Most research naturally gravitates towards the middle. The mainstream. The average. The “typical” customer. It feels safe, representative, and reliable. And to be clear, there are plenty of times when that’s exactly the right thing to do.
But if you’re trying to innovate, or you’re stuck in a rut, that same sensible approach can quietly steer you towards the obvious. The middle often reflects what you already know - familiar behaviours, familiar language, familiar expectations. Helpful, yes. But rarely surprising.
If you want fresh thinking, you need fresh stimulus. And that’s where listening at the edges comes in. Listening at the edges is such a powerful tool when you need to see things differently.
In our recent podcast, Claire Salkeld spoke to Coral McConnon about how listening at the edges can unlock breakthrough thinking. Check out the podcast here.
So what does “listening at the edges” actually mean?
Imagine a bell curve. Most people sit in the middle: your everyday users, occasional buyers, habitual customers. But at either end you’ll find people with a much more intense relationship to the category, or your brand, such as:
- Brand lovers who feel deeply connected to it
- Brand rejecters / haters who actively opt out
- Extreme users with more intense needs or behaviours
- People outside the category using substitutes or workarounds
Listening at the edges isn’t about designing for these people. It’s about using their perspectives to reveal tensions, unmet needs, emotional drivers, coping strategies, and language. These don’t always show up in mainstream research, but when revealed, can unlock breakthrough ideas.
Why listening at the edges matters for innovation
Innovation comes from making new connections - joining up ideas that don’t usually sit together.
But to get there, you need input that takes you beyond business as usual. And edge perspectives do exactly that. They tend to be more emotionally vivid, more deliberate, and more reflective. These people give more thought to the category than the customers who simply buy out of habit. When you listen to extremes, you aren’t chasing niche ideas, you’re finding clarity faster.
Edges give you contrast. And contrast is rocket fuel for better ideas.
The risk of only listening to the mainstream
Mainstream research is valuable but if it becomes the only lens you use, it can create blind spots. Two risks stand out:
1) Overconfidence bias: “We already know this”
When you’ve been close to a market for a long time, it’s easy to believe you’ve got it covered. You know the segments. You know the behaviours. You know the drivers. You’ve seen the dashboards.
But innovation needs curiosity and overconfidence shuts curiosity down. It stops you asking the uncomfortable questions, and it can quietly lock you into outdated assumptions.
2) Echo chambers: “We keep hearing the same thing”
The middle often gives you what’s most common, most expected, most socially “acceptable” to say.
That’s useful for scaling and refining. But it’s not always the place where you’ll find:
- emerging needs
- surprising workarounds
- emotional truths
- new metaphors and language
- alternative frames for the problem
And without those, you risk producing “me-too” ideas that feel plausible… but not distinctive.
Let's look at a couple of real world examples
Edge research has a way of surfacing realities that don’t fit the neat story we think we know. In our menopause work, focusing on women experiencing more extreme symptoms didn’t validate what was already widely known or assumed. Instead it revealed a deeper emotional landscape that mainstream portrayals often flatten.
This kind of edge listening uncovered things like:
- the day-to-day messiness people hide
- experiences that feel embarrassing or isolating
- deep identity shifts and loss of confidence
- the gap between “public conversation” and “private reality”
Those insights don’t just make the work more human. They sharpen the innovation opportunity because they show what needs solving at a much more meaningful level.
Edges aren’t only “people who love or hate your brand.” Sometimes the most powerful stimulus comes from people whose context is extreme.
Coral gave another great example of speaking to an Arctic explorer to understand needs from skincare. Because their skin experiences such extreme conditions it exposes needs in a more visible, exaggerated way. And that visibility can unlock new thinking about:
- protection and barrier function
- hydration and recovery cycles
- cooling and comfort
- resilience and repair
- emotional reassurance (“my skin can cope”)
Again, the goal isn’t “build a product for Arctic explorers”, it’s to use extreme conditions as a shortcut to deeper understanding.
When should you use listening at the edges?
This approach is particularly useful when you want to:
- Spark early-stage innovation
- Break a team out of stuck thinking
- Challenge assumptions and reset the brief
- Build deeper empathy around a real problem
- Create more distinctive directions before investing heavily
It’s especially valuable in categories that have become habitual; where the customer relationship is “fine” but insight has gone stale.
Turning edge insight into action - the part that matters
Like any great piece of research, edge listening only delivers value if it creates movement.
A simple way to make it actionable is to turn insights into provocation. Ask:
- What if… we removed this friction entirely?
- How might we… solve the emotional side, not just the functional one?
- Where are people already coping… and what does that tell us?
- What workarounds exist… that we could improve or replace?
Edges don’t give you the final answer. They help you ask better questions; and better questions lead to better ideas.
A practical way to start (without spending more)
You don’t need a big research budget to begin listening at the edges. At your next team meeting, ask everyone to pick one extreme perspective and do a quick scan (reviews, TikTok, forums, communities) and ask yourself these questions:
- Who loves the category and why?
- Who rejects it and what do they do instead?
- Who uses it in an extreme way?
- Who solves the same need outside the category?
Then each person shares back three things:
- The learning
- The implication for your brand
- The gap in what you currently offer
At worst, you’ll get fresh perspectives. At best, you’ll uncover the beginnings of a breakthrough.
The bottom line
The middle helps you understand what’s typical; the edges help you see what’s possible.
If you want sharper innovation, don’t just listen to the average. Listen where the signals are louder, stranger, messier and often more revealing.
That’s how you avoid blind spots. And that’s where better ideas begin.
Challenge Assumptions. Talk to Hummingbird Insights