What does a neonatal incubator have to do with research? Read on.

In 2010, Design that Matters received widespread recognition for its innovative neonatal incubator. The innovation: the incubator ran off car parts.

Neonatal incubators are an effective tool against infant mortality, as about half of infant deaths worldwide (about 1.8 million infants total) can be attributed to a lack of a consistent heat until they have the body fat and metabolic rate to stay warm. The incubation challenge is extremely difficult in developing countries, where donated incubators fix the problem, until they break. Then they sit, unused, for lack of spare parts or repair know-how. But what did the design team see along with piles of broken, discarded medical devices? Countless old cars, trucks, and SUVs somehow coaxed into running smoothly. The lightbulb went off – if an incubator was built from car parts, mechanics could easily provide needed maintenance and repairs. The resulting incubator is pretty neat, with dashboard fans for circulation, signal lights and door chimes for alarms, a car battery to keep it running even in power outages, and headlights to provide heat.

This is a clever, and more importantly valuable, design. But again… market research? What’s the connection?

Design that Matters recognized a disconnect between the way incubators were built and the environment in which they were being used. MREB Research has shown a similar disconnect in the way that Research functions provide information to the business and the way that executives consume information.  The design team re-conceived the incubator to fit the constrains of its environment… how can Research re-conceive its information distribution processes to fit the new business environment?

We’ve seen companies doing just that – embedding customer knowledge in a way that fits executive decision-making processes: Read More »

This video of today’s generation of kids trying to master the electronics of the 80s elicited some giggles out of my co-worker and me. It really flips the “grandmother trying to use an iPad” stereotype on its head. I have to say I was particularly shocked at the challenge of operating a cassette deck – surely that’s not that old??

Working with new (or even “new-to-me”) technology can be a hard transition to make. “How does it work?” “What is it good for?” “Is it worth it?” “This just feels… wrong!”

Nobody knows this challenge better than the Market Researcher faced with the array of new methods and data sources enabled by technology improvements over the past several years. Is Research keeping up with these changes, or are we still playing Atari?

There are increasingly more – and increasingly sophisticated – ways to collect information about customers and consumers. Advances in data collection methods, storage, and modeling make it possible to gain an understanding of customer behavior to a degree previously unattainable. On the other end of the spectrum are methodological advances like neuroscience and mobile research.

Is it worth it? Early indicators point to yes. More data certainly presents an opportunity to generate more holistic customer insights. From the opposite perspective, might the expanding sources of customer data present a potential threat to the unique value that Research has for the business?

The MREB is tackling this topic in its major research initiative for 2012, Rebalancing the Insight Portfolio. Members, read more about our latest observations pulled from interviews with your peers and take a look at some of our early hypotheses.

We’ve all had to deal with them – the “Know-it-All,” steamrolling over people with their opinions, impervious to criticism, closed off to the possibility that they may have something to learn. Now, “Know-it-All” is a somewhat flip and derogatory title for people who have unshakeable confidence in what they know; but people like this are a real, and really distressing, challenge for Market Researchers.

Executives’ “gut” understanding of the customer/ marketplace, built through experience, is liable to all sorts of cognitive biases and has the danger of being outdated. But when an executive is making a customer-facing decision, they rely mostly on that gut – a phenomenon that threatens smart decision-making.  How can Research break through to people who are mistakenly confident in an outdated or biased view of the customer?

The answer lies in attacking the root cause – the confidence. Leading Researchers are shaking up executive confidence by demonstrating the wrongness or incompleteness of executive knowledge, provoking insecurity and curiosity. 

That’s not enough, though – Research then has to re-shape the gut correctly. Using highly authentic, realistic, and interactive teaching (mimicking the experience that had contributed to their original gut) re-builds executive knowledge, and re-builds their confidence in the new knowledge.

(A great aspect to these approaches? They work across the spectrum of decision-makers, from the resistant-to-learning type to the naturally curious.)

MREB Members, learn more about engineering learning moments.

Related blogs:

• Don’t Try to Overpower Other Info Sources, Co-Opt Them
• 2 Ways to Get Executive the Information They Need, Fast

Communications is a perennial hot topic for Researchers – and for good reason. All the work put into generating insights and business recommendations is a waste if business partners don’t use them!

