Get good ideas (essential)

a) Get inspired by what is happening around you. Look at challenges for society, companies and marketers. Get involved in practice as much as possible (and early on). Try to understand how a certain phenomenon works in the industry.  

b) Read business press (Wall street journal, Forbes, Business Insider): likely some research ideas can appear from there 

c) Follow leaders, trends and companies on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn)   

 •Read overviews and editorials from top journals: they will likely mention a research agenda that you can work on  

•Also, skim through lower-tier journals occasionally as top-notch and famous authors sometimes publish overview papers there  

•Look at the previous literature (Google scholar every possible keyword that is related to your topic, people use different jargon for the same things)

•Creativity can be spurred by reading, doing, noticing and getting inspired.

•Dedicate time for your creative thinking. Meditation can help. 

•Most of good ideas come when you are NOT at your desk -> Take a walk, do sports, enjoy hobbies. 

•Creative Lab

• What I learned the hard way is that, with time, the idea becomes less “sexy” and it’s hard to maintain interest long enough. 
• There are always challenges with data, methods, team, schedules, writing, personalities etc. Be ready for the marathon. 

•  At the initial stages, researchers tend to overlook this point (guilty as charged), assuming they know or remember the relevant papers.
• However, so many papers are published (even in top journals) on a daily basis.
• The risk is to find similar work too late and realize that your contribution is, at best incremental. Do your homework first and stay updated.

Some datasets may be not available (in general) or might be out of reach (due to resources, time, etc.). This can make the project infeasible.

Thus, being up to date with the datasets can be important. Read previous papers from the target journals and see which data they use and what might be useful in your case.

Try to get as much data as possible to cover your basics and future review comments.

Do spend too much time, though! You need to start running models and finally writing the paper

 a) Do any or all of the team members have achieved similar goals that you envision for the project?  

b) If your aim is to publish in A+ journals, it would be helpful if at least some of the team members have published there recently (i.e., last five years).  

c) It’s OK if this is not the case: everyone who published in top journals had to do it for the first time!

Just be aware that a less experienced team might have more bumps on the road. Everyone needs to be ready for the ride. 

What I noticed is that we (academics) are typically very bad in estimating how long things will take (the industry is much better at that). We tend to be overly optimistic.  

• PhD students can graduate and move to the industry where publications don’t matter. PhD students can also abandon the PhD program.  
• Assistant professors can get tenured and might be less motivated for several years.
• Full professors might pick up administrative jobs that require their full-time involvement, which they might underestimate (e.g., becoming Deans of Faculty or AEs in Journals).  

Pivoting might be required: Be prepared to change project leadership or add co-authors along the way to boost productivity. Also, be prepared that you might need to do all the work 

Not every journal is suited for every paper. 

It might be risky to write a paper that is suited for one journal only.

•Example: I wrote a paper for Organizational Research 

Methods that was rejected after R&R and struggled to publish it afterward (eventually published in Long Range Planning, fortunately). 

•

Ask the editors! You can write an email asking the journal editors if the topic fits.

•

Ask around for opinions and get a feel of what type of articles the journal likes/accepts.

•Be creative and look at other fields for potential outlets (e.g., ISR for marketing folks)