In her Co-Lab lightning talk, Danielle Shoshani (Enterprise Researcher at Atlassian) reframes the role of research from passive support to strategic leadership. Drawing on her experience during a major product launch at Thumbtack, Danielle uses the metaphor of a conductor to emphasize how researchers can shape a team’s rhythm, not just play along.

She shares how she built a rolling research program from scratch to keep pace with an intense cross-functional effort, embedding fast, lightweight insights into real-time decision-making. The shift helped research become a trusted input—not a bottleneck—and repositioned her team as key contributors to strategic clarity.

But perhaps more powerfully, Danielle explains why she chose to end that program once the launch stabilized. The move wasn’t about doing less, but about choosing what was right for the moment. Her talk is a call to action: if research only supports, it risks being sidelined. But when it adapts with intentionality—knowing when to speed up, slow down, or step in—it becomes an essential force in shaping decisions.