Some of the notes may only make sense when seen in conjunction with the slides which should be available from the above website shortly after the event.

Game Theory – using gaming to improve online surveys
Jon Puleston (GMI)

What r&d has shown us:

• making questions more game-like increase response

Results:

• less straight-lining – up to 80% less
• lower neutral scoring – avg 25% lower
• higher enjoyment
• lower dropout
• good cross compatibility vs trad grid questions

Simple changes can have real impact:

• change std round buttons to star-shaped
• re-wording questions – more playful/less formal (more vernacular)
• particularly valuable for more creative tasks
• make things more competitive – add a time limit for response
• use games at start to get ppl in right frame of mind, encourage creativity, and do subsequent surveys
• turned ppl into a judge on a panel show called ‘New Product Factors’ – appealing to their inner Simon Cowell!

In development:

• snowboarder going down hill, crashes through flags showing multiple choice responses
• words scattered on a screen, ppl can shoot ones they like
• create word clouds, allow ppl to re-arrange into their own clouds and to change the relative sizes
• guessing games: change ‘what brands can you think of?’ to ‘can you guess the 5 most popular brands of deodorant?’
• currently working with one client to make insight dashboards more fun to look at

Q&A:

• is there a risk of non-gamers mis-playing games? overcome this by training ppl with a few initial questions to train and gauge their ability to respond
• do surveys take longer? yes. but ppl have more fun in the process
• will gaming approach lead to ppl looking to ‘win’? use to your advantage as are trying to push ppl to answer as best they can
• bernie malinoff: the more interesting the question, the more likely it is to change the answer. this presents an issue? would always go with most engaging question
• comment: good to see ppl worrying less about survey length and more about its engagement
• are incentives for gamified surveys less or more? lower financial incentive needed

Play for a High Score – understanding gamers and gaming
Erica M. Ruyle (anthropologist)

3 G’s of gaming: gamers, games, gaming

• Erica refers to herself as a ‘fan scholar’

Gamers – a diverse bunch:

• data below is for US pop
• avg age = 34 (Atari generation)
• most freq age of game purchaser = 40
• 42% of US pop play on a wireless device/console
• 67% of US h/h play consoles/games

Games – key ways to engage users:

• 1. decent graphics
• 2. intuitive playability
• 3. award/achievement system
• 4. story/rationale
• 5. music
• get away from reality – ppl play games to escape reality

Gaming – importance of:

• work/fun – best games require a lot of work but are punctuated w/ fun – get ppl to reach a zen-like state so that they behave emotionally

Ideas for gaming in MR:

• mobile gaming/GPS
• virtual gaming community
• video game rewards
• choice analysis

Q&A:

• definitely diffs between cultures – above data is US-centric
• ppl not likely to disguise their identity in games

Game On! – a semiotician’s view of gaming and MR
Stefania Gogna (Head for Brand)

Gaming = a new way to get insight

Ten principles that make video games so interesting

• 1. participation: ppl take an active part in a peer group environment
• 2. exploration: ppl free to explore information w/out researcher
• 3. expression: ppl feel more free to express themselves
• 4. exchange: exchange ideas, sharing
• 5. simulation: ppl can reconstruct patterns of what they would like to see in the real world
• 6. close attention/scan ability: ppl pay strong attention to all important details
• 7. collaborative problem solving: ppl find new and unexpected ways to resolve problems
• 8. active thinking: more creative problem-solving
• 9. insider: active participant not passive consumer, in charge of their own experience
• 10. amplification: players generate a lot of output from little stimulus

Q&A:

• comment: issue for MR is need to share more w/ respondents
• comment: need to allow player to control some aspects, uncomfortable for some in MR

Research Through Gaming – opportunities for change
Betty Adamou (Nebu)

What is RTG:

• where a company gains data from a resp while they play a computer game and about the way they play the game itself

Fun theory:

• c.f YouTube video of VW piano stairs
• ppl started using stairs rather then escalators purely because of the fun element incorporated in the stairs

Entertainment snacking:

