional services. Accountants, lawyers and strategy consultants do not want to be seen as “pushy sales people.” This titular bias is firmly rooted despite the fact that developing new business is an important role of most senior members of professional services firms. Also, the many aspects of the traditional business development role (finding new distribution channels, for instance) don’t translate easily to the professional services environment.

Since so many clients want to meet and get to know the professionals they will be working with, the Seller-Doer role is well established in many firms. The preference for Seller-Doers also tends to discourage firms from fielding a full-time sales force.

As an alternative approach to leveraging fee-earners’ time, some firms have one or more Business Developers on staff. In the professional services context, these folks are often involved in lead generation and qualification, as well as supporting the Seller-doers in their efforts to close new clients. In other organizational contexts, this role might be thought of as a sales support role.

The result of this confusing picture is that many professional services firms call sales “business development” and make it part of every senior professional’s role. They may also include some marketing functions, such as lead generation and lead nurturing, into the professional’s BD responsibilities.

It is on this expanded role — in which business development encompasses the full range of lead-generation, nurturing and sales tasks — that we will concentrate on in this post.

See also: Heller Consulting Case Story

Business Development Examples

To clarify what the professional services business development role entails, let’s consider this business development example:

Bethany is the Director of Business Development at a fictional mid-sized architecture firm. She is not an architect herself. Nor is she involved in any aspect of delivering client projects. Instead, her role is exclusively focused on signing new business for her firm—whether new or existing clients. 

For new clients, Bethany spends much of her time responding to RFPs, communicating directly with inbound leads generated by the marketing/sales enablement team, and nurturing potential clients that she met at a recent industry conference. Bethany also collaborates with the marketing team in the development of any materials she needs to sell to new accounts.

When it comes to existing accounts, Bethany also plays a major role. She meets monthly with delivery teams to understand whether current client projects are on scope or if change orders are needed. She also maintains a relationship with clients’ key stakeholders. If an opportunity for more work opens, she knows that her relationship with the client is an important component of the potential deal.

In this example, Bethany is the primary driver of business development but that does not mean she is doing this alone. Her colleague, Greg, is a lead architect at the firm. While Greg’s primary focus is delivering for his clients, business development—and even marketing—is also an important part of his professional life. Greg often attends industry conferences with Bethany, where he is a speaker and subject matter expert and she is the primary networker. The business development dynamic should not end with Bethany, and it should permeate the whole organization.

In this business development example, you can see that the range of roles and responsibilities is wide. This is why it is essential that business development be delivered strategically. Let’s talk about what that means.

Strategic Business Development

Not every business development activity has the same impact. In fact, many are opportunistic and tactical in nature. This is especially true for many Seller-Doers. 

Caught between the pressures of client work and an urgent need to bring in new business, they cast about for something quick and easy—maybe a small piece of business at a low price point—that will produce short term results. Of course, this is no real strategy at all.

Strategic business development is the alignment of business development processes and procedures with your firm’s strategic business goals. The role of strategic business development is to acquire ideal clients—the kind that are highly profitable and aren’t overly demanding—for your highest priority services using brand promises that you can deliver upon.

Deciding which targets to pursue and strategies to employ can be a high stakes decision. A good strategy, well implemented, can drive high levels of growth and profitability. A poorly conceived strategy can stymie growth and frustrate valuable talent.

Yet many firms falter at this critical step. They rely on habit, anecdotes and fads — or worse still, that innovation killer, “this is how we have always done it.” In a later section, we’ll explain how to develop your strategic business development plan. But first let’s explore some of the strategies that might go into that plan.

Top Business Development Strategies

Let’s look at some of the most common business development strategies and how they stack up agains what today’s buyers are looking for .

Networking is probably the most universally used business development technique. It’s built on the ideas that professional services buying decisions are rooted in relationships, and the best way to develop new relationships is through face-to-face networking.

It certainly is true that many relationships are established in that way. And if you are networking with members of your target audience, you can develop new business. But there are limitations. Today’s buyers, however, are very time pressured, and networking is time consuming. It can be very expensive, if you consider travel and time away from the office.

Newer digital networking techniques can help on the cost and time front. But even social media requires an investment of time and attention.

A close relative of networking, referrals are often seen as the mechanism that turns networking and client satisfaction into new business. You establish a relationship, and that person refers new business to you. Satisfied clients do the same.

Without question, referrals are common, and many firms get most or all of their business from them. But referrals are passive. They rely on your clients and contacts to identify good prospects for your services and make a referral at the right time.

The problem is, referral sources often don’t know the full scope of your services or the range of ways you can help a client. So many referrals are poorly matched to your capabilities. Other well-matched referrals go unmade because your referral source fails to recognize a great prospect when they see one. Finally, many prospects that might be good clients rule out your firm before even talking with you. One  study puts that number at over 50%.

Importantly, there are new digital strategies that can accelerate referrals. Making your specific expertise more visible is the key. This allows people to make better referrals and increases your referral base beyond clients and a few business contacts.

Learn More: Referral Marketing Course

Sponsorships and Advertising

Can you develop new business directly by sponsoring events and advertising? It would solve a lot of problems if it works. No more trying to get time from fully utilized billable professionals.

Unfortunately, the results on this front are not very encouraging. Studies have shown that traditional advertising is actually associated with slower growth. Only when advertising is combined with other techniques, such as speaking at an event, do these techniques bear fruit.

The most promising advertising strategy seems to be well-targeted digital advertising. This allows firms to get their messages and offers in front of the right people at a lower cost.

Outbound Telephone and Mail

Professional services firms have been using phone calls and mail to directly target potential clients for decades. Target the right firms and roles with a relevant message and you would expect to find new opportunities that can be developed into clients.

There are a couple of key challenges with these strategies. First they are relatively expensive, so they need to be just right to be effective. Second, if you don’t catch the prospect at the right time, your offer may have no appeal relevance — and consequently, no impact on business development.

The key is to have a very appealing offer delivered to a very qualified and responsive list. It’s not easy to get this combination right.

Thought Leadership and Content Marketing

Here, the strategy is to make your expertise visible to potential buyers and referral sources. This is accomplished through writing, speaking or publishing content that demonstrates your expertise and how it can be applied to solve client problems.

Books, articles and speaking engagements have long been staples of professional services business development strategy. Many high visibility experts have built their practices and firms upon this strategy. It often takes a good part of a career to execute this approach.

But changing times and technology have reshaped this strategy. With the onset of digital communication it is now easier and much faster to establish your expertise with a target market. Search engines have leveled the playing field so that relatively unknown individuals and firms can become known even outside their physical region. Webinars have democratized public speaking, and blogs and websites give every firm a 24/7 presence. Add in video and social media and the budding expert can access a vastly expanded marketplace.

But these developments also open firms to much greater competition as well. You may find yourself competing with specialists whom you were never aware of. The impact is to raise the stakes on your business development strategy.

Combined Strategies

It is common to combine different business development strategies. For example, networking and referrals are frequently used together. And on one level, a combined strategy makes perfect sense. The strength of one strategy can shore up the weakness of another.

But there is a hidden danger. For a strategy to perform at its peak, it must be fully implemented. There is a danger that by attempting to execute too many different strategies you will never completely implement any of them.

Good intentions, no matter how ambitious, are of little real business development value. Under-investment, lack of follow through and inconsistent effort are the bane of effective business development.

It is far more effective to fully implement a simple strategy than to dabble in a complex one. Fewer elements, competently implemented, produce better results.

Next, we turn our attention to the tactics used to implement a high-level strategy. But first there is a bit of confusion to clear up.

Business Development Strategy Vs. Tactics

The line between strategy and tactics is not always clear. For example, you can think of networking as an overall business development strategy or as a tactic to enhance the impact of a thought leadership strategy. Confusing to be sure.

From our perspective, the distinction is around focus and intent. If networking is your business development strategy all your focus should be on making the networking more effective and efficient. You will select tactics that are aimed at making networking more powerful or easier. You may try out another marketing technique and drop it if it does not help you implement your networking strategy.

On the other hand, if networking is simply one of many tactics, your decision to use it will depend on whether it supports your larger strategy. Tactics and techniques can be tested and easily changed. Strategy, on the other hand, is a considered choice and does not change from day to day or week to week.

10 Most Effective Business Development Tactics

Which business development tactics are most effective? To find out, we recently conducted a study that looked at 824 professional services firms. The research identified those firms that were growing at greater than a 20% compound annual growth rate over a three-year period.

These High Growth firms were compared to firms in the same industry that did not grow over the same time period. We then examined which business development tactics were employed by each group and which provided the most impact.

The result is a list of the ten most impactful tactics employed by the High Growth firms:

• Outbound sales calls from internal teams
• Providing assessments and/or consultations
• Business development materials
• Speaking at targeted conferences or events
• Networking at targeted conferences or events
• Conducting and publishing original research
• Live product/service demonstrations
• Presenting in educational webinars
• Marketing partnerships with other organizations
• Case studies

There are a couple of key observations about these growth tactics. First, these techniques can be employed in service of different business development strategies. For example number four on the list, speaking at targeted conferences or events, can easily support a networking or a thought leadership strategy.

The other observation is that the top tactics include a mix of both digital and traditional techniques. As we will see when we develop your plan, having a healthy mix of digital and traditional techniques tends to increase the impact of your strategy.

Business Development Skills

Now that we have identified the key business development strategies and tactics, it is time to consider the business development skills your team will need. Business development skills require a broad range of technical skills but there are some that make a difference.

When the Hinge Research Institute studied marketing and business development skills in our annual High Growth Study , we found that the firms that grow faster have a skills advantage within their marketing and business development teams.

In Figure 2 below, we see which business development skills are the most important for the high growth firms:

Figure 2. Skill ratings by marketing function (High Growth vs. No Growth firms)

Let’s dive into the top three skills from this list. 

The number one business development skill high growth firms enjoy are strong project management skills. And for experienced business development specialists, this makes good sense. Staying organized, accurately tracking business development activity, and managing accounts are essential for building and maintaining strong business relationships. Sound project management practices also allow the business development team to product stronger proposals more quickly without sacrificing quality.

