Passion & Curiosity: Driven to Discover

At Langston, our work is shaped by a set of Guiding Principles that define how we think, how we operate, and how we partner with our clients.

These principles weren’t invented in a planning session. They emerged through years of experience and were shaped by what consistently led to better outcomes, stronger partnerships, and more meaningful work. Over time, we’ve chosen to recognize these principles, cultivate them, and hold ourselves accountable to them.

In this article, we explore one of those principles in depth: Passion & Curiosity.

Curiosity is foundational to who we are. Early in our journey, we noticed a consistent pattern in our hiring: deep, intrinsic, unteachable curiosity.

Passion & Curiosity are not simply attitudes at Langston. They are our intrinsic driving force. They reflect a shared desire to build a research approach that is meaningfully better than what existed before, and a belief that the best way to do that is to keep asking questions others haven’t asked yet.

Being Driven to Discover is how Langston came into existence in the first place.

It is what led us to develop Modular Research as a fundamentally different way of structuring quantitative research, moving toward a system designed for consistency, comparability, and constant learning over time. It’s the same curiosity that continues to drive how we refine that system, develop new modules within it, and challenge ourselves to improve how research is designed and delivered.

That same curious impulse is what led to the creation of our new Landscapes offering, not as a reaction to market trends, but as a response to deeper questions about how category understanding should work, how data can compound in value, and how insights leaders can be better supported over time. It was a deep curiosity about the difficult tension between speed and real impact in our industry that led us to plunge into exploring a type of syndicated research offering that breaks the rules of what was previously thought possible in Consumer Insights.

Within the context of individual projects, Passion & Curiosity show up in quieter but equally important ways. It’s what motivates our teams to explore problems from new angles and to push beyond surface-level findings in search of deeper understanding.

Even in the most operational parts of the work, curiosity matters. On topics like data cleaning and quality assurance, it has been individual team members’ curiosity - asking why certain patterns appear, how behaviors might be evolving, and what might be happening beneath the surface - that led us to uncover signs of fraud and identify entirely new types of professional survey takers. Those discoveries have allowed us to continue delivering rock-solid survey data in the midst of an ongoing industry arms race between data providers and increasingly sophisticated fraudulent respondents.

Passion & Curiosity are what keep our work from becoming mechanical or complacent. They ensure that even familiar categories, well-worn methods, and operational details remain areas for learning and improvement.

Curiosity is how we move the work forward and how we continue building something better. It is also what makes this process so personally satisfying for each of us.