• ppl playing apps while waiting to do something/while travelling (on mobile device, via email, thru consoles)
• 1. avatar-based research games (ABRGs)
• 2. gaming as the incentive (GATIRGs)
• 3. questions as mini-games (QAMRGs) – e.g. flash app
• 4. social-media based research games (SMRGs) – e.g. farmville

Classification:

• video content would need to be classified by official industry/regulatory body

Q&A:

• some stuff you won’t want to gamify, e.g. if questions are sensitive

Let’s all Play the Game – applying game playing to qualitative research
Arthur Fletcher (Blauw Research)

Design Game:

• been working for 5yrs with a product called ‘Design Game’ – co-creation tool for design
• a game from beginning to end
• typically played in a focus group facility
• resps play for 2 hrs
• two phases: 1.identify issues; 2.synthesise solutions
• has generated some successful products
• a completely different way to gather info
• all tasks against the clock – highly productive
• clients absolutely love it as can observe
• really hard work for resps

Better than a discussion guide:

• 50% more content by volume
• 75% more content by topic
• no opportunity not to participate
• no opportunity to get bored – cognitive focus

Not suitable for all qual:

• fine for majority of assignments
• lacks scope for detailed probing
• more expensive
• purists wouldn’t like it

Game vs discussion guide:

Example 1:
• dg: “what sort of things frustrate you when shopping online”
• game: “in the next 60 secs, list as many things that frustrate you when shopping online”
• game: can refine importance by asking for top 3 reasons

Example 2:

• dg: “ok, so you mentioned security is a big issue, how to overcome?”
• game: “security has been identified as a major issue – in next 2 mins design a new security system and name 3 reasons why better”
• game: this works well in practice

Q&A:

• reaction to being told it is a MR exercise rather than a game? resps told it is a MR exercise from the outset – the game element is a pleasant surprise
• how sell into clients? need a good client relationship, they need to trust you. tough sell. have evidence that it works, and this helps to convince

Trust, Identity, Reach and Reward – the implications of social media
Nigel Legg (Trevanian Legg)

Trust is 2-way:

• ppl must trust researcher
• and vice versa

Trust based on identity:

• ppl invest time in identity
• social media relies on real world relationships w/ real world ppl
• twitter is old fashioned by allowing ppl to post under pseudonyms

Reach:

• getting the right sample
• hard to do/expensive with trad MR
• platforms only valid when critical mass of users

Reward:

• ppl must have a reason to press the share button – e.g. prizes
• different rewards for different types of participation (e.g. voting, giving ideas)

Coffeemat challenge:

• rcv prizes for submitting business ideas
• animation for voting

Other applications:

• crowd-sourced idea generation
• survey design
• SMM (social media marketing) campaigns
• SM (social media) platforms

Q&A:

• if rewards vary by activity, might this influence/game their response? fair comment

Mobile Social Games for MR – challenging boundaries
Leonard Murphy (Brandscan 360)

Mobile ecosystem:

• smartphone penetration growing to ubiquity
• ecosystem expanding rapidly
• real-time anywhere access to apps and functionality

New frontier for gaming and MR:

• 73% of US engaged in social media
• 32.7m ppl play social games daily
• 75+m ppl play farmville monthly
• foursquare, yelp and getglue engage millions daily
• morgan stanley: mobile device will be the primary web interface within 5 yrs

Using gaming in MR – engagement:

• reward users for returning in a short time
• reward users for helping friends
• allow users to create w/out typing
• offer increasing levels of complexity and mastery
• have surprises and limited time events

Revolutionary approach:

• web partners encourage users to download mobile app
• members earn badges for survey participation
• badges promote online reputation and influence, interests, brand affinity
• consumers rate brand perceptions, awareness, experience
• surveys received via LBS, push notifications, check-ins, can share w/ friends

Starts with the community:

• best way to engage consumers
• gaming driven by making it fun, social esteem, rewards

Badge benefits:

For users:
• users build reputation
• creates instant value
• users share badges

For brands:

• drop-in reputation across web
• define new rewards easily
• social analytics for brands
• new way to engage with customers, members, fans

Brandscan 360 rating:

• community members provide thousands of daily ratings
• based on brand touchpoints/interactions
• data mapped to location

Apps – the new currency:

• in-demand and WoM driven
• consumers earn points for participation

Q&A:

• since not everyone is interested in badges, does this create a source of bias? no
• location-based angles? opportunity to use for shelf testing

Prediction Markets for Fun and Prophet – putting gaming to work
Jeffrey Henning (Vovici)

Prediction markets:

• been around for a while
• became popular in 2004 w/ wisdom of crowds book
• hsx – hollywood stock exchange – given virtual dollars to invest in movies and stars – chance to be a movie mogul
• used by spread betters cantor fitzgerald to establish odds

Other pred mkts:

• simexchange – for games
• betfair
• iem – iowa electronic markets – politics – oldest pred mkt
• bet2give: wide range of topics

Why pred mkts work well:

• we see others better than we see ourselves

Combe case study:

• hair care products brand – just for men, grecian…
• traditionally used surveys for concept testing
• tried pred mkts due to low incidence rates (i.e. ability to use a general pop sample = cheaper)
• pred mkt ‘traders’ allocate virtual dollars to preferred concepts
• no sample selection – general pop
• ppl like the exercise, more entertaining

Benefits of pred mkts:

• ask ppl what would the market do (not what they would you do)
• variable incentives
• 3-4 days vs 3-4 wks
• half the price

Reasons for limited client adoption:

• companies reluctant to abandon normative databases
• failure has many fathers
• early adopters have expensive-to-reach mkts

Q&A:

• not had any papers refuting pred mkts so why are clients reluctant to adopt? idea not been sufficiently evangelised. forrester research just blogged that they are about to bring out a new paper on pred mkts shortly. stuff takes time to get adopted
• pred mkts is a different slant on gaming. are there other examples of different takes on gaming? gaming usually means simulations. lesson from today is the need to take inspiration from games to make things more fun and entertaining
• comment: trendspotting/cool hunting are examples of engendering a competitive instinct to encourage responses

Earlier today we tweeted this Prezi presentation on alternatives to PowerPoint/Keynote for researchers that Tim Macer gave at a recent ASC conference.

It proved a popular link, so we thought we’d turn the presentation into an audio slideshow (just to see how well it would come out). The result is above, it’s only 5mins long so enjoy! A larger version is available on our YouTube page. Or you can revert to the original Prezi version.

That was the intriguing notion being discussed by Annelies Verhaeghe of Insites Consulting at the recent Cloud of Knowing meetup.

As John puts it:

[In the Insites study] bloggers were asked to provide images of what they perceived to be cool at a music festival they were attending. Researchers, marketing experts and 4 different types of crowds were then given the task of evaluating these and providing perceptions of their own. The bloggers then graded these in terms of the insights they generated. The 4 different types of crowd included those who were at the festival and also those who were not. And those who knew the bloggers and those who did not. The result showed that crowds appeared to be a better source of insight. And that the most fruitful crowd was one familiar with the context (ie present at the festival) and unfamiliar with the blogger (at several degrees of separation). A fascinating paper which has given Insites a way to use crowds to increase insight generation (they claim) by 200%!

Watch the video to discover what Annelies found.

Back in March this year, Herdmeister Mark Earls organised a talk at the RSA involving two of his collaborators (Prof. Mike O’Brien, professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri, and Dr. Alex Bentley, co-director of the Centre for the Co-evolution of Biology and Culture at the University of Durham).

ResearchTalk was there to capture the event so for those who weren’t able to make it, we hope you enjoy this brain food.

Mark Earls:

Prof. Mike O’Brien:

Dr. Alex Bentley:

On the eve of the release of Wall Street 2, the message above is somewhat befitting. It comes from the British Library’s Inventing the 21st Century exhibit which promises to “explore the journey behind 15 of the most ingenious inventions to come out of Britain in the past ten years.” Even though you’ll probably be familiar with many of the inventions it’s still worth a visit if you’re nearby.

Anyway, the above post-it was one of many left by visitors encouraged to share their own ideas, completely in the spirit of our collaborative times. We found it amusing, as we did the following, and there’s also a couple of good ideas in there…

A pill you take so you never have explosive diarrhea

A happy pill without adverse effect!

A device to assist in understanding women!