The next most important skill is simplifying complex concepts. In business development conversations, it is vital that team members are able to communicate your firm’s service offerings and capabilities in a ways that prospects can understand. Speaking in industry jargon or presenting overly complicated charts creates unnecessary confusion and friction. Therefore, it is no surprise to see that the fastest growing professional services firms have an advantage in communicating complex information in a way that buyers understand.

The third most important business development skill is data analytics. Firms that make a habit of regularly monitoring key metrics have a real advantage. They can see what marketing techniques are working and which are having problems. The allows them to make course corrections in near real time. Firms that rarely or never look at data are running blind, relying instead on potentially misleading anecdotal evidence.

Review the other business development and marketing skills in the figure above and determine which skills your team should aim to develop.  Developing these skills should be a key priority of your business development team.

How to Create Your Strategic Business Development Plan

A Business Development Plan is a document that outlines how you implement your business development strategy. It can be a plan for an individual, a practice or the firm as a whole. Its scope covers both the marketing and sales functions, as they are so intertwined in most professional services firms.

Here are the key steps to develop and document your plan.

Define your target audience

Who are you trying to attract as new clients? Focus on your “best-fit” clients, not all possible prospects. It is most effective to focus on a narrow target audience. But don’t go so narrow that you can’t achieve your business goals.

Research their issues, buying behavior and your competitors

The more you know about your target audience the better equipped you will be to attract their attention and communicate how you can help them. What are their key business issues? Is your expertise relevant to those issues? Where do they look for advice and inspiration? What is the competitive environment like? How do you stack up?

Identify your competitive advantage

What makes you different? Why is that better for your target client? Are you the most cost-effective alternative? Or the industry’s leading expert? However you position your firm, your claims need to be true, provable and relevant to your target audience. It is very useful to document this positioning as you will use it over and over again as you develop your messages and marketing tools.

Choose your overall business development strategy

Pick the broad strategy or strategies you will use to reach, engage and convert your prospects. You can start with the list of top strategies provided above. Which strategy fits with the needs and preferences of your target audiences? Which ones best convey your competitive advantage? For example, if you are competing because you have superior industry expertise, a thought leadership/content marketing strategy will likely serve you well.

Choose your business development tactics

A great place to start is the list of the most effective tactics we provided above. Make sure that each technique you select fits your target audience and strategy. Remember, it’s not about your personal preferences or familiarity with a tactic. It’s about what creates a connection with your audience.

Also, you will need to balance your choices in two important ways: First, you will need tactics that address each stage of the business development pipeline shown in Figure 1. Some techniques work great for gaining visibility but do not address longer-term need to nurture prospects over time. You need to cover the full funnel.

Second, you need a good balance between digital and traditional techniques (Figure 2). Your research should inform this choice. Be careful about assumptions. Just because you don’t use social media doesn’t mean that a portion of your prospects don’t use it to check you out.

When, how often, which conferences, what topics? Now is the time to settle on the details that turn a broad strategy into a specific plan. Many plans include a content or marketing calendar that lays out the specifics, week by week. If that is too much detail for you, at least document what you will be doing and how often. You will need these details to monitor the implementation of your plan.

Specify how you will monitor implementation and impact

Often overlooked, these important considerations often spell the difference between success and failure. Unimplemented strategies don’t work. Keep track of what you do, and when. This will both motivate action and provide a great starting place as you troubleshoot your strategy. Also monitor and record the impacts you see. The most obvious effect will be how much new business you closed. But you should also monitor new leads or new contacts, at the bare minimum. Finally, don’t neglect important process outcomes such as referrals, new names added to your list and downloads of content that expose prospects and referral sources to your expertise.

If you follow these steps you will end up with a documented business development strategy and a concrete plan to implement and optimize it.

Free Resource

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Client Development for Consultants: How to Grow & Keep Clients

Client development is what you do to develop clients — one of the most important practices of any consulting business.

Right now, in the middle of a pandemic, client development can be tough. You need to bring in new business to keep your business running — but a lot of clients have minimized their budgets.

Experts at client-development don’t seem to have this same problem.

To help you become an expert at client development, we’re sharing a summary of the talk Andrew Sobel , client development expert, gave at our Clarity Coaching Virtual Mastermind event this summer.

By the end of this post, you’ll understand how to become an expert in client development — and how to keep your sales pipeline full .

Sales Confidence: It Starts With Your Mindset

What does it mean to become proficient at client-development?

At what point can your client development skills create tremendous value for your consulting business?

Here’s your client development goal: to get 10-20% more leads than you can handle .

Once you can do that, the magic happens:

• You can turn down the lowest value leads — and focus on only your highest-value leads
• You gain the courage to stand firm on your fees — and charge what you know you are worth
• You can invest in your business and your thought-leadership — two of the best long-term strategies for growth
• You will begin to radiate confidence — creating a feedback loop that makes you believe in yourself and your services, which your clients will feel

But first, you must sell to the most important buyer of all — yourself.

As Andrew said during our Mastermind talk:

“You have to make the first sale to yourself. You have to believe that you have something great and valuable to offer your clients — and that you are really going to be helping people. That is the fundamental idea.”

How you think about client development plays a big role in how it affects your results.

Misconceptions About Client Development: Do You Think This Way?

Andrew then spoke about the common misconceptions about client development.

These are harmful beliefs that consultants have about marketing and sales that hold them back.

Do any of them sound familiar to you?

“Business development is different from project delivery.”

Wrong — project delivery IS marketing and client development. Think about what you’re doing while delivering an engagement. You’re building key relationships. You’re learning where and how to add value. This is the most natural time to build trust, learn about your client’s business, and then plant the seeds for new opportunities.

“Consultants are chosen based on rational thinking.”

False. Client’s base their decisions heavily on emotional factors, and then justify their choices based on rationality. So, if you want to appeal to their emotions, get to know your client’s personal agenda — not just their business agenda. How can you help them advance in their career? How can you help improve their day-to-day life? How can you help facilitate and grow their network and learning? Of course, your clients want to cut costs and grow revenue — but focus more on them personally, and they’re more likely to choose you.

“I don’t want the client to think I’m selling.”

If you’re worried that the client will think you’re selling, you haven’t developed enough trust with them yet . Once a certain amount of trust has been established, clients know that you are being sincere when you make an offer. Develop more trust, and ditch this mindset for good.

“I don’t have enough time.”

Wrong. You’re ALWAYS doing client-development — whether you realize it or not. You have enough time, you just aren’t approaching it the right way. More on that below.

“Great rainmakers are born great — I wasn’t.”

Wrong. Andrew LEARNED how to become great at client development — and you can too. You don’t have to be a natural extrovert full of confidence. Instead, by practicing certain habits, you can practice and learn how to become a master at developing new consulting business.

How To Become A Rainmaker: 7 Habits Of Highly-Effective Rainmakers

Andrew talked about the habits that make a “Rainmaker”: a master at attracting clients and bringing in new business .

Here are a few of those habits:

• Adopt the advisor mindset rather than the expert-for-hire mindset: Experts are all about “me”, while the trusted advisor is focused on “you” and/or “we.” Forget about being seen as an expert, and focus more on helping your clients reach their most important goals.
• Get comfortable talking about things outside of your area of expertise: Unlike “experts” trusted advisors have business acumen. They can tease out real problems/aspirations instead of trying to solve narrow problems using one method. You can only do this when you get comfortable talking about things outside of your area of expertise.
• Stop relying on presentations, and focus more on unscripted conversations: Become adept at speaking with your clients about their problems and goals. Instead of speaking at them, collaborate with them. Asking great questions will help with that.
• Ask “power questions”: Power questions — the name of one of Andrew’s books — are questions that help you make an immediate connection with your clients. They give power to your conversations. They help you learn critical details about your client. Rainmakers ask good questions — and those conversations turn into new business.
• Focus less on building your credibility, and more on personal trust: Chances are, you’re focusing too much on building your credibility. Balance that out by building personal trust with your high-value clients. The more you can make it about them, the better.
• Be “in the flow”: Be out there talking to people in your market. Talk to people in your client’s market. This is known as being “in the flow” — and in doing so, you’ll create serendipity.
• See abundance instead of scarcity: Look for scarcity and you’ll find it. Or, look for possibility, and you’ll find that instead. Rainmakers make a deliberate choice to see possibilities instead of scarcity — and you can make the same choice.

If you can turn these habits into daily, consistent actions, over time, you will become a rainmaker.

It won’t happen overnight, but with enough practice, developing new clients will become second-nature.

Action Step: The One-Pager

Early on in Andrew’s business, there was one action he took that had a MASSIVE impact on his client development.

He wrote 30 of the toughest problems his clients were dealing with.

Then, he wrote a one-pager on each problem.

Doing this helped him create thought-leadership , gave him valuable material for follow-ups, and ultimately, helped position him as a trusted advisor to his clients.

Now, it’s your turn.

But instead of writing 30 one-pagers, you’ll start with one. Here’s how to do it:

• Examine your emails with clients, LinkedIn feed, past conversations, and intuition to write down 30 of the toughest problems your clients face .
• Select one of the problems that you feel would be easiest to write.
• Intro: Describe the problem.
• Why: Explain why it is a problem.
• How: Demonstrate how one should think about, approach, or solve the problem.
• Next Step: Give your reader an action — the very next thing they should do to make progress on solving their problem.
• Set aside an hour to write 500+words for your one-pager.
• Publish the one-pager to your consulting website — and share it with your network, your LinkedIn page, and your email list!

If you can eventually create 30 of these one-pagers, you’ll create an impressive client-development asset: a collection of work that markets and sells your consulting services for you.

What are you doing for your consulting practice’s client development? What is — or isn’t — working for your business?

Leave a comment below and join the discussion!

(For more on client development, read Andrew’s book: It Starts With Clients )

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A 3-Step Guide to Performing Prospect Research (Before You Pick Up the Phone)

Updated: June 11, 2021

Published: August 06, 2013

What's the difference between a poor first-time connect and a successful one? One word: context .

