A look back at TMRE 2009: How Do You Research A Tsunami? A New Era For Market Research

The Market Research Event 2010 is taking place this November 8-10, 2010 in San Diego, California. Every Friday leading up to the event, we'll be recapping one session from The Market Research Event 2009.

Keynote Presentation: How Do You Research A Tsunami? A New Era For Market Research

Presenter: Jim Dator, Professor, University of Hawaii & Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies

Jim Dator begins his keynote presentation by mentioning that this is a great time for transformation in market research, and that the economy will bring forth new opportunities that were not available before.

To be truly effective in future studies, forecasting has to be done continuously instead of one-shot only.

Jim explains the way the Three 'components' of the future used to be
1. Continuations ' 80%
2. Cycles ' 15%
3. Novelties ' 5%
Then he goes on to explain the three 'complements' as it may be now
1. Continuations ' 5%
2. Cycles ' 15%
3. Novelties ' 80%

In order to make predictions and assumptions on the future you must be ready to sound ridiculous, to be laughed at, and even to be wrong at times. The definition of Future studies does not mean studying the future but instead images, ideas, theories, and methods of the future. Jim has discovered that billions of images of the future can be categorized into 4 alternatives.
- Continuation
- Collapse
- Disciplined Society
- Transformational Society

Jim Dator mentions, 'Humans are able to do things they could not do before and thus develop new ideas, new values, and new social institutions.'