Abstract Since 2010, our research group has been organizing and analyzing data originally collected for non-academic purposes—primarily from the application of Business Games focused on disseminating the Management Excellence Model (MEG). This reflective paper presents our methodological approach, the tools developed to structure long-term research (namely the UN-NS Logbooks), and discusses the scientific production that emerged from applied educational and corporate initiatives. We argue that structured reflection on data generated from pedagogical or corporate contexts can and should be converted into academic contributions.

Writing Scientific Papers Based on Data and Information Not Initially Collected for Research Purposes

Since August 2010, our team has held weekly meetings (excluding school holidays) primarily to analyze data from projects promoting the dissemination of the Management Excellence Model (MEG) through Business Games. These games had been previously developed and applied in undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as corporate training contexts. Our goal was to evaluate the feasibility of using the results of these games—after proper statistical treatment—for the development of scientific papers to be submitted to international conferences and academic journals.

To preserve our work and future plans, we created a structured system of directories named Up to Now – Next Steps(UN-NS), organized by year (UN-NS 2010, UN-NS 2011, ..., UN-NS 2025). Each weekly meeting's documents—written texts, data sets, references, and reflections—were stored in these folders, forming a comprehensive longitudinal archive of our activities.

In May 2012, we presented the first outcome of this effort at the IMRA International Conference in London, UK. That same year, we launched a project involving Business Games in high school settings, aimed at introducing students to the field of Business Administration. This initiative was part of my postdoctoral research. Unfortunately, the pandemic forced us to pause the project.

In 2022, we began a new project focused on Entrepreneurship, incorporating Business Games into a high school elective course aligned with the Brazilian National Common Curricular Base (BNCC). The project spanned four semesters and culminated in the publication of a book. For the evaluation of the Business Games, we used two sources: the MEG Foundations and the Entrepreneurial Competency Framework from EMPRETEC (https://unctad.org/topic/enterprise-development/Empretec).

To date, this ongoing project has resulted in:

• 1 postdoctoral research report
• 2 published articles in indexed journals (TQMBE and Cadernos EBAPE) and 1 under review
• 6 conference papers (AIC 2024 Midterm Meeting; ISAGA 2023; ABSEL 2020; ISAGA 2016; ABSEL 2013; IMRA 2012)
• 16 UN-NS folders (from 2010 to 2025), filled with collected and produced material
• 1 e-book

We now aim to publish a series of documents titled UN-NS Logbooks, which will compile and share our experiences, data, tools, and reflections. These logbooks are designed to support researchers who wish to transform applied, practice-based data into rigorous scientific writing—even when such data was not initially collected with research as its main objective.

We conclude this reflective report by posing three key questions to the academic community:

References

ChatGPT. (2025, June 5). UN-NS Logbooks: A Practical Approach to Transforming Applied Experiences into Scientific Output[Translation and writing support]. OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/