Researching potential prospects before you first email or call them can make a world of difference between a deal or a bust. By understanding the background of a company and the person you're trying to speak to, you can better frame a conversation.

And just like no two prospects are the same, no two prospects’ interactions with you should be the same. It's important Sales take the time to collect information and then create more tailored experience from first touch. By creating relevancy, you're much more likely to engage a prospect and have a positive, meaningful conversation.

But we also know that time is precious. While there's a lot to gather from your research, ultimately it's important to train yourself to spend no more than around five minutes researching potential prospects. With practice, you can start to develop a sixth sense for knowing what to look for -- here's a guide to start you off.

Step 1: Learn About the Company

Visit the company website. Make note of its mission and vision . At the end of the day, this company wants to be great at what it does, and if you can identify how your products or services can help it achieve its vision, you can paint a more meaningful picture for your prospect.

Some basic information you should quickly gauge include:

• Company Size
• Number of Employees
• Product or Service Offerings
• Typical Sale Size

You should also do some more in-depth sleuthing that gives context to that information. Search for any recent third-party publications mentioning the prospective company -- is an industry blog talking about struggles that company is facing, or something the company is doing really well? Who are its competitors? Does this company have its own blog? Do they use social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? What are they talking about there ? Has the company just published a post about a new product they’ve released, or about an event they were a part of? Knowing this type of information can add relevancy when you reach out to start a conversation, and allow you to send relevant information their way.

If you're looking to learn more about how Sales can use social media to close business, check out this free ebook . 

( Bonus Tip:   What is the company tweeting about? Does it seem to be trying to push one or two types of content -- maybe ebooks for a specific product or service, or a thought leadership piece? You might be able to discern some top priorities based on what’s being communicated in their own lead generation content.)

Step 2: Do a Background Check

It’s incredibly important not only that you reach out to the right company, but also to the right person at that company. Are you talking to an influencer, a decision-maker, or someone who has no reason to ever talk to you about your product or service? For example, HubSpot sells software for marketers -- so reaching out to someone on the R&D team of a company would result in either no connection, or a much longer sales process as they forward a representative onto someone else.

First, look at the company website’s “About” and “Contact” pages. Does it list bios of employees? Do they have contact information for certain areas, such as “please contact [email protected] for all marketing inquiries”? 

LinkedIn should also become your best friend. Do some digging around people listing your company of interest as their employer. Look for information such as recent job changes, their job function, and their education. What's their role? How long have they been at the current company? Someone who has only recently started may not have enough context about the company's needs or may have less influence in the decision-making process. Build a persona in your head of who this person is, and think over how you'd address him or her if you were face to face. 

Step 3: Hypothesize Pain Points

Try to find out what a company is doing to address their problems relevant to your product or service offerings, already.

If you're selling an inbound marketing platform like HubSpot, for instance, you'd look at how a company is currently trying to drive traffic to its website. Perhaps the company's using banner ads and paid search, which can be costly. Your "in" here would be to bring up these points in the initial conversation - “I noticed that you've been using paid advertising. How well has this been working? Have you been able to hit your traffic goals? Why, or why not?".

The information gleaned before even reaching out can turn you from a salesperson into a consultant. Instead of talking at a prospect, you're starting a problem-solving process that you both have a stake in.

Since you’ve already narrowed down your list of potential people to reach out to, you should also look at these people's personal channels. What are they tweeting about? Are they part of a special-interest group on LinkedIn? It’s all about relevancy -- build an idea of who this person is, and what that person's pain points are within the context of their company's goals, before you reach out to them.

Remember, Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover

Methodology for pre-qualifying prospects differs from salesperson to salesperson, but one important rule of thumb is to never rule out a prospect if you can come up with even one reason they might buy your product. As you research, hypothesize different scenarios a potential prospect might be facing so you can be prepared to address it. Is there any reason they wouldn’t buy your product or service? Is there any reason they couldn't be a potential customer?

There are some cases where, as someone familiar with your industry, you just know a prospect is not workable. Other times, you can prioritize prospects based on likeliness of converting them into a customer. Assign them with a high/medium/low value and organize your time accordingly. Go with your gut on these, but err on the side of caution -- it’s better to send an email and make a call and not have anything come of it than lose a good opportunity. Most of the time you simply cannot know what is going on in a prospect’s head, and the only way to find out is to get him or her on the phone and ask them.

In short -- don’t judge a book by its cover, but make sure to read and analyze what’s right in front of you, too. Knowing as much as you can about a potential prospect before you reach out can save you time and energy by reaching out to the right prospect, with the right message that is tailored to them, at the right time. We are living in the age of context, and using relevant information to create a unique experience for each prospect will yield a more fruitful start to the sales process.

What are some pre-connect researching tips you have when prospecting?

Image credit: Rev Dan Catt

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Client Research and Problem Identification

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Active areas of Ethereum research

One of the primary strengths of Ethereum is that an active research and engineering community are constantly improving it. Many enthusiastic, skilled people worldwide would like to apply themselves to outstanding issues in Ethereum, but it is not always easy to find out what those issues are. This page outlines key active research areas as a rough guide to Ethereum's cutting edge.

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General research resources.

Regardless of the specific topic, there is a wealth of information on Ethereum research to be found at ethresear.ch (opens in a new tab) and the Eth R&D Discord channel (opens in a new tab) . These are the primary places where Ethereum researchers discuss the latest ideas and development opportunities.

This report published in May 2022 by DelphiDigital (opens in a new tab) provides a good overview of the Ethereum roadmap.

Sources of Funding

You can get involved with Ethereum research and get paid for it! For example, the Ethereum Foundation recently ran an Academic Grants funding round (opens in a new tab) . You can find information on active and upcoming funding opportunities on the Ethereum grants page .

Protocol research

Protocol research is concerned with Ethereum's base layer - the set of rules defining how nodes connect, communicate, exchange and store Ethereum data and come to consensus about the state of the blockchain. Protocol research gets divided into two top-level categories: consensus and execution.

Consensus research is concerned with Ethereum's proof-of-stake mechanism . Some example consensus research topics are:

• identifying and patching vulnerabilities;
• quantifying cryptoeconomic security;
• increasing the security or performance of client implementations;
• and developing light clients.

As well as forward-looking research, some fundamental redesigns of the protocol, such as single slot finality, are being researched to allow for significant improvements to Ethereum. Furthermore, the efficiency, safety, and monitoring of peer-to-peer networking between consensus clients are also important research topics.

Background reading

• Introduction to proof-of-stake
• Casper-FFG paper (opens in a new tab)
• Casper-FFG explainer (opens in a new tab)
• Gasper paper (opens in a new tab)

Recent research

• Ethresear.ch Consensus (opens in a new tab)
• Availability/Finality dilemma (opens in a new tab)
• Single slot finality (opens in a new tab)
• Proposer-builder separation (opens in a new tab)

The execution layer is concerned with executing transactions, running the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) and generating execution payloads to pass to the consensus layer. There are many active areas of research, including:

• building out light client support;
• researching gas limits;
• and incorporating new data structures (e.g. Verkle Tries).
• Introduction to the EVM
• Ethresear.ch execution layer (opens in a new tab)
• Database optimizations (opens in a new tab)
• State expiry (opens in a new tab)
• Paths to state expiry (opens in a new tab)
• Verkle and state expiry proposal (opens in a new tab)
• History management (opens in a new tab)
• Verkle Trees (opens in a new tab)
• Data availability sampling (opens in a new tab)

Client Development

Ethereum clients are implementations of the Ethereum protocol. Client development makes the outcomes from protocol research into reality by building them into these clients. Client development includes updating the client specifications as well as building specific implementations.

An Ethereum node is required to run two pieces of software:

• a consensus client to keep track of the head of the blockchain, gossip blocks and handle consensus logic
• an execution client to support the Ethereum Virtual Machine and execute transactions and smart contracts

See the nodes and clients page for more detail on nodes and clients and for a list of all current client implementations. You can also find a history of all Ethereum upgrades on the history page .

Execution Clients

• Execution client specification (opens in a new tab)
• Execution API spec (opens in a new tab)

Consensus Clients

• Consensus client specification (opens in a new tab)
• Beacon API specification (opens in a new tab)

Scaling and performance

Scaling Ethereum is a large area of focus for Ethereum researchers. Current approaches include offloading transactions onto rollups and making them as cheap as possible using data blobs. Introductory information on scaling Ethereum is available on our scaling page .

There are now several Layer 2 protocols that scale Ethereum using different techniques for batching transactions and securing them on Ethereum layer 1. This is a very rapidly growing topic with a lot of research and development potential.

• Introduction to layer 2
• Polynya: Rollups, DA and modular chains (opens in a new tab)
• Arbitrum's fair-ordering for sequencers (opens in a new tab)
• ethresear.ch Layer 2 (opens in a new tab)
• Rollup-centric roadmap (opens in a new tab)
• L2Beat (opens in a new tab)

One particular area of layer 2 that requires more research and development is safe and performant bridges. This includes bridges between various Layer 2s and bridges between Layer 1 and Layer 2. This is a particularly important area of research because bridges are commonly targeted by hackers.

• Introduction to blockchain bridges
• Vitalik on bridges (opens in a new tab)
• Blockchain bridges article (opens in a new tab)
• Value locked in bridges (opens in a new tab)
• Validating bridges (opens in a new tab)

Sharding Ethereum's blockchain has long been part of the development roadmap. However, new scaling solutions such as "Danksharding" are currently taking center stage.

The precursor to full Danksharding known as Proto-Danksharding went live with the Cancun-Deneb ("Dencun") network upgrade.

More about the Dencun upgrade

• Proto-Danksharding notes (opens in a new tab)
• Bankless Danksharding video (opens in a new tab)
• Ethereum Sharding Research Compendium (opens in a new tab)
• Danksharding (Polynya) (opens in a new tab)
• EIP-4844: Proto-Danksharding (opens in a new tab)
• Vitalik on sharding and data availability sampling (opens in a new tab)

Running nodes on modest hardware is fundamental to keeping Ethereum decentralized. Therefore, active research into minimizing the hardware requirements to run nodes is an important area of research.

