GreenBook and NewMR hosted a debate on research gamification. Here’s a summary: Continue reading »

At The Market Research Event in Orlando, Nokia’s Dr. Oskar Korkman discussed how his company uses consumer practice as a starting point for innovation. His research puts the customer at the heart of product development and marketing, in four main ways. Continue reading »

Today Andrew Jeavons, EVP at Survey Analytics, moderated a fascinating live debate on data privacy in market research. The virtual debate has been brewing in blogs, LinkedIn, and Twitter for some time, but a discussion paper on the topic from the MRS and new draft guidelines from CASRO brought this issue back to the forefront in recent weeks.

This webinar featured leaders from each of the three major market research associations, as well as industry opinion leaders on the topic. Here is what the six participants had to say in their opening statements. Continue reading »

Ideation and insight-gathering techniques are evolving to meet the current realities of an increasingly connected customer who is using social media, online communities, and self-ethnography. But, with all of these new ways of eliciting ideas and gathering data, techniques for vetting this into viable, validated concepts have not evolved as quickly. Continue reading »

The Groundswell, as Forrester calls it, is in full swing. Social technologies continue to change the fabric of our interactions, both personally and professionally. Three to five years ago, consumers’ use of social media was laying the groundwork for companies’ broader adoption of tools and technologies to not only interact with consumers but among internal teams and business units. Continue reading »

The innovation funnel is a visual representation that people are familiar with when discussing how companies move from ideas to products. And it accurately reflects the narrowing of possibilities that occurs over time: Every crazy idea you can imagine makes it into the top of the funnel; as the ideas are analyzed, fewer and fewer move down the funnel. And only a select few exit the funnel and become products. But is the funnel the right shape for 21st-century innovation? Continue reading »

Whether your funnel is choking up the innovation process, or you want to choke the funnel with your bare hands out of innovation frustration, ask yourself: is it the funnel itself that’s flawed, or the process that people layer over it? To me, the funnel still seems like a good starting point, but it requires the right process and culture to make it a reality. Continue reading »

In order to manage the new product development (NPD) process, many companies today employ the model of an innovation funnel. In a time when we are awash in ideas and information – from internal resources to traditional market research, to social media data – marketers and product strategists are challenged to effectively and efficiently hone in on the best ideas. Continue reading »