Research function charter
Target: automated research function live by 2026-06-05 (30 days). Owner: Florian. Why it matters: the prior report is a snapshot. The market moves — KNX IoT releases, CRA milestones, Matter expansions, competitor moves, new entrants, customer signals. Without a heartbeat, the GTM strategy ages out of date in weeks.
Definition of "research function live"
The function is "live" when all four of these are true:
- Inputs: a defined set of sources is monitored on a defined cadence
- Process: a repeatable pipeline turns inputs into curated digests
- Outputs: at least three distinct artefact types are published on a cadence
- Triggers: significant market events trigger an insight memo within 5 business days
The four output artefacts
| Artefact | Cadence | Audience | Lives in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly market pulse — bullet digest of standards/regulatory/competitor moves with "so-what" line | Weekly (Mon) | Markus + sales | /04_research_function/market_overview/weekly/ |
| Monthly market overview — narrative state-of-market refresh | Monthly | 4Rooks leadership + advisor decks | /04_research_function/market_overview/monthly/ |
| Positioning & USP recommendations — should we change anything? | Monthly | Florian + Markus | /04_research_function/positioning_usp/ |
| Insight memo — triggered by significant market events (e.g., new CRA guidance, competitor pricing change, large customer announcement) | Ad-hoc | Markus | /04_research_function/market_overview/memos/ |
Source list (v1)
Standards & regulation
- KNX Association — knx.org/news, KNX IoT spec updates
- Connectivity Standards Alliance — csa-iot.org/newsroom (Matter)
- Thread Group — threadgroup.org/newsroom
- LoRa Alliance — lora-alliance.org/lorawan-news
- OPC Foundation — opcfoundation.org/news
- EU Cyber Resilience Act tracker — Commission press releases, ENISA guidance
- BSI (Germany) — IoT/CRA guidance
Competitors
- Foundries.io — blog, pricing page
- Mender — blog, releases
- Torizon — blog, product updates
- Zephyr Project — blog, releases
- Yocto Project — releases
- Eclipse hawkBit — releases
- New entrants — Hacker News "Show HN" filtered for IoT/embedded; YC batches; Product Hunt embedded category
Industry signal
- IoT Analytics — research notes (gated, but headlines worth tracking)
- Business of Apps — IoT developer reports
- IoT For All — feature pieces
- LinkedIn — Markus's network + named ICP companies' posts
Target-account intelligence
- KNX manufacturer directory — knx.org member list
- LinkedIn job posts at target accounts (embedded engineer listings = trigger event)
- CRA-readiness press releases at target accounts
The pipeline (v1)
The simplest version that works:
- Scheduled task every Monday morning runs a curated set of web searches + RSS-style fetches against the source list
- Output: a raw collection in
/04_research_function/market_overview/weekly/raw/YYYY-MM-DD.md - Florian (or Claude on demand) triages the raw collection, produces the curated weekly pulse — should take <30 min
- Significant items get tagged for monthly overview or insight memo
- Monthly overview is a synthesis pass of the four weeklies
Implementation note: the scheduled-task tool (mcp__scheduled-tasks__*) and Claude's automated workflows can run this. We will set up the schedule once the source list is finalised and tested manually for one week.
Output quality bar
A digest is good when:
- Every item has a 1-line "so-what for 4Rooks" — what should we do or say differently
- Items without a "so-what" are removed, not kept
- The reader can read the whole thing in <3 minutes
- Sources are linked
- Confidence level is marked when something is speculative
What this function does not do
- Long-form analysis (that's an ad-hoc memo, triggered explicitly)
- Customer-specific research (that's account files in
05_lighthouse_customers/) - Product or roadmap research (4Rooks engineering owns that)
Time budget
This must run in <1 day per month of Florian's capacity once stable. Setup is the expensive part (estimated 2 days in month 1).
Last modified 2026-05-05. Suggest a change to this page →