A device to clip walking sticks to a table or chair in cafes

A powder/sachet of sunscreen that you could add to your shower head, to be fully protected at the start of every day

Shoes with built-in weighing scales

We’re just back from the excellent two-day European Customer Experience Event where folks from Zappos and Harley-Davidson talked about how they build their ‘wow’ experience.

It’s our first time there and, to be honest, not the usual beat for us. But it should be – both for us and the insight community in general. Researchers who do anything related to loyalty or customer service should be attending this type of event because they get to meet the folks who actually put their work into practice – customer experience and service heads from major organisations, public and private.

We’ll blog more with some things that caught our eye. But first, in what’s becoming a tradition, here’s a wrap-up chat with three fellow delegates in which we talk highlights, learnings, customer experience in the public sector, digital natives vs. immigrants, behavioural economics, engendering loyalty by charging people (!), transparency and authenticity, convergence, and improvements for next year. Enjoy!

STARRING:

• Brian Koma, VP Research, Vovici
• Sharon Bayliss, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
• Toni Blumeris, MD, Harding & Yorke (S. Africa)

European Customer Experience World event

A lot of folks are drinking the Zappos kool-aid these days. And it’s easy to see why. Because every now and then you come across a company that’s so contrarian in its thinking and execution that it leaves most observers bewildered. Before it was Google with quirky initiatives such as 20% time, something we now know powers its innovation funnel.

Online retailer Zappos is the latest purveyor of contrarian thinking, all in the pursuit of its happiness business model. For example, staff can spend six minutes or six hours on the phone with a single customer – there’s never any pressure to hit productivity quotas. New staff are paid to leave to gauge their commitment. And customers can return shoes up to a year after purchase, postage free, for a full refund. The list goes on.

The result? Booming sales – a couple years ago they broke the $1bn mark. And they were recently acquired by Amazon for – insert Dr. Evil voice – one billion dollars!

Harley-Davidson needs no introduction. It’s an iconic brand that, unlike Zappos, has been around for decades. And for many of us it conjures up distinct emotions such as freedom even if we’ve never experienced their products.

So, why are we telling you all this? Because you’ll learn more about how these companies are building strong cultures which drive profitability in the short podcast below (15 mins). It’s a discussion with the COO of Zappos and a senior marketer from Harley-Davidson, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming European Customer Experience World event in May – check out the website for tickets and details.

Kindly hosted by Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s intellectual adventurer and scholar of the new world of work. He focuses on customer loyalty and talent engagement.

In the chat we learn about…

• The genesis of Zappos quirkiness
• How Harley-Davidson is managing to stay relevant today
• Whether the ‘humanizing the organisation’ movement has staying power
• Examples of initiatives to build a sustainable culture of positive experiences/behavioural economics
• The evidence that these deliver topline and bottom-line results

STARRING:

• Alfred Lin, COO, Zappos
• Markus Kramer, director of marketing operations, Harley-Davidson
• HOST – Dean van Leeuwen, intellectual adventurer, TomorrowToday

Music by Amber Ojeda.

Episode 3: Not even the volcanic ash could delay this episode, a clientside special in which two former senior clientside insights folks dish the dirt on agencies (well, sort of!).

We’re pleased to welcome Lisa Ohlin who recently headed up the global insights function at Cadbury, famous for its Gorilla campaign. A campaign that, interestingly, tested poorly in research but was greenlit nonetheless (something we discuss).

And then there’s Jaroslav Cir, a former key insights player in the Rexona (deodorants) division of Unilever. He became well known for favouring non-traditional methods and approaches, and the agencies that espoused them. Techniques such as semiotics, crowd sourcing and co-creation. He recently left the UK for his native Czech Republic, opening a research agency in a Prague cafe.

We chat about…

• Agency biz dev approaches they liked/didn’t like.
• Why larger agencies are a turn-off.
• Whether their views have changed in the switch to agency-side.
• Allowing new suppliers not already onto the supplier long list.
• Why Cadbury allowed the Gorilla ad. to run against negative research feedback.
• What research needs to be to support both emotional (intuition) and rational (hard data) decision-making.
• Whether FMCG companies are getting more comfortable with social media – the Wispa example.
• Activating research clientside – the Bournvita battle plan.
• Getting clients away from their desks and in front of people (consumers) – focus groups in a cafe.

