The concept of "get out of the building" has been hammered home in entrepreneurship and product management circles so often and so loudly that it's become a cliché. But in the world of innovation, research takes on a slightly different form.

Research is the bridge between an innovator's dream and the real world. For that digital product to actually live and thrive, it needs more than just code. For it to actually solve pains, hook users, provide delight, become minimally viable, and capture imagination, it needs something that's not inherently hard to create, but definitely challenging to get right: context.

We must understand and model the world the product is going to live in, from the user's perspective as well as the buyer's perspective. So how does research build context for product management, design, and product marketing?