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February 2, 2015
Driven by unprecedented demand from the investment community, the Gen2 Advisors team has come up with a list of the macro trends that are defining our industry now, and will for the foreseeable future.
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By Todd Powers, Gregg Archibald & Lenny Murphy
So far 2015 has been breathtaking in the level of interest being shown in the market research space by investors, Private Equity firms, and acquisitive companies. This should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to the news in the past few months. PE groups have been involved with SSI, Reputation Institute, Macromill/MetrixLabs, FocusVision/Revelation/Decipher, and Research Now (off the top of my head) and of course VC firms have been injecting capital into SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, Vision Critical, Pureprofile and a multitude of various and sundry players in the “analytics” space.
Research is hot right now, and one of the biggest reasons is because it is in a massive state of change and disruption, which creates many opportunities for investors.
At Gen2 Advisors, the consultancy I am a partner in, it’s been a virtually non-stop series of engagements with many investment firms, in addition to the usual work with client-side organizations, start-ups, and established suppliers. In all my years in this industry, and especially during the last few years in my role as an industry analyst, I have never seen this level of demand to understand what boils down to two very basic questions:
Those are big questions for sure, and there is no shortage of opinions on the answers or efforts to quantify them (such as our own GRIT study). However, what’s been new in my experience for 2015 has been the volume of requests coming from the invest community, who tend to want to look at macro trends vs. the micro trends of what specific methods will be become the flavor of the week or how much of a shift we’ll see from Qual to Quant. Those questions are important for sure, but charting a five year plan as part of pre-investment due diligence requires taking a broader view first, then drilling down into the micro-trends that are important to a specific company’s product portfolio and positioning.
So, my colleagues Gregg Archibald and Todd Powers (who also graciously listen to my own ramblings on these matters) have been working on summarizing these macro trends that apply to the whole industry, regardless of whether you’re a client or supplier, quallie or quant shop, tech company or full service consultancy. Our belief is that these trends are defining our industry now, and will for the foreseeable future.
Here is our take on the 10 disruptive macro trends in market research:
These trends are deeply inter-connected, and while not strictly linear in relationship, there is a certain cascade effect in play, with each impacting and often reinforcing the others.
Collectively they paint a picture of an industry that is facing many challenges, but also has many, many opportunities. Data is the true currency of our world today, and although the types of data and the ways we go about collecting and analyzing it are changing very rapidly our core value proposition of helping organizations make smarter, more impactful business decision has not changed. As we navigate these trends let’s keep that in mind, because it’s the true nature of the value we bring, and that value is only increasing.
Disclaimer
The views, opinions, data, and methodologies expressed above are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official policies, positions, or beliefs of Greenbook.
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