Research Without the White Coat: How Business Research Proves Intellectual Rigor to Colleges

When most high school students hear the word "research," they immediately picture a white coat, safety goggles, and hours spent pipetting clear liquids into test tubes.

But did you know that the business world is full of research too - work that is highly rigorous, practical, and immediately applicable?

What Actually Is Business Research?

In the scientific world, research is about discovering new phenomenons. In the business world, research is about reducing uncertainty.

Business research is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to help an organization make a difficult decision. For a high school student, this usually falls into three buckets:

• Market Intelligence: Who else is solving this problem and how are they doing it?
• Customer Discovery: Who actually wants to buy this product, and why?
• Strategic Analysis: Should the organization expand into a new region or pivot their product?

It requires the same critical thinking as STEM research, but the feedback loop is faster. The stakes are also immediate: revenue generated, awareness created, and people affected.

The "Real World" Learning Curve

As the Program Director at Hinksey Labs, an international business research hub for talented high school students, I’ve noticed a pattern.

Students come into our program accustomed to high school research, where they tackle theoretical questions. However, they quickly realize that at Hinksey Labs, they are acting as junior consultants to a real organization. They have to shift their mindset, constantly moving between deep-dive research and the broader picture of what they are trying to prove.

The biggest learning we have had working with multiple cohorts is that students are capable of incredibly high-level strategic thought if you treat them like adults. They don't need to be coddled; they need proper guidance to help frame their research process, and then they need direct access to the problem they are exploring.

The Story of Mariana

There is no better example of this than Mariana dos Santos, one of our standout alumni and a current Economics student at Dartmouth College.

When Mariana joined us, she chose to conduct her research with Cynamics, a cutting-edge AI Cybersecurity startup. However, she faced a significant challenge: diving deep into a highly technical industry despite having a non-technical background.

She had to understand the "Why" behind the technology without being a cybersecurity expert herself - approaching the challenge instead through a business lens to quickly master market dynamics, business models, and strategies for value creation and market positioning.

Mariana immersed herself in her research, posed sharp questions to the CTO, and synthesized complex information into actionable insights and recommendations for Cynamics - demonstrating exceptional intellectual rigor and business acumen that serve her today at Dartmouth and will certainly serve her well into the future.

Why This Matters for Students

If you are a student interested in business, economics, entrepreneurship, or social sciences, you don't need to force yourself into a chemistry lab to do "research."

You can look at the business world. You can analyze markets. You can solve problems for real companies. That is research. And, it is a powerful story to tell.

I invite you to visit Hinksey Labs to learn more about how we support high school students passionate about real-world business research.