Finding the next high-growth US metro in five days

Client

Date

$5B+ Global Design and Engineering Firm

08/2026

The challenge

A $5B+ global design and engineering firm had to decide where in the United States to place its next growth bets, and was carrying 25 to 30 growth opportunities nobody had researched. Regional teams answered questions of that kind with phone calls and hand-collected data, one city at a time. The question was which metro comes next.

The solution

FifthRow ran a dedicated instance for the firm behind a single intake form. Any team could submit a brief and get back a sourced research report, with the evidence behind it kept queryable for follow-ups. The growth-market question ran through that same route, on a five-day clock.

5 days

to name the firm's next growth market

25

stalled growth opportunities researched and cleared

Growth-market selectionA sourced candidate shortlist with head-to-head data in five days

Opportunity backlog25 to 30 identified with none researched, 25 named research programmes delivered

Cost of asking one more questionA scoping call, a statement of work and a purchase order, reduced to a submitted form

01 — A STANDING RESEARCH DESK

Before the growth question could be answered in a week, the route to an answer had to already exist. One intake form replaced "who can look into this for us" across the firm's innovation network.

Core Activities

Published a single intake form so any team could submit a brief without a scoping call, a statement of work or a purchase order
Took 17 briefs in a single first batch and ran them in parallel rather than in sequence
Delivered 14 completed market reports within three weeks of day one
Covered supply chain resilience, transition finance, circular business models, predictive asset maintenance, climate risk, nature-based solutions, zero-emission transport and energy network resilience
Ran everything on the firm's own branded instance

The Results

A backlog that had sat unresearched was cleared in one pass, and the firm kept a warm route from a consultant's question to a sourced answer for the following seven months. By the time the growth question arrived, nobody had to build a process to handle it.

market reports delivered in the first three weeks

02 — THE GROWTH QUESTION

The firm's growth director wanted to know where the next fast-growing US metro would be, before it was obvious. The first move was not to guess at candidates. It was to build a full evidence base on the metro everyone already agreed was the benchmark.

Core Activities

Ran a market report on the benchmark metro across four drivers: demographic shift and population growth, industry dynamics, real estate and housing, and cultural and lifestyle appeal
Framed the brief around what an investor in that market would need to know, not around what a consultancy would normally write
Collected the source base automatically instead of commissioning a study

The Results

A sourced, queryable account of what had actually driven one metro's growth, broken into four drivers that could be tested anywhere else. That turned an unanswerable question into a measurable one.

1 day

from submitted brief to a sourced benchmark evidence base

03 — CANDIDATE MARKET SHORTLIST

With the drivers isolated, the same analysis was pointed outward. Which other US metros were showing the same pattern early enough to matter.

Core Activities

Tested other metros against the benchmark market's growth drivers, in a comparison that could be rerun on any market
Reran it with a wider source pull, which surfaced additional candidates the first pass had missed
Ran head-to-head comparisons between the benchmark metro and each shortlisted metro
Pulled hard data on population, industry mix and real estate rather than commentary
Deepened the corporate expansion read mid-week, once the first pass proved shallow on it

The Results

A named shortlist of candidate growth metros, each with a side-by-side data comparison against the benchmark. What had been an opinion in a business development conversation became a defensible list with sources attached.

comparative market studies delivered in a single day

04 — WHY PEOPLE ACTUALLY MOVE

Economic data shows that a metro is growing. It does not show why anyone chose it. The last layer of the growth read went looking for the stated reasons, in people's own words.

Core Activities

Mined public forum discussion for the reasons people gave for relocating
Upgraded it mid-week from summarised findings to verbatim quotes, so the design teams got language rather than conclusions
Kept every quote attached to the source it came from
Kept the relocation read in a repeatable form so it could be rerun against any candidate metro

The Results

The growth read closed with both halves of the answer: which markets the data pointed at, and what people said was pulling them there. The systems were left behind as templates rather than as a single report, so the same analysis could be rerun on any market the firm chose next.

1 week

from an unresearched question to a shortlist the firm could act on

05 — WHAT TO BUILD IN THE NEW MARKET

Knowing where to grow is only useful alongside knowing what to build there. Four building-typology briefs ran on the same instance in the same week, on the same source machinery.

Core Activities

Ran dedicated research programmes on four residential and hospitality building typologies the firm was weighing for the new market
Answered every individual question in a brief separately through direct question-and-answer, each with its own sourced response
Published reports as live pages inside the firm's own instance, with the sources attached and queryable

The Results

The growth read and the design reads sat on one instance, sourced the same way. A team asking where to expand and a team asking what to design for that market were working off the same evidence, in the same week, for the first time.

building-typology programmes briefed and delivered in the same week

What it proved

The question was where to grow next in the United States. In five working days it went from a business development conversation to a sourced answer: a 555-source read on the benchmark metro, a comparative study that surfaced candidate markets, head-to-head data comparisons against the benchmark, and a qualitative layer mining public discussion for why people relocate, quoted rather than summarised. Seven purpose-built systems came out of the growth question alone, four of the comparative studies landing in a single day. Four building-typology programmes ran alongside it in the same week. Behind all of it sat seven months of standing research capacity: 25 named programmes delivered through one intake form, 14 of them in the first three weeks.

What the firm was left holding was a method, not a single answer. The comparison system reruns against any market, the relocation-motivation workflow reruns against any metro, and the source base behind both stayed queryable rather than frozen in a document. Teams stopped scoping research engagements and started submitting questions, and the answers came back inside the week rather than inside the next budget cycle.

Results

MetricBenchmarkResultImprovement

Growth-market selection

Benchmark: No evidence base; phone calls and hand-collected data, one city at a timeResult: Candidate metros shortlisted and compared on data in five days

From opinion to a sourced list

Sources behind a market read

Benchmark: Tens, read manually by an analystResult: 555, collected and cited automatically

Order-of-magnitude larger evidence base

Repeating the analysis on a new market

Benchmark: A new commissioned study each timeResult: The same system rerun against any market

Reusable rather than one-off

Opportunities carrying a first research layer

Benchmark: 25 to 30 identified, none researchedResult: 25 named research programmes delivered

Backlog cleared

First-pass research throughput

Benchmark: One commissioned study at a timeResult: 17 briefs taken in, 14 reports out, in three weeks

Parallel rather than sequential

Cost of asking one more question

Benchmark: A project budget line and a scoping conversationResult: Zero, inside a fixed monthly subscription

Removed

OPEN INTAKE

Any team submits a brief through one form without a scoping call or a purchase order, and briefs run in parallel rather than in sequence.

BENCHMARK-DERIVED DRIVERS

A complete read on the market everyone already agrees is the benchmark yields the drivers every other candidate is then tested against.

RERUNNABLE COMPARISON

The market comparison is left behind as a system that reruns against any new market, so a fresh study is not commissioned each time.

QUOTED EVIDENCE

Public discussion is mined for the reasons people give in their own words, with every quote kept attached to the source it came from.

LAYERED EVIDENCE BASE

One sourced evidence base is collected first and purpose-built systems run over it, so follow-up questions do not require new research.

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