Unfortunately, recent MREB research into executive decision-making reveals that Research falls very low on the list of sources that decision-makers consult when making decisions:

How to deal with this reality? Trying to change executives’ decision-making process is probably a fool’s errand. Instead, leading Researchers are working with decision-makers’ natural preferences, and tapping the natural information flows within the company. These companies are increasing the resonance and shareability of insight messaging to prompt peer-to-peer sharing.

MREB members, learn more about optimizing your content for resonance and shareability.

Patience may be a virtue, but it’s one rarely seen in the corporate world. Executives have always wanted to have the information they need right when they realize they need it – and if they could have it before then, even better!

Exacerbating this desire for instant information are some recent developments.  First, executives report that the overall increased pace of change creating more truly urgent decisions – and it’s not the case that urgent decisions are less important than non-urgent ones.

Second, information seems to be everywhere. Need advice or information? You can ask Google, or maybe poll your friends with a Facebook status update. Now, you may wince to hear these sources in reference to a business decision (and rightly so!) but the point is that people expect to be able to access the information they need quickly – social media and the internet have trained us well.

MREB research into executives’ decision-making processes confirms that when faced with urgent decisions, they rely on their gut instinct when they can, or skim multiple sources and make the decision with what they can access quickly, regardless of the quality. Waiting for Research can be a drag.

We’ve seen Market Research functions tackle the challenge of informing urgent decisions two ways:

1. Improving their anticipation of urgent requests by focusing scoping on unarticulated and emerging needs;
2. Improving their reaction to urgent requests by aggregating existing knowledge into “good enough” information in a short time-frame.

MREB members, learn more about focusing Research scoping and execution for fast delivery.

How well do your business partners know your customers? They’re likely to say they understand them well – after all, years of experience builds a “gut instinct” that is valued in business leaders, and has probably served them well in situations over the years. But what about when that instinct is outdated, or just plain wrong? It’s hard to teach people when they think they have nothing to learn!

We’ve covered a few techniques for breaking your business partners’ pre-conceptions, but have one other idea to share.

One popular training technique, one that I’ve personally sat through in countless L&D courses, is teaching information, then asking the student to use that information in an exercise. This technique can be highly effective. Unfortunately, it fails when a student can complete the exercise based on what they already know – and can completely check out of the “learning” aspect.

A smart solution to this problem is to place the exercise in a new context, one where the “student” (sub in “executive”) can’t rely on what they already know. This effectively neutralizes their existing understanding and requires them to learn anew. 

Telecom NZ exemplified this approach in their segmentation workshop with executives. Sure, a telecommunications executive might be able to design a telecom product for young customers off the top of their head – without learning about the behaviors and attitudes of that segment – but can they design a cocktail for them without learning the same? (I might add – not only does this new context require executives to learn, it strikes me as a little more fun!) So think outside your industry!

MREB members, learn more about Telecom NZ’s workshop and other gut-busting experiences.

“Anatomy” is commonly defined as the bodily structure of an organism (or the study of such). Human or animal bodily structures are of little interest to the Market Researcher (aspects of the human psyche is a different matter!), but what about the structure of a Market Research organization as an “organism”?

The diagnostic tool commonly referred to as “the Anatomy” is one of the MREB’s most popular survey tools and a touchstone for successful functional management. And the Anatomy has just had a facelift: what was once the Anatomy of a World-Class Market Research Function is now the Anatomy of a Business Impact-Focused Market Research Function.

Ok, so we changed a few words in the title… but what are the implications of that change?

 Instead of being a diagram of all activities of a Market Research function, the new Anatomy is a diagram of the activities that deliberately position a function to create business impact (as identified through MREB research). It more clearly defines what a function needs to do to impact business decisions. See for yourself, in this comparison of the major categories:

While the previous version allowed you to learn the best-practice ways of approaching all activities, this version is more focused on the best-practice ways of approaching the best activities for value creation – it’s basically a double-whammy of “best”!

Members, visit the Anatomy resource center to learn more about the 20 attributes that underlay the major categories above, and to see the resources that can help you improve in each. Interested in running your team through the diagnostic in order to identify which area you should prioritize for improvement? Contact your account manager directly or through the resource center.