• Ethereum on ARM (opens in a new tab)
• ecdsa on FPGAs (opens in a new tab)

Security is a broad topic that might include spam/scam prevention, wallet security, hardware security, crypto-economic security, bug hunting and testing of applications and client software and key-management. Contributing to knowledge in these areas will help stimulate mainstream adoption.

Cryptography & ZKP

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and cryptography are critical for building privacy and security into Ethereum and its applications. Zero-knowledge is a relatively young but fast-moving space with many open research and development opportunities. Some possibilities include developing more efficient implementations of the Keccak hashing algorithm (opens in a new tab) , finding better polynomial commitments than currently exist or reducing the cost of ecdsa public key generation and signature verification circuits.

• 0xparc blog (opens in a new tab)
• zkp.science (opens in a new tab)
• Zero Knowledge podcast (opens in a new tab)
• Recent advance in elliptic curve cryptography (opens in a new tab)
• Ethresear.ch ZK (opens in a new tab)

Ethereum wallets can be browser extensions, desktop and mobile apps or smart contracts on Ethereum. There is active research into social recovery wallets that reduce some of the risk associated with individual-user key management. Associated with development of wallets is research into alternative forms of account abstraction, which is an important area of nascent research.

• Introduction to wallets
• Introduction to wallet security
• ethresear.ch Security (opens in a new tab)
• EIP-2938 Account Abstraction (opens in a new tab)
• EIP-4337 Account Abstraction (opens in a new tab)
• Validation focused smart contract wallets (opens in a new tab)
• The future of accounts (opens in a new tab)
• EIP-3074 AUTH and AUTHCALL Opcodes (opens in a new tab)
• Publishing code at an EOA address (opens in a new tab)

Community, education and outreach

Onboarding new users onto Ethereum requires new educational resources and approaches to outreach. This might include blog posts and articles, books, podcasts, memes, teaching resources, events and anything else that builds communities, welcomes new starters and educates people about Ethereum.

To onboard more people onto Ethereum, the ecosystem must improve the UX/UI. This will require designers and product experts to re-examine the design of wallets and apps.

• Ethresear.ch UX/UI (opens in a new tab)
• Web3 Design Discord (opens in a new tab)
• Web3 Design Principles (opens in a new tab)
• Ethereum Magicians UX discussion (opens in a new tab)

Economics research in Ethereum broadly follows two approaches: validate the security of mechanisms relying on economic incentives ("microeconomics") and analyze the flows of value between protocols, applications and users ("macroeconomics"). There are complex crypto-economic factors relating to Ethereum's native asset (ether) and the tokens built on top of it (for example NFTs and ERC20 tokens).

• Robust Incentives Group (opens in a new tab)
• ETHconomics workshop at Devconnect (opens in a new tab)
• Empirical analysis of EIP1559 (opens in a new tab)
• Circulating supply equilibrium (opens in a new tab)
• Quantifying MEV: How dark is the forest? (opens in a new tab)

Blockspace and fee markets

Blockspace markets govern the inclusion of end-user transactions, either directly on Ethereum (Layer 1) or on bridged networks, e.g., rollups (Layer 2). On Ethereum, transactions are submitted to the fee market deployed in-protocol as EIP-1559, protecting the chain from spam and pricing congestion. On both layers, transactions may produce externalities, known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), which induce new market structures to capture or manage these externalities.

• Transaction Fee Mechanism Design for the Ethereum Blockchain: An Economic Analysis of EIP-1559 (Tim Roughgarden, 2020) (opens in a new tab)
• Simulations of EIP-1559 (Robust Incentives Group) (opens in a new tab)
• Rollup economics from first principles (opens in a new tab)
• Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges (opens in a new tab)
• Multidimensional EIP-1559 video presentation (opens in a new tab)
• Cross domain MEV (opens in a new tab)
• MEV auctions (opens in a new tab)

Proof-of-stake incentives

Validators use Ethereum's native asset (ether) as collateral against dishonest behavior. The cryptoeconomics of this determines the security of the network. Sophisticated validators may be able to exploit the nuances of the incentive layer to launch explicit attacks.

• Ethereum economics masterclass and economic model (opens in a new tab)
• Simulations of PoS incentives (Robust Incentives Group) (opens in a new tab)
• Increasing censorship resistance of transactions under proposer/builder separation (PBS) (opens in a new tab)
• Three Attacks on PoS Ethereum (opens in a new tab)

Liquid staking and derivatives

Liquid staking allows users with less than 32 ETH to receive staking yields by swapping ether for a token representing staked ether that can be used in DeFi. However, the incentives and market dynamics associated with liquid staking are still being discovered, as well as its effect on Ethereum's security (e.g. centralization risks).

• Ethresear.ch liquid staking (opens in a new tab)
• Lido: The road to trustless Ethereum staking (opens in a new tab)
• Rocket Pool: Staking protocol introduction (opens in a new tab)
• Handling withdrawals from Lido (opens in a new tab)
• Withdrawal credentials (opens in a new tab)
• The risks of Liquid Staking Derivatives (opens in a new tab)

Formal verification

Formal verification is writing code to verify that Ethereum's consensus specifications are correct and bug-free. There is an executable version of the specification written in Python that requires maintenance and development. Further research can help to improve the Python implementation of the specification and add tools that can more robustly verify correctness and identify issues.

• Introduction to formal verification (opens in a new tab)
• Formal Verification (Intel) (opens in a new tab)
• Formal verification of the deposit contract (opens in a new tab)
• Formal verification of the Beacon Chain specification (opens in a new tab)

Data science and analytics

There is a need for more data analysis tools and dashboards that give detailed information about activity on Ethereum and the health of the network.

• Dune Analytics (opens in a new tab)
• Client diversity dashboard (opens in a new tab)
• Robust Incentives Group Data Analysis (opens in a new tab)

Apps and tooling

The application layer supports a diverse ecosystem of programs that settle transactions on Ethereum's base layer. Development teams are constantly finding new ways to leverage Ethereum to create composable, permissionless and censorship-resistant versions of important Web2 apps or create completely new Web3-native concepts. At the same time, new tooling is being developed that makes building dapps on Ethereum less complex.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is one of the primary classes of application built on top of Ethereum. DeFi aims to create composable "money legos" that allow users to store, transfer, lend, borrow and invest crypto-assets using smart contracts. DeFi is a fast-moving space that is constantly updating. Research into secure, efficient and accessible protocols is continuously needed.

• Coinbase: What is DeFi? (opens in a new tab)
• Decentralized finance, centralized ownership? (opens in a new tab)
• Optimism: The road to sub-dollar transactions (opens in a new tab)

An impactful use case for Ethereum is the ability to organize in a decentralized manner through the use of DAOs. There is a lot of active research into how DAOs on Ethereum can be developed and utilized to execute improved forms of governance, as a trust-minimized coordination tool, greatly expanding peoples options beyond traditional corporations and organizations.

• Introduction to DAOs
• Dao Collective (opens in a new tab)
• Mapping the DAO ecosystem (opens in a new tab)

Developer tools

Tools for Ethereum developers are rapidly improving. There is lots of active research and development to do in this general area.

• Tooling by programming language
• Developer Frameworks
• Consensus developer tools list (opens in a new tab)
• Token standards
• CryptoDevHub: EVM Tools (opens in a new tab)
• Eth R&D Discord Consensus Tooling channel (opens in a new tab)

Oracles import off-chain data onto the blockchain in a permissionless and decentralized way. Getting this data on-chain enables dapps to be reactive to real-world phenomena such as price fluctuations in real-world assets, events in off-chain apps, or even changes in the weather.

• Introduction to Oracles

Recent Research

• Survey of blockchain oracles (opens in a new tab)
• Chainlink white paper (opens in a new tab)

App security

Hacks on Ethereum generally exploit vulnerabilities in individual applications rather than in the protocol itself. Hackers and app developers are locked in an arms race to develop new attacks and defenses. This means there is always important research and development required to keep apps safe from hacks.

• Wormhole exploit report (opens in a new tab)
• List of Ethereum contract hack post-mortems (opens in a new tab)
• Rekt News (opens in a new tab)
• ethresear.ch Applications (opens in a new tab)

Technology stack

Decentralizing the entire Ethereum tech stack is an important research area. Currently, dapps on Ethereum commonly have some points of centralization because they rely on centralized tooling or infrastructure.

• Ethereum stack
• Coinbase: Intro to Web3 Stack (opens in a new tab)
• Introduction to smart contracts
• Introduction to decentralized storage
• Smart contract composability

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Client Development

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Effective client development is crucial for sustaining and growing any recruitment business. At hireneXus Research Research, we focus on building and nurturing relationships through tailored client development strategies that leverage cutting-edge researching services for recruiters. Our team works closely with you to understand your unique needs, enabling us to provide customized solutions that drive your business forward and help you achieve long-term success.

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Connecting with clients requires more than just a message; it requires a strategy. Our electronic outreach services leverage the insights gained from marketing research for recruiters to filter responses from email campaigns, ensuring that every communication reflects your brand’s voice and objectives.

By building targeted lists of past and potential clients, we craft email campaigns and sequences that not only reach but resonate with your audience, turning prospects into partners.

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What They Do

What does a Client Development Manager do?

A client development manager cultivates and develops relationships with their regular and prospective clients. Client development managers track trends, opportunities, competitors, and challenges for sales. It is part of their job to document scheduled time and interactions in organizational software. They make negotiations and supervise outreach and sales activities. Also, they offer feedback and suggestions to improve customer satisfaction, maximize retention, and to increase the ROI of the clients in the industry.

