Clear view on MR things needed...
One of the good things when blogging for a longer period of time is the fact that you - virtually - get to know a lot of people in your area of profession.
One of the bad things is, that if you keep on blogging about specific topics for let's say more than three years, you will see the day, that somebody you love to follow and read stops blogging. Although there are a lot of reasons for someone to stop blogging, sometimes you wish to read more from some "fading blogs".
However, sometimes it is valuabel to re-scan even those once loved "fading blogs", search for the good postings, re-read it and see if and what has changed over tim.
Yesterday I re-found one of my all time favourite posts ever - from May 2010.
Obviously MR hasn't died and is still alive, but some of Mr. Heretic, the blog owner, manifesto-style hypotheses are of course still dominating today's MR-scene.
For example this one: "You killed market research when you defended the status quo." To be honest, this is what we do every day, don't we? And for some reasons this is okay. But what about innovations?
I very much agree to Katie's view on active innovation. And MR has already talked a lot about innovation in 2012..
... but nearly exclusively to its clients :-)
However, what about innovating the own industry?
Another example: "You killed market research when you mistook information for understanding"
To be honest, I got a little bit fed up with the term "insight" over the last years. If every piece of information, offered to me as an insight really was an insight, I would be a wise man today.
Mistaking information for understanding also leads to the fact that we mis-educate our professional young talent. They often use the word insight, not knowing the difference between information and understanding.
So even MR is still alive our MR-world is still complex.
One of the consequences: We need a clear view on things and talk with each other about the requirements.
To get a clear view on the status quo regarding innovation and insighting (beyond lots of others) make sure that you join us at the The Market Research Event 2012, hosted by IIRUSA November 12-14, 2012 in Boca Raton, FL. For more about this year's program download the agenda.
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Today's guest post is from Christian Dssel (@olympiamilano). Christian is Senior Research Director at MM-Eye, a market research and research consulting firm in Hamburg / Germany helping clients from US and Asia to research Europe. He has worked for TNS, TBWA and other advertising, strategy and market research agencies helping clients from industries such as finance, transport and logistics, telecommunication and entertainment to understand consumers through market research and to increase implementation excellence. He will be live blogging from The Market Research Event 2012 this November 12-14 in Boca Raton, Florida. If you'd like to join him, register today and mention code TMRE12BLOG to save 15% off the standard rate!