We help product teams build
BUILD SMARTER
Product development is hard. It's easy to lose sight of the people you're building for. Too often, teams operate blindly, leading to costly mistakes and wasted resources.
95% of new products fail. The #1 reason is insufficient user understanding.
The common way of building products isn't working. Many teams take the "design and validate" approach. They throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, building dozens—sometimes hundreds—of working prototypes and MVPs only to learn that their idea doesn't work once it reaches users.
Product-market fit starts with understanding the market.
We advocate a research-first approach to product development. By understanding user needs first, teams can uncover latent opportunities to shape their product strategy and offer deep, durable value.
Our studies go deep, so you can go far.
Join us as we guide your team into the inner world of your user's needs, mental models, and aspirations. We leverage an interdisciplinary mix of sophisticated qualitative and quantitative methods to uncover actionable insights for high-impact product strategy.
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"Rhizome R&D brought intellectual rigor and proven research processes, but also a robust belief that we are pursuing something of value, with sincere interest in our success."
JOSH SILVERMAN
HEAD OF DESIGN, MEETINGPULSE
Our studies help teams
  • Map new market opportunities
  • De-risk product strategy
  • Inform critical design decisions
  • Identify the best moves for growth
  • Refine product for launch
"Rhizome helped us understand our users' mental model of a feature we wanted to redesign. In doing so, they brought much-needed nuance to a problem we were thinking about far too linearly."

Alessandro Mingione
Designer, Tailscale
AWARDS
BUILD
FASTER
Velocity in product development has never been more important, yet most teams are mired in a slog of meetings and emails that seem to go in circles. We've studied and supported cross-functional teams at some of the world's top organizations. Here's what we've learned.
The faster decisions can be made, the faster a team can move.
Meetings are for reaching decisions, but when meetings don't produce decisions, it creates a momentum-breaking spiral. More meetings are scheduled to compensate. When meetings fill everyone's calendar, the team has less time to do the actual work. They begin to dread the meetings, which makes them even less effective, which leads to even more meetings...
Teams that employ structured collaboration make decisions faster.
High-velocity teams have flexible but structured processes for reaching confident decisions fast, leaving everyone with more time executing and less time talking in circles.
Our collaborative workshops leverage proven techniques to accelerate your team's velocity.
We visualize ideas, clarify complexity, and gather insight from every team member to make superior decisions faster—transforming weeks into days or even hours. We'll facilitate a sequence of exercises carefully adapted to your team's current need and get you to a successful launch faster.
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"Rhizome R&D's Strategy Workshop was an extremely productive exercise — it brought together a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team in a way that was valuable, efficient, and fun."
Marielle Gross, MD, MBE
Johns Hopkins University
Our collaborative workshops help teams quickly
  • Articulate and align on goals
  • Generate and prioritize research and workstreams
  • Chart high-impact product strategy
  • Develop concrete action plans for each team member
  • Make hard decisions faster
Upskill your team to navigate ambiguity
BUILD TOGETHER
Over many years of supporting teams across industries, we've noticed one factor that determines success more than any other: team alignment.
Most teams are scattered and reactive.
‍They lack focus. A team of 8 might have 16 different ideas of how the product should move forward, leading to collective paralysis. What they lack is a coherent, shared story about their vision and the way that their current work connects to it.
Strategic narratives get teams on the same page.
As humans, we learn and remember through stories. Give us a list of facts and we'll forget them tomorrow—weave them into a story and we'll share it with others. A shared story is a powerful motivator. It can catalyze action, build coalitions, and win customers.
What's your team's story?
Our approach to team alignment begins with careful listening and deep analysis. Every team is unique, so our diagnostic highlights the key themes and narrative needs of your team. The story we then co-create doesn't just align your team but addresses underlying doubts and concerns to unlock your team's potential.
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"Rhizome R&D was an invaluable thought partner in shaping our strategy at a pivotal point in our product journey. Kasey helped us synthesize our thoughts into a coherent strategy and narrative that let our team and leadership connect on a logical and emotional level, resulting in strong alignment. I highly recommend Rhizome R&D at any stage of strategy refinement."
Tom George
Head of Pebble, Sidewalk Labs
Our alignment programs help teams
  • Map out team knowledge and assumptions
  • Resolve internal disagreements
  • Refine the logic of product vision and strategy
  • Gain momentum through a shared story
  • Optimize team collaboration and efficiency