• Responsibilities
• Skills And Traits
• Comparisions
• Types of Client Development Manager

Client development manager responsibilities

As a client development manager, one of the primary responsibilities is to build and maintain relationships with executive decision-makers and stakeholders. This involves executing direct contact with producers and service providers, including financial service providers and insurance networks, as stated by Dr. Mark Harvey Ph.D. from the University of Saint Mary. They also work on developing marketing plans and materials, completing sales training, and implementing new CRM database management systems. In addition, they play a key role in identifying test cases and data, serving as a client-facing representative, and handling the onboarding process for new clients. The role requires a strong understanding of software such as MS Word, Excel, and analytics, as well as familiarity with social media platforms used in the industry. Furthermore, they must be able to cultivate key accounts and generate new business through competitive media, cold calls, and related trade show events.

Here are examples of responsibilities from real client development manager resumes:

• Build and execute annual CRM marketing plans to ensure long term client marketing goals are achieve.
• Lead centralized, electronic referral center coordinating post-acute service needs of patients discharging from multiple acute facilities in Arizona region.
• Select and implement new CRM database management system with accounting package.
• Analyze LTV data, ROI and banner/video performance.
• Track all new contacts and new marketing opportunities in Salesforce.
• Provide feedback and recommendations to increase clients' ROI, improve customer satisfaction, and maximize retention.
• Strengthen key customer relationships through senior level conversations leading to a new infrastructure solution providing more flexibility and a future platform.
• Pioneer the use of Salesforce.com.
• Provide e-business development, requirement analysis, and gap strategy.

Client development manager skills and personality traits

We calculated that 9 % of Client Development Managers are proficient in C++ , Account Management , and PowerPoint . They’re also known for soft skills such as Creativity , Interpersonal skills , and Organizational skills .

We break down the percentage of Client Development Managers that have these skills listed on their resume here:

Major technologies on the Internet Explorer side were C++, ATL, WTL and Win32.

Received Quarterly Awards, as a result of exemplary account management, thorough product knowledge and sound sales techniques.

Created custom presentations, proposals, and RFP responses in PowerPoint and MS Word.

Selected and implemented new CRM database management system with accounting package.

Designed overall systems requirements and populated new DB2 Database.

Assisted business getting efforts with visits planning, participated in business development meetings, and conducted valuations research.

"c++," "account management," and "powerpoint" are among the most common skills that client development managers use at work. You can find even more client development manager responsibilities below, including:

Creativity. The most essential soft skill for a client development manager to carry out their responsibilities is creativity. This skill is important for the role because "advertising, promotions, and marketing managers must be able to generate new and imaginative ideas." Additionally, a client development manager resume shows how their duties depend on creativity: "developed wholesale-focused distribution process through salesforce to streamline product shipment, inventory logs, and sales reports which increased client satisfaction. "

Interpersonal skills. Another essential skill to perform client development manager duties is interpersonal skills. Client development managers responsibilities require that "managers must deal with a range of people in different roles, both inside and outside the organization." Client development managers also use interpersonal skills in their role according to a real resume snippet: "utilize excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills to establish strategic business relationships that increase/streamline processes needed to initiate/close sales. "

Organizational skills. This is an important skill for client development managers to perform their duties. For an example of how client development manager responsibilities depend on this skill, consider that "advertising, promotions, and marketing managers must manage their time and budget efficiently while directing and motivating staff members." This excerpt from a resume also shows how vital it is to everyday roles and responsibilities of a client development manager: "hold team responsible for excellent organizational skills and the ability to multi task and be flexible. ".

Analytical skills. For certain client development manager responsibilities to be completed, the job requires competence in "analytical skills." The day-to-day duties of a client development manager rely on this skill, as "advertising, promotions, and marketing managers must be able to analyze industry trends to determine the most promising strategies for their organization." For example, this snippet was taken directly from a resume about how this skill applies to what client development managers do: "analyzed and calculated sales data and strategy to maximize client retention. "

Communication skills. A commonly-found skill in client development manager job descriptions, "communication skills" is essential to what client development managers do. Client development manager responsibilities rely on this skill because "managers must be able to communicate effectively with a broad-based team made up of other managers or staff members during the advertising, promotions, and marketing process." You can also see how client development manager duties rely on communication skills in this resume example : "used vision as a crm and internal communication program. "

All client development manager skills

The three companies that hire the most client development managers are:

• McKinsey & Company Inc 48 client development managers jobs
• Boston Consulting Group 18 client development managers jobs
• CJ 17 client development managers jobs

Compare different client development managers

Client development manager vs. director of marketing & development.

A director of marketing development is a management professional who is responsible for improving the marketing scheme of an organization while discovering ways to obtain new customers. This director is required to lead a team of marketers and work with other departments to make the organization's marketing plans become a reality. The director must possess customer service skills as they often personally reach out to and deal directly with clients. This director must also work within the constraints of a budget to create the necessary marketing materials.

These skill sets are where the common ground ends though. The responsibilities of a client development manager are more likely to require skills like "c++," "c #," "account management," and "crm." On the other hand, a job as a director of marketing & development requires skills like "revenue growth," "twitter," "press releases," and "revenue generation." As you can see, what employees do in each career varies considerably.

Client development manager vs. New business development

New business development focuses on new business opportunities and new product innovation, including product design, business model design, and marketing. This includes a wide scope of responsibilities that includes marketing planning, strategic partnerships, and increased profitability. It is the responsibility of new business development agents to be aware of new market opportunities, possibilities for expansion, competitor product developments, and the company's current sources of revenue. This job can be summarized as the source of ideas, initiatives, and activities aimed in the direction of making a business better.

Each career also uses different skills, according to real client development manager resumes. While client development manager responsibilities can utilize skills like "c++," "c #," "powerpoint," and "database," new business development use skills like "senior level management," "sales strategies," "sales quota," and "product development."

Client development manager vs. Business development director

A business development director specializes in crafting plans and strategies to develop the relationship between the brand, clients, and other key characters in the industry. It is their responsibility to examine and understand everything about the brand and figure out which areas require improvement or changes. They must also conduct a thorough marketing analysis and remain updated on the latest trends in the market to identify new opportunities that would improve customer satisfaction. Furthermore, they must also communicate with all clients, even appear on public gatherings to strengthen brand awareness.

Some important key differences between the two careers include a few of the skills necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of each. Some examples from client development manager resumes include skills like "c++," "c #," "powerpoint," and "database," whereas a business development director is more likely to list skills in "patients," "customer relationships," "project management," and "client relationships. "

Client development manager vs. Business development officer

A business development officer is responsible for implementing project management techniques and identifying business opportunities to generate revenue resources and increase client partnerships. Business development officers negotiate business offers to the clients, understanding their specifications, and develop strategic processes to reach their target goals according to their requirements, such as budget limitations and deadlines. They also review sales proposals and marketing materials, adjusting existing policies to deliver high-quality outputs with minimal costs. A business development officer analyzes feedback, evaluates current market trends, and monitors business and financial transactions.

Types of client development manager

• Business Development Director
• Development Manager
• Client Services Manager
• Client Manager
• Director Of Marketing & Development
• Client Relationship Manager

Updated April 25, 2024

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

What Similar Roles Do

• What an Account Development Manager Does
• What a Business Development Account Manager Does
• What a Business Development And Marketing Manager Does
• What a Business Development Director Does
• What a Business Development Manager Does
• What a Business Development Officer Does
• What a Business Development Sales Manager Does
• What a Client Account Manager Does
• What a Client Manager Does
• What a Client Relations Manager Does
• What a Client Relationship Manager Does
• What a Client Services Manager Does
• What a Development & Program Manager Does
• What a Development Manager Does
• What a Director Of Marketing & Development Does

Client Development Manager Related Careers

• Account Development Manager
• Business Development Account Manager
• Business Development And Marketing Manager
• Business Development Manager
• Business Development Officer
• Business Development Sales Manager
• Client Account Manager
• Client Relations Manager
• Development & Program Manager

Client Development Manager Related Jobs

Resume for related jobs.

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Case Study Research Method in Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews).

The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient’s personal history). In psychology, case studies are often confined to the study of a particular individual.

The information is mainly biographical and relates to events in the individual’s past (i.e., retrospective), as well as to significant events that are currently occurring in his or her everyday life.

The case study is not a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies.

Freud (1909a, 1909b) conducted very detailed investigations into the private lives of his patients in an attempt to both understand and help them overcome their illnesses.

This makes it clear that the case study is a method that should only be used by a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, i.e., someone with a professional qualification.

There is an ethical issue of competence. Only someone qualified to diagnose and treat a person can conduct a formal case study relating to atypical (i.e., abnormal) behavior or atypical development.

 Famous Case Studies

• Anna O – One of the most famous case studies, documenting psychoanalyst Josef Breuer’s treatment of “Anna O” (real name Bertha Pappenheim) for hysteria in the late 1800s using early psychoanalytic theory.
• Little Hans – A child psychoanalysis case study published by Sigmund Freud in 1909 analyzing his five-year-old patient Herbert Graf’s house phobia as related to the Oedipus complex.
• Bruce/Brenda – Gender identity case of the boy (Bruce) whose botched circumcision led psychologist John Money to advise gender reassignment and raise him as a girl (Brenda) in the 1960s.
• Genie Wiley – Linguistics/psychological development case of the victim of extreme isolation abuse who was studied in 1970s California for effects of early language deprivation on acquiring speech later in life.
• Phineas Gage – One of the most famous neuropsychology case studies analyzes personality changes in railroad worker Phineas Gage after an 1848 brain injury involving a tamping iron piercing his skull.

Clinical Case Studies

• Studying the effectiveness of psychotherapy approaches with an individual patient
• Assessing and treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD
• Neuropsychological cases investigating brain injuries or disorders

Child Psychology Case Studies

• Studying psychological development from birth through adolescence
• Cases of learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD
• Effects of trauma, abuse, deprivation on development

Types of Case Studies

• Explanatory case studies : Used to explore causation in order to find underlying principles. Helpful for doing qualitative analysis to explain presumed causal links.
• Exploratory case studies : Used to explore situations where an intervention being evaluated has no clear set of outcomes. It helps define questions and hypotheses for future research.
• Descriptive case studies : Describe an intervention or phenomenon and the real-life context in which it occurred. It is helpful for illustrating certain topics within an evaluation.
• Multiple-case studies : Used to explore differences between cases and replicate findings across cases. Helpful for comparing and contrasting specific cases.
• Intrinsic : Used to gain a better understanding of a particular case. Helpful for capturing the complexity of a single case.
• Collective : Used to explore a general phenomenon using multiple case studies. Helpful for jointly studying a group of cases in order to inquire into the phenomenon.

