Foundational Research to Identify Business Opportunities.

At Cisco, I informed 3-5 years of business roadmap by leading a deep dive foundational research study.

Impact includes identifying four areas for further research, informing survey instruments, and defining market study parameters.

*Under NDA - Rich on story, limited on data*

Role

Design Strategy & Research Intern

Organization

Cisco Secure

Duration

8 Weeks

Key Activities

Discussion guide
Participant recruitment
Interviews - moderation to synthesis
Insight socialization
Actionable recommendations

Tools

Dovetail, Miro, Figma

Collaborators

Design Researchers & Strategists
Business Innovation Teams
Data Analytics Team
Design Ops

Here is my story!

What was the study?

This strategy research project was done with the business strategy and innovation team.

The project's ultimate goal was to identify business 3-5 years business development opportunities for Cisco Secure.

What had been done already?

Before I joined, Cisco had already conducted a study and identified 4 key unmet customer needs. Those being..

01 Business Value Security

03 Fragmented CloudTransition

02 Data Compliance & Regulation

04 Decentralized Data & Distributed Access

What did I choose to do?

In the ongoing phase of the study, I chose to conduct a deep dive into the 4 unmet customer needs to identify the exact opportunities for business development.

Interviews

12 Semi Structured Interviews
60 minutes each
Over phone call

But it took me time to understand the study because..

So to understand the study and the domain..

I seeked mentorship from my manger.

I had 1:1 with diverse teams within Cisco to develop my own perspective.

And it helped me prepare the interview guide & Project timeline.

Let me give you an example of Decentralized Data & Distributed Access.

1st draft By myself

With people and data being in multiple places, how do you identify that the appropriate person is accessing the data they are entitled to?

2nd draft With manager

What are some security complexities due to the introduction of hybrid working?
What are some of the challenges of having data stores in multiple places?
What are some challenges in having multiple data storage platforms?

3rd draft With cross-functional teams

What are some of the security measures which are implemented at the data end? ( Imagine a line. On the left, you have the user; the line indicates the access, and on the right is the data)

However, recruiting participants was a different ballgame.

At first, I was targeting specific roles for each study topic. But, soon, I realize that roles & titles keep changing across companies.

Therefore, I focused on job responsibilities and shared them with the recruiting agency & they got back with the appropriate candidate.

Decentralized Data & Distributed Access

Security professionals who define and managers access to data and identity across multiple systems (cloud-native applications)
IT Professionals who work closely with the security team to ensure the infrastructure is configured as per the org’s data security and access needs.
People responsible for demonstrating the maturity of their data security to potential clients so that it drives business.

Paraphrasing of responses by participants.

And the reason I failed were

Sticking too tightly to the interview guide.

I knew I could have done better because

Soon came the first interview & I could have done better

Change in tone of the participant

Trying to cover too many touch points.

I changed my interviewing technique.

I started following the thread by identifying participants’ excitement towards specific questions.

I leaned my interviewing scale towards unstructured interviews.

But then, I adapted.

When I could not understand, I told the subject matter expert that I was new to the field.

“I am curious to know what the study is about'!”

Participant 7

“This is an interesting question.”

Participant 5

And the following interviews were a breeze.

“It has been fun talking to you!”

Participant 8

I presented my findings to different stakeholders after each topic on a weekly cadence.

The teams were curious to know what I learned, and so was I to share.

But discovering nuanced insights was totally different.

Interview A

Interview B

Interview C

I followed a thread in each of the interviews. And by following a thread, the data I got from each interview felt disjointed. Therefore, I was unable to discover insights.