• Lisa Ohlin, Royal Mail
• Jaroslav Cir, Perfect Crowd
• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond, Cloud of Knowing, @johngriffiths7

Groove on.

Insight Course: On June 8th, John will be running an insight course for agency researchers with Pauline Williams, former head of insights for British Gas, Nationwide and ’3′. John says that it’s an opportunity “to learn how to work better with client companies to deliver insights. This course is about how clients operationalise insights and how agencies can better support this – this course is a rare opportunity for suppliers to get an insider view.” Tweet John if you’d like to sign-up or know more.

Click here for previous episodes. Remember to tweet us feedback, suggestions and guest ideas (@johngriffiths7 / @surinder).

Music by Kevin Macleod.

References: Greg Rowland, John Kearon, Research International (RI), John Pawle, QiQ International, Conquest Research

Produced by the wonderful folks at the RSA

But then again, sometimes it’s next to useless…

Pic c/o Twitter user ilicco

Episode 2: In which we delve into the extremities of stakeholder research and discover how it’s being pulled towards a more cohesive, organic, inclusive model.

We chat with Peter Hutton, at one end of the supplier spectrum with a classic research background and who rose to deputy MD of a mid-sized UK agency before deciding to establish BrandEnergy Research which services the stakeholder research needs of large organisations. And, in complete contrast, we also chat with Kate Tribe who set up Sydney-based Tribe Research without any significant research background after university, and who uses a set of web-based tools to steer her small-to-medium sized business clients, traditionally under-served by the research community, towards success.

We chat about…

• Genesis of their respective businesses
• The fuzziness of ‘category’
• The fallacy of only using metrics that change
• The value of simple conversation
• The challenges of researching via social media
• Insider vs. outsider views
• Telling stories (engagement examples)
• Web tools
• Lessons for large corporates (from smaller businesses)
• Whether MR as a whole heading in this direction?
• The tribal movement
• Including suppliers in the audit
• ‘Avatar’ and whether MR needs to be invasive

 STARRING 

• Kate Tribe, Tribe Research / @katetribe
• Peter Hutton, BrandEnergy Research
• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond / @johngriffiths7

Click here for previous episodes. Remember to tweet us feedback, suggestions and guest ideas (@johngriffiths7 / @surinder).

In the final of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ’10, we chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn about his new tool, Infexious, which he says better predicts the likelihood that a campaign will go viral.

More precisely, David is interviewed by Rob Gotti and Robert Hall, both from the Boston Beer Company and who were intrigued by the tool and had a few questions.

David founded and runs the London-based quantitative outfit Conquest Research. The invention of Infexious, which uses visual metaphors to get a more emotional, pre-cognitive measure of consumer reaction, follows the earlier development of Metaphorix, a tool using a similar approach to measure how engaging a campaign or execution is.

We chat about…

• What the tool does
• Pre-testing the Cadbury Gorilla ad. failed – would Infexious be any better?
• The difference between an individual and a social response – and which is best measuring
• Is this tool really measuring pre-cognitive responses?
• Validation – Evian & Compare the Meerkat ads.
• Do clients always want their ad. agency to develop ads. that go viral?
• Persuasion in communications without being rational – the Carling campaign

In the second of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ’10, we chat with anthropologist Grant McCracken.

Grant trained as an anthropologist (Ph.D. University of Chicago), has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He started the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he did the first museum exhibit on youth cultures. He has taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge, ethnography at MIT, and marketing at the Harvard Business School.

He recently published his third book, Chief Culture Officer, in which he argues that the time has come to elevate cultural understanding within organisations as part of both an offensive and defensive strategy.

We chat about the key themes in the book and are kindly joined by researcher Steve Gentile of Think Tank NYC, someone who I roped into the conversation once I heard that he had actually read Grant’s book

In the first of three short audio podcasts recorded at ARF Re:think ’10, we chat with Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Digital Strategic Services Online Division at Nielsen.

