In the face of uncertainty, many companies will default to asking their innovators to study and analyze, which can't actually ever provide a definitive answer.

People who copy what exists copy a point-in-time artifact, and if you are managing the process correctly you are already hard at work on the next thing.

History teaches us that many breakthroughs were happy accidents. Whether that's penicillin coming from Fleming neglecting to clean his laboratory before going on vacation or the team at Odeon trying a little side project that allowed people to communicate in real time as long as their message was 140 characters or less (which ultimately of course became Twitter), the unintended is often the transformational.

The school at which you studied - design school, disruptive school, TRIZ school, user-centered innovation school, etc - determines the specific words you use.

The curious company studies the anomalies or the unexpected findings. The company that isn't curious ignores them or punishes people who don't do exactly what they set out to do.

Seeking chaos is at least one way to develop the skills and mindsets to tackle ambiguity.

The reality is customers lie - not because they want to want to deceive you, but because they don't do a good job of predicting what they will do in the future.