A recent article in the Huffington Post explored the poor ability of people to predict the events of the future – a particularly popular pastime in early January, and getting a lot of press in 2012 especially with the shaky economy and upcoming election(not to mention the threat of the end of the world, according to the Mayans). The author asks this not of psychics or modern-day prophets, but of the experts – people who should be able to make balanced, accurate predictions.

The culprit he fingers? Confirmation bias, the tendency of people to look for and accept information that reinforces their existing beliefs, conveniently ignoring contradictory information. In the context of this discussion, it’s confirmation bias while researching – which the scientific method was created to counteract, and which market researchers are trained to avoid.

There’s another way that confirmation bias can get in the way of Market Research, though – while trying to get business partners to internalize customer information or insights, especially those that contradict their existing beliefs. People are likely to ignore or resist internalizing new information in these circumstances.

The key to getting past this tendency? To create multi-sensory, realistic, and engaging learning opportunities for business partners. While a data point on a powerpoint is easy to dismiss, not so is a customer in front of you demonstrating what this data point says. It’s those three characteristics that make immersive experiences so effective at changing people’s minds – creating visceral dissonance and then rebuilding their “gut” understanding.

MREB members, learn more about these “gut-busting” experiences and how companies like P&G and Alticor create them.

Around this time of the year, you see a proliferation of two types of articles: “Best of [this year]” and “Predictions for [next year].” I thought, why not jump on this bandwagon? So here, based on industry news, recent research, and conversations with members, are MREB’s Top 5 Trends to Watch Out For in 2012.

1. From Insight Consultant to Knowledge Inculcator: In a recent quant study, we surveyed decision-makers to uncover the characteristics of the information that they find valuable when making customer-facing decisions. What we found was pretty sobering – the decisions best informed by a consultative research process account for only 10% of the value of all decisions made at your company. The characteristics of valuable information, and experiences of leading Market Research functions, suggests a new impactful role for Research: increasing the customer acumen of the business. The “knowledge inculcator” engages organization-wide decision-makers with novel and contrarian knowledge to help them internalize the most essential information.
2. Synthesis improves corporate agility and knowledge: Support urgent decisions by creating new insights without spending time collecting data. Rather than launch new projects to address business needs, many functions devote formal time to synthesizing and updating existing information to create holistic, easily accessible knowledge for organizational use. This trend has been gaining steam for some years, and will only increase in the next – as business change speeds up and Research moves towards a currency of knowledge over data.
3. Broadening data inputs: We predict that traditional methodologies like focus groups and surveys will continue to decline as a percentage of your total data inputs. It’s not that they’ll be replaced by new methodologies – no matter what suppliers claim – but that more time will be spent integrating methodologies to get to deeper insight.
4. Big Data ≠ Big Action: Technological enhancements have made it easier than ever to collect data and the press has been (mostly) trumpeting the benefits that solid data will have for decisions. Unfortunately, access to ever-increasing quantities of data does not automatically equate to better decisions. The need for incorporating data analytics into traditional research, as well as smart analysis and business translation, will be more necessary than ever to turn information into actionable insights.
5. Emerging markets are for understanding, not offshoring: A continued focus on globalization will lead to more research on the consumers in emerging markets, but less staffing in them.  The gains from offshoring market research activities to countries like India have plateaued, with the challenges of managing an offshore team often stymieing the benefits.

What do you think? Leave a comment if you have a 6th trend – or a bone to pick with one of the above!

“Open bar!” “Attendees will be automatically entered in a raffle to win an iPod.” “Lunch will be provided.” “Open this e-mail to claim your cash prize!”

We’ve all seen these tactics used to try to get people to show up somewhere or read something – I’m sure you can think of even more! Vague promises of value aimed at people’s stomach, wallet, or techie desires seem to be very popular in getting people’s attention.

Market Research often faces the challenge of getting people to pay attention to research – especially when working with people who have strong confidence in their already-existing view of customers. Why should they be interested in learning when they know everything they need to know already?

How to get around this challenge? Show people that they actually don’t know everything already – and even that what they “know” is wrong. A new niggling feeling of doubt, or outright shock, goes a long way in provoking interest in learning. Pull those emotional levers – surprise, doubt, wonder, intrigue – and grab their attention.

MREB members, read more about how Heinz and Iconoculture use emotions to create interest in learning opportunities.