Pete was one of the early advocates of CGM and started a firm that eventually became part of Buzzmetrics, itself later bought by Nielsen. An author and prolific tweeter, we chat about…

• The implications for an organisation’s structure and culture as it grapples with responding to customer issues in real-time
• Which department should manage and own social media conversations
• The importance of ensuring that consumer trust is never ‘violated’
• Nielsen’s new algorithm for blending the potency of paid- (advertising) and earned- (social) media
• What CMOs are looking for from media measures
• The next challenge for social media: data integration, segmentation

Neither the BA strike nor the motley crew above could stop our first visit to the ARF Re:think annual confab in New York (a special thanks, btw, to Joel Rubinson and team for providing access).

Key themes this year were neuroscience, biometrics, social media management and measurement, integrating offline with online behavior (as advertisers and marketers look to link a stimulus on one with resultant behaviour on the other), and the increasing value of understanding cultural influences through ethnography. It was good to see a conference confidently devote so much of its agenda to the new MR, or ‘the new normal’ as the ARF referred to it.

Specific highlights for us include

• A marathon 2-hour session from various folks at Nielsen on ‘Thinking How Consumers Watch, Listen and Buy’. Led by Paul J. Donato, CRO, we learn, among other gems, that high search term prices was the reason for the bizarre but ultimately successful UK ad. campaign Compare the Meerkat. Donato also referred to big data sets – data abundance and mining was a clear theme, particularly among the big boys in audience and shopper measurement
• A panel discussing the new ways to understand influences on consumers, by looking through a social lens (Larry Friedman of TNS), a cultural lens (anthropologist Grant McCracken) and an emotional lens (Carl Marci, Innerscope). The different perspectives showed the value of diverse information sources and subsequent need to integrate or synthesise the data into a coherent, persuasive whole
• A lively debate among client-side folks on ‘How to Bring the Voice of the Human Into the Boardroom’. Some interesting ideas came out the debate moderated by Joel Rubinson: Stan Sthanunathan of Coca-Cola says they are slowly shifting to a pay-performance model for their MR agencies; John Forsyth of McKinsey says that his clients are looking for people with good synthesis skills; Susan Wagner of Johnson & Johnson talked of having shifted 15% of their MR budget to so-called new MR tools (she didn’t specify what these were). Stan also talked of ways to stimulate his internal clients’ thinking using more than just conventional research – for example by getting them to meet with folks in the army to share challenges and strategies

We managed to record a few short audio podcasts, do have a listen

• Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw on a new algorithm for measuring ‘blended media’ (paid + earned media) Listen here
• Anthropologist Grant McCracken on why companies can’t afford to continue without a Chief Culture Officer Listen here
• Conquest Research’s David Penn on his new tool for predicting the virality of communications Listen here

It was a pity we couldn’t stay for the final day when neuroscience and biometrics were covered in earnest. But we have recorded video chats with some of the key players and plan to bring the completed film to you later this year.

A big thanks again to ARF folks Joel Rubinson, CRO, and marketing director Heather James for giving me access to an event I look forward to attending again.

Here’s a couple of panel discussions from the event.

     
Paul Berney of the MMA probably said it best: giving the keynote at the Globalpark-sponsored 2010 Mobile Research Conference, he said that 2009 turned out to be the year that mobile became a serious consumer internet access device. But then he also said he wasn’t going to be held to that proclamation given how premature the prediction turned out in previous years!

Around 100 folks turned up for the two-day, well-organised event in London for what I believe was a meaty feast of the useful and practical. And there was good Wifi so lots and lots of tweeting (apparently nine tweets/min at one stage).

We took advantage of the Wifi to post these five podcast chats in almost real-time – hope the many hundreds who listened to these on the day felt the speedy upload was useful.

See here for audio from two of the panel discussions.

In the next few days we’ll add links to blogger commentaries:

My oh my, it’s been a while since we updated the blog. But we have been busy in the meantime updating the @mrnews feed with news and, more importantly, our brand of inspiration and ideas. Twitter’s become our favourite way of sharing this goodness, and the feed’s also syndicated to our Facebook group.

So, given the short break, we thought it time to re-engage those podcasting muscles. And this time with friend and inspirateur John Griffiths.

We’re calling it The John Griffiths Show because it will focus on issues and people in the brave new world of market research that are of interest to John. To say he has eclectic interests is an understatement – just look at (one of his) websites.