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

There are several places to find data for a case study. The key is to gather data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of the case and corroborate facts or findings through triangulation of evidence. Most of this information is likely qualitative (i.e., verbal description rather than measurement), but the psychologist might also collect numerical data.

1. Primary sources

• Interviews – Interviewing key people related to the case to get their perspectives and insights. The interview is an extremely effective procedure for obtaining information about an individual, and it may be used to collect comments from the person’s friends, parents, employer, workmates, and others who have a good knowledge of the person, as well as to obtain facts from the person him or herself.
• Observations – Observing behaviors, interactions, processes, etc., related to the case as they unfold in real-time.
• Documents & Records – Reviewing private documents, diaries, public records, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., relevant to the case.

2. Secondary sources

• News/Media – News coverage of events related to the case study.
• Academic articles – Journal articles, dissertations etc. that discuss the case.
• Government reports – Official data and records related to the case context.
• Books/films – Books, documentaries or films discussing the case.

3. Archival records

Searching historical archives, museum collections and databases to find relevant documents, visual/audio records related to the case history and context.

Public archives like newspapers, organizational records, photographic collections could all include potentially relevant pieces of information to shed light on attitudes, cultural perspectives, common practices and historical contexts related to psychology.

4. Organizational records

Organizational records offer the advantage of often having large datasets collected over time that can reveal or confirm psychological insights.

Of course, privacy and ethical concerns regarding confidential data must be navigated carefully.

However, with proper protocols, organizational records can provide invaluable context and empirical depth to qualitative case studies exploring the intersection of psychology and organizations.

• Organizational/industrial psychology research : Organizational records like employee surveys, turnover/retention data, policies, incident reports etc. may provide insight into topics like job satisfaction, workplace culture and dynamics, leadership issues, employee behaviors etc.
• Clinical psychology : Therapists/hospitals may grant access to anonymized medical records to study aspects like assessments, diagnoses, treatment plans etc. This could shed light on clinical practices.
• School psychology : Studies could utilize anonymized student records like test scores, grades, disciplinary issues, and counseling referrals to study child development, learning barriers, effectiveness of support programs, and more.

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

Follow specified case study guidelines provided by a journal or your psychology tutor. General components of clinical case studies include: background, symptoms, assessments, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Interpreting the information means the researcher decides what to include or leave out. A good case study should always clarify which information is the factual description and which is an inference or the researcher’s opinion.

1. Introduction

• Provide background on the case context and why it is of interest, presenting background information like demographics, relevant history, and presenting problem.
• Compare briefly to similar published cases if applicable. Clearly state the focus/importance of the case.

2. Case Presentation

• Describe the presenting problem in detail, including symptoms, duration,and impact on daily life.
• Include client demographics like age and gender, information about social relationships, and mental health history.
• Describe all physical, emotional, and/or sensory symptoms reported by the client.
• Use patient quotes to describe the initial complaint verbatim. Follow with full-sentence summaries of relevant history details gathered, including key components that led to a working diagnosis.
• Summarize clinical exam results, namely orthopedic/neurological tests, imaging, lab tests, etc. Note actual results rather than subjective conclusions. Provide images if clearly reproducible/anonymized.
• Clearly state the working diagnosis or clinical impression before transitioning to management.

3. Management and Outcome

• Indicate the total duration of care and number of treatments given over what timeframe. Use specific names/descriptions for any therapies/interventions applied.
• Present the results of the intervention,including any quantitative or qualitative data collected.
• For outcomes, utilize visual analog scales for pain, medication usage logs, etc., if possible. Include patient self-reports of improvement/worsening of symptoms. Note the reason for discharge/end of care.

4. Discussion

• Analyze the case, exploring contributing factors, limitations of the study, and connections to existing research.
• Analyze the effectiveness of the intervention,considering factors like participant adherence, limitations of the study, and potential alternative explanations for the results.
• Identify any questions raised in the case analysis and relate insights to established theories and current research if applicable. Avoid definitive claims about physiological explanations.
• Offer clinical implications, and suggest future research directions.

5. Additional Items

• Thank specific assistants for writing support only. No patient acknowledgments.
• References should directly support any key claims or quotes included.
• Use tables/figures/images only if substantially informative. Include permissions and legends/explanatory notes.
• Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
• Provides insight for further research.
• Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.

Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants (nomothetic approach) with the aim of ‘averaging’.

Because of their in-depth, multi-sided approach, case studies often shed light on aspects of human thinking and behavior that would be unethical or impractical to study in other ways.

Research that only looks into the measurable aspects of human behavior is not likely to give us insights into the subjective dimension of experience, which is important to psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

Case studies are often used in exploratory research. They can help us generate new ideas (that might be tested by other methods). They are an important way of illustrating theories and can help show how different aspects of a person’s life are related to each other.

The method is, therefore, important for psychologists who adopt a holistic point of view (i.e., humanistic psychologists ).

Limitations

• Lacking scientific rigor and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider population.
• Researchers’ own subjective feelings may influence the case study (researcher bias).
• Difficult to replicate.
• Time-consuming and expensive.
• The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted the depth of analysis that was possible within the available resources.

Because a case study deals with only one person/event/group, we can never be sure if the case study investigated is representative of the wider body of “similar” instances. This means the conclusions drawn from a particular case may not be transferable to other settings.

Because case studies are based on the analysis of qualitative (i.e., descriptive) data , a lot depends on the psychologist’s interpretation of the information she has acquired.

This means that there is a lot of scope for Anna O , and it could be that the subjective opinions of the psychologist intrude in the assessment of what the data means.

For example, Freud has been criticized for producing case studies in which the information was sometimes distorted to fit particular behavioral theories (e.g., Little Hans ).

This is also true of Money’s interpretation of the Bruce/Brenda case study (Diamond, 1997) when he ignored evidence that went against his theory.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895).  Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Curtiss, S. (1981). Genie: The case of a modern wild child .

Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 151(3), 298-304

Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Freud, S. (1909b). Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (Der “Rattenmann”). Jb. psychoanal. psychopathol. Forsch ., I, p. 357-421; GW, VII, p. 379-463; Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis, SE , 10: 151-318.

Harlow J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head.  Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39 , 389–393.

Harlow, J. M. (1868).  Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head .  Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2  (3), 327-347.

Money, J., & Ehrhardt, A. A. (1972).  Man & Woman, Boy & Girl : The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Money, J., & Tucker, P. (1975). Sexual signatures: On being a man or a woman.

Further Information

• Case Study Approach
• Case Study Method
• Enhancing the Quality of Case Studies in Health Services Research
• “We do things together” A case study of “couplehood” in dementia
• Using mixed methods for evaluating an integrative approach to cancer care: a case study

Related Articles

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What Is Internal Validity In Research?

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What Is Face Validity In Research? Importance & How To Measure

Criterion Validity: Definition & Examples

Client Development Executive Salaries in the United States

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May 23, 2024

Purdue and Elanco Animal Health announce One Health Innovation District in Indianapolis

The newly created One Health Innovation District in downtown Indianapolis will solve pressing issues impacting animal, human and environmental health. (Photo courtesy of Elanco)

Purdue joins Elanco in a shared vision of a research park dedicated to solving pressing issues impacting animal, plant, human and environmental health

INDIANAPOLIS — Purdue University will partner with Elanco Animal Health Inc. and become part of Indiana’s new One Health Innovation District. The announcement was made Thursday (May 23) at Indiana’s 2024 Global Economic Summit after Purdue President Mung Chiang and Elanco President and CEO Jeff Simmons signed a shared memorandum of understanding with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to establish a globally recognized research innovation district dedicated to optimizing the health of people, animals, plants and the planet.

Purdue and Elanco have committed to develop a new shared-use facility on 3 acres in the One Health Innovation District near the future Elanco global headquarters on the western edge of the White River in Indianapolis. The facility is designed to deliver and scale up innovation where industry and academia can collaborate including office, wet lab and incubator space. This is in addition to the nearly complete 220,000-square-foot corporate headquarters of Elanco Animal Health, with an expected opening date in the second quarter of 2025. Elanco also announced its commitment to purchase an additional 12 acres to the north of its existing footprint for future expansion and the development of the Epicenter for Animal Health.

“Totality of Purdue to the totality of Indianapolis — that’s our pledge as the Indianapolis part of Purdue’s main campus officially launches on July 1,” Chiang said. “In the coming years, all programs at Purdue will find homes throughout our state’s capital city. Today’s announcement carries a special excitement for the partnership and the location. Purdue is excited to partner with Elanco and other collaborators to build out the ecosystem of One Health Innovation District, starting from the building announced and expanding to an entire district. Human health, animal health, plant health will be jointly advanced by the nation’s leading companies and our state’s top-ranked university.”

The facility will help extend Purdue’s substantial research arm into the heart of Indianapolis, coinciding with the launch of the university’s urban extension, Purdue University in Indianapolis, on July 1. Research interests will include understanding of the microbiome, antimicrobial resistance, computational biology, comparative genomics and livestock sustainability, among others. Indianapolis is home to the biotech companies that are on the cutting edge of the revolution in animal health (Elanco), human health ( Eli Lilly and Company ) and plant health ( Corteva Agriscience ). The One Health Innovation District will be less than 1 mile from Lilly’s world headquarters, creating a unique and direct link between the two entities. 

“The One Health Innovation District will propel the state’s vision for our regional technology hub aimed at accelerating collaborative innovation in our life sciences,” Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said. “The partnership marks a rare and noteworthy move wherein a global health company, a university and a government come together with a shared vision. The district will create an ecosystem that is focused on talent, applied research and innovation that can be sustained for generations to come.”

