Coming from an academic perspective, my knee-jerk reaction to this post is "Awesome, we definitely need this", but after some thought I really don't see this as

Coming from an academic perspective, my knee-jerk reaction to this post is "Awesome, we definitely need this", but after some thought I really don't see this as a necessary job (at least, not for most startups in most areas). I'll try to explain my more ruminative thinking:  Since the article actually specifies behavioral research, I think my background in anthropology and the social sciences might be helpful here. My research for the past ~year has been on the culture of Quantified Self, but I'm also coming from a background of Human-Computer Interaction and I'm going to study HCI at Stanford (sooner or) later this year. What I generally call "behavioral" research is just too specific to be applicable without an academician him/herself to parse, abstract, and apply this stuff. Worse, you would be hard-pressed to find an anthropologist (or I suspect any other social scientist) who would be able, let alone willing, to make any predictions about the future, even in their own niche. My thesis's discussion section looks at the future of QS culture as it relates to mainstream culture, but I'm not willing to make any predictions at all. The most brazen thing I'm willing to do is highlight some of my observations and follow where those observations might lead. I immediately underscore that these are total unknowns, and that we should all just keenly watch QS culture for how these issues will play out. That kind of non-committal culture (at least in the social sciences) is favored in academia because it's incredibly difficult to correctly guess or predict the future, especially when humans are the subject of research (and especially when they're aware of the prediction you're making, because they so often seem to want to prove you wrong). You want your research to stand the test of time, and making predictions that don't bear out undercuts your credibility. So you won't read any journal articles in sociology or anthropology that definitively tell you what you should make your next startup about, and any interpretation between the lines you read will invariably be contentious. For all of my research, I wouldn't bet my lunch on any particular prediction. Instead, it makes much more sense to have a UI/UX specialist whose job includes knowing the research and academic consensus on stuff. Maybe they should keep their ear to the ground to hear for any trends or new paradigms in user interface design, but whether this person can even shoehorn that stuff into real-world business endeavors is questionable. All that being said, I think I agree with the idea that a startup should be cognizant of research in the area they're trying to break into. But that sounds (to me, anyway) like I'm advocating that in the process of doing a business plan and analyzing competitors someone should do a cursory search for existing literature on this topic to make sure there are no land mines in the field. If someone wanted to get into medical informatics but had no idea about HIPAA-compliance and the complications that injects, I would steer clear.