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Insights Industry News
August 3, 2010
Lenny Murphy shares a collection of recent interesting blog posts from across the market research industry.
Obviously we’re fans of blogging around here at the GreenBook, and today’s post should show you why. This is by no means a comprehensive collection of recent blog posts, but it is an aggregation of those that I found most interesting, and hopefully so will you! Click on the quotes to go to the original content.
Starting us off, Spych Market Analytics asks the question Has Social Media Research Shown Market Researchers a Different Recession in Our Industry?. This a great exploration about the impact of the loss of credibility of MR among both consumers and some business decision makers, and also a series of proposed solutions to address this issue.
This seems like the foundation for a new MR Mission Statement to me!
Continuing on the theme of how MR can add value, Ian Lewis writes on the Cambiar blog about the Four Pillars for Success – Make the Move from Researcher to Consultant! As I’m sure you know, Ian is a central player in the ARF Transformation initiative and has been espousing the transition to a consultancy-based model for some time. Here he lays out the steps to make that happen.
Ian goes on to elaborate on the Four Pillars necessary to bring this vision to life; it’s well worth a read!
Shifting gears a bit away from strategy and towards new techniques, we have a two posts related to “Next Generation” MR concerns. The first is by Andrew Jeavons, posting on the Research Access site on the topic of CrowdSolving – Beyond CrowdSourcing? Andrew writes about some innovative ways that companies are using the reach and engagement models of online and social media to go beyond data collection and instead are harnessing the power of participants to solve critical business issues.
It’s a great post, and helps shed some light on the possibilities for future opportunities for enterprising MR suppliers!
Next, SocialMediaToday gives us the low-down on Data Mining: The Real Killer App of Social Media. There has been a lot of discussion recently about how research companies could develop new revenue opportunities by implementing more data mining initiatives, and it seems to be beyond a shadow of a doubt that the future of MR includes a significant focus on data mining as a core offering of successful firms. This post details some of the issues that may be on the horizon gives a few ideas on what we can do to work around them.
In fact, it should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the Internet, and especially the social media revolution of Web 2.0, that data mining and tracking software is the killer app of e-commerce. Before the Internet, companies had to rely on market surveys and anecdote in order to track the behavior of their customers (and, even more importantly, their potential customers). Data was often unreliable, and even when it reflected consumer preferences it was often received months after the relevant transaction.
It sounds like our trade orgs may have some more work cut out for them in dealing with more legislative issues soon!
Wrapping up the blogs that caught my eye, we have two posts related to issues of human capital. The always interesting Harvard Business Review has a great entry about the need to focus on finding talent vs. education profiles titled Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren’t.
This is a must read folks. I’ve written before on the need for MR to begin focusing on talent identification and human capital in general in order to help drive the industry into the future, and this blog makes the argument far better than I can. Do yourself a favor and check it out!
Finally, on Research-live.com David McCallum writes about how important it is to Master your Craft and Bullet-proof your Career. It’s a great piece on the importance of honing core capabilities vital for success in the MR space, as well as in business in general.
It has also been said that in tomorrow’s environment; yesterday’s skills will be redundant. That’s true to a degree but only so long as the former skills are replaced, updated, and re-applied. All the changes in the commercial and technological environment do not mean that research skills per se become unnecessary, they need to be augmented not replaced by business acumen and client servicing ‘savvy’ as well as an ongoing appreciation of the new consumer settings. Because even if you are studying blogs or online research community content it doesn’t mean you can avoid digging into the data like an “old-school” researcher or designing studies and framing issues to avoid bias and provide focus.
That’s the blog round-up as of the first week of August. We hope you enjoy the selections here as much as we did in finding them!
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