Developing the One Health Innovation District surrounding the new Elanco global headquarters presents a unique opportunity to enable a coordinated partnership among public, private, government, university and community that will attract and retain top talent and drive growth and development for downtown Indianapolis. One Health is recognized by scientific institutions including the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as being a preferred approach where the interconnection among human, animal and plant science can help solve complex global health problems.

“For life-changing innovations to move from idea to reality, they must grow in the right environment,” Simmons said. “The many partners in the Indianapolis One Health Innovation District will set Indianapolis apart as an area where innovators will find a vast ecosystem of support — including one of the world’s leading universities, funding, lab space, collaboration with many other innovators and companies — and most significantly, shared technical development and pilot plant facilities to manufacture and scale innovations. We believe connecting innovators with access to world-class, state-of-the-art resources will help bring solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues facing people, animals and the environment. This is a key milestone in bringing to life our goal of creating an animal health epicenter to reach the world’s animals from our new global headquarters in the heart of Indianapolis.”

The unique partnership is designed to increase the ability to prevent, predict, detect and respond to health threats. One Health integrated approaches are widely recognized as the new frontier in biosciences. Purdue and Elanco, in collaboration with Applied Research Institute, AgriNovus, BiomEdit and others, are planning a One Health Summit for fall to showcase the ecosystem of capabilities and draw the first era of innovators to the One Health District.

This new announcement is yet another step forward to bring to fruition Gov. Holcomb’s goal of developing a regional technology hub in Indiana. Following the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, through the newly constituted Applied Research Institute (ARI), Indiana stood up Heartland BioWorks and was designated as one of 31 Tech Hubs in October of last year by the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Purdue University was part of a consortium of Indiana stakeholders successful in securing that Regional Technology and Innovation Hub (Tech Hub) designation, which recognizes regions poised to ensure the U.S. is globally competitive in areas that are key to national security. The One Health Innovation District is part of that consortium, and any implementation funding from the EDA would support and greatly accelerate the district’s capability to translate innovative ideas into real-world products and job opportunities. With awards expected this summer, Heartland BioWorks now awaits word on whether it will be chosen for the next phase of funding that will invest another $50 million to $75 million in five to 10 designated hubs around the country. This Regional Tech Hub Program was authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act, of which U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., was a co-sponsor.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition for 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the new Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, and Purdue Computes — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives .

About Elanco

Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (NYSE: ELAN) is a global leader in animal health dedicated to innovating and delivering products and services to prevent and treat disease in farm animals and pets, creating value for farmers, pet owners, veterinarians, stakeholders, and society as a whole. With nearly 70 years of animal health heritage, we are committed to helping our customers improve the health of animals in their care, while also making a meaningful impact on our local and global communities. At Elanco, we are driven by our vision of Food and Companionship Enriching Life and our Elanco Healthy Purpose™ Sustainability/ESG Initiatives — all to advance the health of animals, people and the planet. Learn more at  www.elanco.com . 

Writer/Media contact:  Derek Schultz,  [email protected]

Sources:  Mung Chiang, Eric Holcomb, Jeff Simmons

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• IRD Strategic Plan Prepares DHS for Future Homeland Security Challenges

News Release: Innovation, Research and Development Strategic Plan Prepares DHS for Future Homeland Security Challenges

For immediate release s&t public affairs , 202-286-9047.

Plan will prepare DHS to meet emerging technological needs and maximize strategic impact.

WASHINGTON - The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the first-ever department-wide Innovation, Research and Development (IRD) Strategic Plan , articulating key investment goals over the next seven fiscal years. Developed at the direction of Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Strategic Plan serves as a blueprint for DHS to keep pace with technology by leveraging research and development to address homeland security challenges.

“This visionary roadmap, informed by scientific efforts, will empower DHS and its components to reduce risks to the homeland through optimized innovation, research and development investments,” said Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology. “The technologies resulting from our IRD investments play a critical role in equipping the Department’s front-line operators with necessary tools to outpace our adversaries and enhance our preparedness and response capabilities.”

In 2022, Secretary Mayorkas tasked the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) with examining DHS’s execution of research and development (R&D), including through developing a coordinated strategy focused on areas for long-term Departmental research. The resulting IRD Strategic Plan will help the Department and its partners make coordinated, integrated investments. In addition to capturing current IRD efforts already underway – compiling data from every DHS component and office – it provides an overview of complementary efforts led by federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, nongovernmental and private sector entities.

From this analysis of common research fields, the plan highlights eight Strategic Priority Research Areas (SPRAs) and future capabilities that DHS needs across its missions. The SPRAs will enhance the coordination of R&D across DHS while giving a demand signal for industry, interagency, academic, and international communities about future partnership opportunities. The Strategic Priority Research Areas for Fiscal Years 2024-2030 are:

• Advanced Sensing – next-generation sensor capabilities to provide enhanced detection performance against a broad spectrum of threats.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Systems – automated technologies to provide predictions, recommendations, or decisions across a wide variety of operating environments, including means to deal with adversarial AI.
• Biotechnology – augmented capabilities to predict, detect, and defend against current and emerging bioagents and biotechnologies of concern.
• Climate Change – technologies to strengthen climate adaptation/resilience, improve equity, protect critical infrastructure, and reduce carbon emissions.
• Communications and Networking – enhanced communications and networking capabilities, while maintaining security and resiliency.
• Cybersecurity – enhanced resiliency, protection, and operational assurance across data, software, hardware, and communications networks.
• Data Integration, Analytics, Modeling and Simulation – enhanced, integrated data ecosystems, analytics, and modeling to enable better and more accurate data-driven insights, predictions, and decisions.
• Digital Identity and Trust – enhanced capabilities to establish and verify both individuals’ identities and the validity, integrity, and privacy of associated data.

In collaboration with stakeholders from across DHS, S&T is advancing implementation of the Strategic Plan by developing IRD investment roadmaps for each SPRA. These roadmaps will inform the Department’s budget process for FY 2027 and beyond. 

More information about the IRD Strategic Plan and its priorities can be found at DHS IRD Strategic Plan FY24-30 | Homeland Security .

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More From Forbes

Nine steps to produce cta landing pages with higher conversion rates.

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It's hard enough for a brand to compete in a crowded marketplace—let alone when potential customers and prospects are keeping a closer eye on budget constraints and determining how best to spend their money.

Designing a landing page that features an attractive limited-time-only call to action is one way to get people's attention, but there are a host of other factors to consider when it comes to improving your team's likelihood of seeing higher conversion rates at the end of each quarter. Below, nine experts from Forbes Business Development Council each share one best practice to motivate consumers to move forward and close the deal.

1. Provide Clear Instructions And Explain The Benefits

Back up your suggestions with data. For example, you could say the following or something similar: "In this A/B test, Brand X saw a Y% increase in Z KPI after including this CTA." A strong CTA tells site users exactly what to do and why it matters. It streamlines conversions, ultimately benefiting your bottom line. Use clear, benefit-oriented CTAs. "Get Your Free Guide" and "Download Now" are a bit more exciting than "Submit Data" or including no CTA at all. - Timothy McDermott , Noble House Media Group

2. Be Willing To Share More Assets And Data

One of the best ways to encourage a CTA is to ensure you make most assets and data accessible. Don't gate everything to get to the real info. True leaders want to put the information out there so that potential clients will be comfortable about speaking with them because they can trust what the brand is doing. Be a business partner and give them what you have. Then invite them to something that is even more meaningful than a demo. - Curtis Brinkerhoff , Impartner, Inc.

3. Create A Limited-Time Opportunity

Create a sense of urgency or exclusivity around the CTA. Show a timer and offer a limited-time discount, exclusive access to content or a special offer for the first respondents. This will activate FOMO and motivate new and current clients to act immediately. Additionally, the CTA must be clear and compelling and directly benefit the client to increase the likelihood of engagement. - Tomer Warschauer Nuni , Pink Moon Studio Ltd

Samsung Slashes Galaxy S24 Price In A Major New Promotion

The 108 best extended memorial day sales you can still shop today, shop the birkenstock memorial day sale with these last chance deals, 4. explain your brand's unique value and solution.

A landing page must answer three questions: "What sets us apart?" Define your unique value proposition, offering something distinct from competitors. "What's in it for the client?" By articulating the value of your solution, you create a compelling case for engagement. "Is this a company I want to work with?" Through authentic client testimonials, you showcase the credibility of your commitment. - Tim Condon , Clutch

Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?

5. Highlight Client Success Stories

Focus on the value provided, not just the price or limited offers. Showcase your brand’s understanding of client challenges and your proven solutions. Highlighting real success stories assures clients that their needs aren’t just seen but effectively addressed. This approach not only captivates but converts, as it speaks directly to the heart of the client's concerns. - Eddy Vertil , Vertil & Company

6. Craft Intent-Focused CTAs That Resonate With The Target Audience

Tailor the call to action to align with your audience's specific needs and desires. Instead of a generic "Get a free demo" approach, focus on crafting intent-focused, customer-first CTAs that resonate more deeply. For instance, if you are reaching out to CMOs primarily concerned with maximizing ROI, you could frame the CTA as "I want to increase ROI up to 2.6 times with personalized campaigns." - Annu Baral , LatentView Analytics

7. Make It Easy To Act

Providing clients with value and ease is necessary. Identify the immediate value that a brand or product will create in a potential or current customer's life—solve a problem, add meaning, offer aspiration and drive revenue. Next, make it easy to act. Any call to action that takes more than 15 to 30 seconds to perform is a lost opportunity. Shorter sign-ups, QR codes and social media sharing are all easy ways to drive engagement. - Archana Rao , Innova Solutions

8. Utilize Software Tools To Offer Customization For Each Visitor

Testing is always helpful, but there are incredible tools available to marketers that customize landing pages to mirror the visitor’s intent. Such tools can allow you to match search terms to a pre-determined copy to ensure your messaging speaks to the exact pain point that the visitor is experiencing. - Ashleigh Stanford , PracticeTek

9. Make Your CTA Visually Distinct On The Page

One effective practice is to use clear, compelling incentives linked directly to the call to action. This could be a limited-time offer, exclusive content or a discount code. Ensure the CTA is visually distinct and positioned prominently on the landing page, simplifying the decision-making process and encouraging immediate action. - Rahul Saluja , Cyient

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Government of Canada invests in cutting-edge research and the next generation of scientists

From: Employment and Social Development Canada

News release

Canada’s scientists and researchers are working to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges for the benefit of us all. Their innovations and discoveries are the foundation of Canadian economic growth and prosperity, as well as the health and well-being of people in Canada. That is why the Government of Canada continues to make investments to boost research and innovation and ensure Canada remains a leader in research and new technologies.

