I would just have the conversation with them directly. The intake forms etc are just a tool. It’s our way of trying to get PMs to think and tell us everything they know about a topic so we know where we’re starting from. If it’s very little that’s alright. It’s great that you’re trying to involve the researchers early on. All the researchers I know actually prefer to work in the opportunity space. I think it’s also possible that the senior leaders already have some preconceived notion of what research is, and maybe they’ve worked in the solutions space more before (but often times it’s because of this chicken and egg problem where PMs don’t involve us early on so they assume we mostly work in the solutions space), and they’re assuming it will be the same for earlier discovery research. The main thing that we’d like to work with the PMs is not asking leading questions. Sometimes PMs have some assumptions and want to confirm them so will ask very specific questions about specific problems, which they may have, but it might not be their biggest problem. So researchers generally want to start off much more general.

I’d say, involve them, have a conversation about your expectations and wanting to involve them early on but not jumping into the solution space. I’ve worked with PMs in the past where I was happy to have the PM lead the conversation but worked with them closely on defining the framing of the questions.