We believe we formulated a focused research question, and what was apparently a good idea, to research design leadership in F50 corporations because they have a lot of credible public data due to the intense scrutiny they are under, turned out to be a limiting factor for exactly the same reasons. These corporations, exactly because they are under so much scrutiny, have a very choreographed way of communicating, with strong guidelines (and legal implications) on who/ what/ when/ how communication can occur. We tried to engage many agents in these corporations that either did not respond, responded with limited engagement, responded and engaged but asked for anonymity. They are also not that open to academic endeavors like PhD research, they fail to see how that can benefit them, and sometimes the fact that the corresponding author did not come to them through a top notch business school affected the outcome. We are satisfied with the engagement we had, but it took a lot longer to have access and to have the conversations we needed to create the insights we did and make sense of the subject.