I’d like to think that John and I will chat with what I refer to as ‘builders’, that is those at the thick end of building the new future rather than merely talking about it. We’ll cover their struggles and find out how effective what they’ve built really is.

The last bit is an important shift from the way things were in 2006 when I first started podcasting. That’s when I noticed the swirl of a renaissance of new ideas starting to sweep the sector. But that’s all they were: ideas. Now, in 2010, alot of those ideas have been built out, tested, confirmed or ditched in the fine tradition of the scientific method.

The other aspiration for the show is to focus on things that make research much better than it is now rather than being satisfied with incremental change: e.g. searching for something that replaces questionnaires rather than something that makes them a few minutes shorter.

In this debut episode – and remember this is a work in progress – John and I talk mobile apps with a couple folks who have recently built some of their own. Ethnographer Siamack Salari talks about his iPhone app – the inspiration, development issues and reactions and future deals and developments. And Confirmit’s Pat Molloy talks about giving iPhone users the ability to build speed boats around his supertanker.

John and I have lots of ideas for some of fine folks we’d like to invite on the show over the coming months. But we’d also welcome your suggestions. Probably best to send us a tweet (@johngriffiths7 and/or @surinder).

 STARRING 

• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond
• Siamack Salari, Everyday Lives / blog
• Pat Molloy, CSO, Confirmit

Sound familiar?

From TechDirt’s Mike Masnick.

When I wrote this slightly provocative piece for Research World (link only active during Nov ’09) based on my feeling that quallies lacked ambition, I fully expected criticism and counter arguments.

Now, I did get a few folks telling me they agreed with the central tenets of my argument, namely that quallies weren’t innovating as much as they could be, or as much as entrepreneurs from outside the market research industry or some quant. firms.

But I didn’t get any criticism. Until now. And it’s come from an unexpected quarter: Simon Chadwick, editor-in-chief of Research World itself.

Here’s what Simon wrote:

…In the qualitative arena, however, we are seeing developments that perhaps come closer: collaborative research, ethnography and co-creation all feature heavily of accounts of development in qualitative. Indeed, Lewis and van der Wal conclude that co-creation can actually lead to increased brand loyalty, so perhaps there are hidden benefits to the ‘new’ qualitative!

Despite this, Surinder argues that innovation in qualitative research appears to be rather linear, as opposed to what is going on in quant. which he characterises as exponential. It is not often that I disagree with my old friend Surinder, but this is one of those times.

Simon is indeed a friend. But, hey, friends can disagree with one another.

You see, my target was the folks in the traditional part of the qualitative industry. That’s why I referred in my title to ‘quallies’ and not the ‘qualitative industry’.

Just as Simon does, I talk up the range of wonderful developments in areas such as neuroscience, biometrics and mass ethnography. But I then make this point:

You’ve [quallies] made a good start with those hybrid techniques. But some of the most interesting and potentially successful developments are arguably coming from ‘outsiders’ – entrepreneurs in quantitative and from outside the industry.

By which I was referring to developments in neuroscience which is being popularised by marketing ‘guru’ Martin Lindstrom. And the fact that quant. behemoth Nielsen has recently invested in Neurofocus (interestingly, Nielsen CEO David Calhoun sits on their board so this investment is clearly not casual). And the fact that online quant. agency BrainJuicer is experimenting with mass ethnography to scale its analogue cousin.

Simon’s core point is that quallies have been instrumental in these new developments. That may be the case but why aren’t they more prominent? Why aren’t they gunning to be the next Nielsen? That’s right, I absolutely think they should be building the next $1bn research company. If that sounds ridiculous for a qual. company then that’s not what I’m talking about; I’m talking, as Simon does in his piece, about a company that infuses deep and rich qualitative understanding into a scale business. It would be the ultimate research company. And it’s the ambition of a number of companies I know of. None of which do any significant level of traditional qual.

The difference of opinion may be one of vantage point. In any case, I still believe, in a positive way, that quallies aren’t ambitious enough. As I conclude in the piece…

Radical change is happening whether we like it or not. You have the talent, resources and nurturing environment to take advantage of that. Use that power wisely.