The Research Industry Needs More Experimentation

// January 11th, 2009 // Journal

Mr. Heretic gets it.

Other people get it too.

So why are few people using everything the internet has to offer the world of market research? Why aren’t you pushing the boundaries? Why aren’t you taking risks?

Don’t tell me that risks are too expensive. Don’t get silly and bet your company or your clients on a single new approach, methodology, or process.

But you can take many smaller risks and compare the results to past experiments. Afterall, we are a research industry, right?

So why do the instruments used in 2009 look almost identical to those used in 1959? Did we get it perfect back then?

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  • There are many reasons why. Here are two of the big ones:

    1) Middle managers who don't understand new technology have enough power, a motive (survival!), and often band together, to protect the status quo. The bigger the research company, the more this happens.

    2) Established MR companies are run by accountants. The will avoid risk and try to make the old methods leaner and more efficient until they have absolutely no other choice. This systematically inhibits innovation and frustrates the clued-in people within the company until the give up and leave.

    Seth Godin said it best: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03...

    <abbr>MR HERETIC’s last blog post..Safe is the New Dangerous</abbr>
  • Corey
    no one has figured how to integrate the technology with their 1950s platforms.
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