I know plenty of teams that do all the right research activities, but these activities don’t influence their product decisions. They set out to build the same solutions they intended to build before they did their research activities.
They might make some UI tweaks based on what they learned in usability testing, but they rarely make significant changes to their solutions or choose alternative opportunities to pursue. This is akin to putting lipstick on a pig.
I want to see discovery activities leading to work being thrown away, ideas abandoned, and new directions chosen. If this isn’t happening, then a manager should step in and help the team connect their research activities to their product decisions.
Source: Teresa Torres, https://www.producttalk.org/2017/05/managing-product-teams/