It's very "Black Swan".
I don't think you understand what the term means. It's unknown unknowns and not known unknowns. Whether or not an unproven product will succeed is a question about a known unknown.
This is especially true in fast-changing or competitive markets, where the only way to collect more evidence without direct risk is to let your competitors jump in the water first.
I don't think that's true. There are various forms of doing market research that simply involve money but not additional risk.
I use "Black Swan" in the context of the whole book. That is, we build narratives after-the-fact to explain correct priors as skill and judgment. Also, the greater impact of more uncertain decisions, in a way that ties uncertainty to the impact, is exactly the nature of unknown-unknown black swans (which I'd say the launching of a substantially new product category fits into, in a mild form. The iPod/iTunes was not a black swan for Apple, though they took considerable risks with it. It was a black swan for the music industry.).
Market research is ...
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