$171.6 million in funding will go to 5 science and research organizations across Ottawa May 26, 2024             Ottawa, Ontario              Employment and Social Development Canada Canada’s scientists and researchers are working to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges for the benefit of us all. Their innovations and discoveries are the foundation of Canadian economic growth and prosperity, as well as the health and well-being of people in Canada. That is why the Government of Canada continues to make investments to boost research and innovation and ensure Canada remains a leader in research and new technologies. Today, the Honourable Jenna Sudds, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development on behalf of the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health, highlighted up to $171.6 million in funding for third-party science and research organizations through the Strategic Science Fund . The funding will support 5 organizations in Ottawa, as announced in December 2023, and was awarded through a new competitive, merit-based and transparent process, informed by the advice of an independent expert review panel. The organizations include:

• Actua – up to $38.4 million
• ArcticNet Inc. – up to $32.5 million
• BioCanRx – up to $38 million
• Canadian Association of Science Centres (CASC) – up to $14.2 million
• Stem Cell Network (SCN) – up to $48.5 million

These organizations span Canada’s science and research landscape and are making contributions in a range of crucial areas, including researching and developing health care solutions, supporting Indigenous inclusion and research, addressing climate change, supporting Arctic science and research, making advancements in emerging technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence, promoting STEM education among young people, and facilitating learning and training opportunities for post-secondary students.

“The Government of Canada is proud to be investing in science and research organizations that play a vital role in Canada’s research ecosystem. The government’s ongoing support for science and research, including through the Strategic Science Fund, is helping to cement Canada’s position as a world leader in innovation, and will ensure a better quality of life for all Canadians.” – The Honourable Jenna Sudds, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development

“Science and research are the cornerstones of Canada’s economic well-being and progress. Canada’s researchers work to expand our understanding of the world, and they generate new ideas to solve some of the biggest challenges of our time. With this investment through the Strategic Science Fund, the Government of Canada is continuing its support for world-class, cutting-edge research and for those who work to inspire and train the next generation.” – The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

“By investing in health organizations through the Strategic Science Fund, we are advancing Canadian research and knowledge that will improve health outcomes across the country. This funding supports innovative medical treatments, advanced biotechnological applications, genomic science, regenerative medicine, and research into cancer and brain health. By deepening our understanding of health challenges and supporting science-based solutions, we are investing in the well-being of people in Canada.” – The Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health

“This investment will allow us to harness our home-grown expertise in diverse fields of research such as cancer and STEM cell technology, climate change, and artificial intelligence. Developments in these fields are critical to improving the quality of life of all Canadians, while also bringing in over $171 million to research and development right here in Ottawa. We are proud to support Canadian leaders in their fields knowing that their work is an integral part of the health and prosperity of our communities and our country.” – The Honourable Mona Fortier, Member of parliament for Ottawa-Vanier

“Successful scientific innovation and discovery requires a sustained and ongoing commitment in support of those on the front lines of research. Successive federal budgets have strengthened and enhanced that commitment and with today’s funding announcement through the Strategic Science Fund, our continuing commitment is further demonstrated. Our world class Canadian researchers require a nimbleness that will allow them to address the health care challenges of the modern world. The funds awarded today to the five organizations here in Ottawa will go a long way toward achieving the goal of improving the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of today’s research to meet tomorrow's challenges.” – The Honourable Yasir Naqvi, Member of parliament for Ottawa Center. 

“Today's investment reaffirms our commitment to advancing Canadian innovation and supporting our brightest minds, right here in the National Capital Region. By empowering our scientists and researchers, we are driving economic growth, improving health outcomes, and positioning Ottawa as a leader in cutting-edge research. This ensures a brighter future not only for Ottawa but for all Canadians for generations to come.” – The Honourable David McGuinty, Member of parliament for Ottawa South

“We are absolutely thrilled and so grateful for the support to continue our fundamental work in research and science in Canada’s Arctic. As a nation with the second largest Arctic land mass and largest Arctic coastline in the world it is paramount that we as Canadians are leaders in Arctic science and this investment can help ensure this now and into the future. The climate is warming at four times the rate of the global average in the Arctic regions and the world of the future will not be the same as the world as we know it now – unless we invest in discovery based science in key regions such as the Arctic. We are also proud of our Canadian approach to science in the Arctic which involved working in partnership with Inuit organizations and communities  where we equally value science and Inuit knowledge”. - Jackie Dawson, Scientific Director, Network of Centres of Excellence, ArcticNet

"Hosted by the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, BioCanRx unites researchers and other stakeholders across Canada to advance immunotherapy, and turn all cancers into curable diseases. Today's funding announcement marks a significant step forward in the fight against cancer, both nationwide and in Ottawa, where our work has already benefited patients like Camille Leahy, whose acute leukemia is now in remission thanks to a local clinical trial. We look forward to continuing our work with researchers, clinicians, and patients in Ottawa and in cities across the country to develop immunotherapy treatments to benefit all Canadians." – Dr. Stéphanie Michaud, President and CEO, BioCanRx.

“We are grateful for this federal investment in Actua’s work to develop the early stages of Canada’s talent pipeline. This significant support recognizes the critical importance of youth engagement in STEM, along with continued priority on removing barriers and building inclusivity.” – Jennifer Flanagan, CEO, Actua.

“On behalf of Canada’s Stem Cell Network I would like to extend our thanks to the Government of Canada for its ongoing support and continued funding.  SCN is committed to transforming lives through regenerative medicine research, and as a pan-Canadian community of researchers, clinicians, scholars and next generation talent we will work with our partners to deliver the innovative cell and gene therapies that Canadians expect and deserve.”  – Cate Murray, President & CEO Stem Cell Network

“We are thrilled to be part of the SSF family and this collaborative approach to advancing Canada’s science and innovation culture. CASC is Canada’s largest national network of public science engagement organizations. Our members are beloved and trusted sources for science information, and they engage tens of millions of people across the country every year. This funding signals the tremendous value of the work that they do, and the essential role that CASC plays in bridging research, science, and society.” – Dr. Marianne Mader, CEO of the Canadian Association of Science Centres (CASC).

Quick facts

This announcement is apart of more than $800 million in funding that will go to 24 science and research organizations across Canada.

The creation of the Strategic Science Fund (SSF) was announced in  Budget 2019  as a way to make federal investments in third-party science and research more effective by assessing applicants using a framework of principles for allocating federal funding.

Since 2016, the government has provided more than $16 billion to support science and research.

In addition,  Budget 2024  provides $825 million to increase support for master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral students, as well as $1.8 billion to the federal granting councils to increase core research grant funding and support Canadian researchers.

Budget 2024 also includes investments in modern, high-quality research facilities and infrastructure to help solve real-world problems, create economic opportunities, and attract and train the next generation of scientific talent.

The next call for applications to the SSF is scheduled to take place in 2026–2027. Funding from the current competition will be disbursed from April 2024 to March 2029, pending finalization of contribution agreements.

Associated links

• List of recipients and funding amounts

Geneviève Lemaire Press Secretary Office of Minister of Families, Children and Social Development [email protected] Media Relations Office  Employment and Social Development Canada  819-994-5559 [email protected] Follow us on X (Twitter) Audrey Millette Press Secretary Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry [email protected] Media Relations Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [email protected] Christopher Aoun Press Secretary Office of the Minister of Health 613-291-4176 Media Relations Health Canada 613-957-2983 [email protected] Stay connected Find more services and information at Canada.ca/ISED . Follow Canadian Science on social media. X (Twitter):  @CDNScience | Facebook:  Canadian Science | Instagram:  @cdnscience

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Charge your laptop in a minute or your EV in 10? Supercapacitors can help; new research offers clues

Imagine if your dead laptop or phone could charge in a minute or if an electric car could be fully powered in 10 minutes.

While not possible yet, new research by a team of CU Boulder scientists could potentially lead to such advances. 

Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science , researchers in Ankur Gupta ’s lab discovered how tiny charged particles, called ions, move within a complex network of minuscule pores. The breakthrough could lead to the development of more efficient energy storage devices, such as supercapacitors, said Gupta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering . 

Gupta explained that several chemical engineering techniques are used to study flow in porous materials such as oil reservoirs and water filtration, but they have not been fully utilized in some energy storage systems.

The discovery is significant not only for storing energy in vehicles and electronic devices but also for power grids, where fluctuating energy demand requires efficient storage to avoid waste during periods of low demand and to ensure rapid supply during high demand.  

Supercapacitors, energy storage devices that rely on ion accumulation in their pores, have rapid charging times and longer life spans compared to batteries. 

“The primary appeal of supercapacitors lies in their speed,” Gupta said. “So how can we make their charging and release of energy faster? By the more efficient movement of ions.”

Their findings modify Kirchhoff’s law, which has governed current flow in electrical circuits since 1845 and is a staple in high school students’ science classes. Unlike electrons, ions move due to both electric fields and diffusion, and the researchers determined that their movements at pore intersections are different from what was described in Kirchhoff’s law.

Prior to the study, ion movements were only described in the literature in one straight pore. Through this research, ion movement in a complex network of thousands of interconnected pores can be simulated and predicted in a few minutes.

“That’s the leap of the work,” Gupta said. “We found the missing link.”

This work was funded by National Science Foundation CAREER Award # 2238412.

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