Business Insider kicked off 2013
with a piece entitled "13 Things That Went Obsolete in
2012." Among them were some notable standbys of days gone
by, including hard drives, buying individual songs or albums, standalone GPS
units, non-smartphone cameras and even the venerable alarm clock. All of these
examples represent the rapidly escalating phenomenon of creative destruction.
If you're not familiar with the term, creative destruction is an
economic concept articulated by Joseph Schupeter in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. He wrote:
"Capitalism...by nature[…]never can be
stationary. The opening up of new markets […] illustrates the same process of
industrial mutation [...] that incessantly revolutionizes the economic
structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly
creating a new one. This process of creative destruction is the essential fact
about capitalism."
ritzholtz.com
As technological progress occurs at an increasingly rapid rate,
we're seeing creative destruction happen with alarming regularity. We live in the post-Blockbuster era. The
post-landline era. The post-Postal era. And the list continues. As I
began to apply this concept to the MR industry, I arrived at conclusions that,
for some, may seem utterly ridiculous.
As someone who believes that embracing the ridiculous (to borrow a thought
from Albert Camus) is an important element in innovation, I'd like to submit to
you my 5 sacred cows in MR that will become obsolete quicker than you and I can
imagine.
1. In-Person Focus Groups
While qualitative research is undeniable in its power and
immediacy, the traditional in-person focus group, conducted in a sterile
boardroom environment, is an endangered species. Although we try to
spruce it up with Koosh balls and other lighthearted techniques, it’s increasingly
difficult to entice consumers to come to a focus group facility and sit around
a table for two hours. Traditional focus group rooms limit creativity on a
psychological level, and it's becoming clear that its value proposition works
for a narrowing range of research problems.
In short, the traditional in-person focus group is on life
support and ripe for creative destruction.
What will replace it? In the near future, we will see the continued
blossoming of non-traditional focus group environments to make focus groups
feel like friends chatting at a bar. Definitely more enjoyable for respondents
and more conducive for creative exchanges of ideas.
Longer term, we'll see explosive growth in online virtual focus
groups conducted primarily from mobile devices. As collaboration
technologies evolve, online focus groups will become the de facto standard. The
blossoming of 4G LTE (and beyond) technologies will allow researchers to engage
effortlessly with consumers located anywhere.
2. PowerPoint Reports
Love it or hate it, PowerPoint is by far the dominant medium for
delivering research results. However, just because it is the standard
doesn't mean it is an efficient or effective platform for its stated purpose.
It forces a linear and static frame on information that deserves an engaging,
interactive, and multidimensional experience.
As a result, it's only a matter of time before PowerPoint falls
victim to a disruptive technology that will drive users to actively explore,
imagine and intuitively grasp the meaning of multiple streams of research
simultaneously. This technology will free insights within the entire
enterprise, unlocking them from the linear and siloed world of share drives and
search functions. I, for one, will be thrilled to see that day!
3. Online Surveys
Though a heretical thought today, the traditional online survey is a dead man
walking. In our brave new mobile culture, the idea that a 30+ minute
PC-based survey is going to be viable even three years from now is an increasingly
absurd belief. We (agencies and clients) need to shake ourselves awake
and realize we're living on borrowed time when it comes to this increasingly
anachronistic mindset.
What's the future? Micro-surveys. Modular data-fusion
techniques. Geofence-driven in-the-moment mobile feedback. Indirect
measurement. Facial sentiment recognition. Mobile neurofeedback. That’s the future.
4. The Quant / Qual Duality
Today, research is split into two methodological spheres: quant
and qual. We think of research as being either one or the other. We think
of qual phases preceding quant phases. All sequential. All nicely
compartmentalized. A mindset driven by current methodological limitations
and the intellectual constructs underpinning what we think of as research.
In an era of time compression and rapidly evolving technologies,
this duality will ultimately fade away. Quant or qual will be replaced by quant and qual. The worlds will collide. Both will occur
simultaneously. Qual methods will be interwoven with quant methods and vice
versa. The result will be research that is deeper, faster and more
insightful than today.
5. The Rational Frame
Underpinning the scientific method (and hence social and market
research) is the utter dominance of the “rational frame," the belief that
humans react in purely rational ways. Disagree with me? Just take a
look at any survey and the innumerable attributes respondents are forced to
rate on a five-point rating scale to explain what drives their behavior.
We all know intuitively that this isn't the way humans operate.
Yet we cling to this structure because it helps us feel more confident
and in sync with the other social sciences in our approach.
That's all changing, and the explosion of interest in behavioral
economics is evidence that the purely rational frame is ripe for creative
disruption. At this point, behavioral economics still lacks breadth of
methodological applications, especially on the quant side of the equation. (But
I’d like to credit my colleague Michael Alioto, whose passion about identifying
behavioral economics principles applicable to the MR industry inspired my
thinking on this subject.) However, I think it signals the beginning of a whole
new era, one that will allow research to more fully explain and predict the
behavior of human beings in all of their wonderful complexity.
So this is my list for the market research “eight-tracks” of the
future. And while you might agree with me on this, you may think it won’t
happen until 2020 at the earliest. My bet is we’ll be
shocked at how quickly this will go down.
Why do I believe this? One of my favorite reads over the past
couple of years has been Ray Kurzweil's seminal work The Singularity Is Near:
When Humans Transcend Biology. Regardless of whether you think Kurzweil's
vision is revolutionary or pure bunk, he offers a possible explanation for our
inability to keep up. He contends that Moore's Law (which posits that
computational power doubles every two years) places technology and our
civilization on an exponential curve. Additionally, he points to the fact that
we are approaching the nearly vertical portion of that curve.
As a result, because we have a hard time factoring that nearly vertical
trajectory into our thought process, we find ourselves constantly being
surprised by how quickly the bedrocks and foundations of our culture become
obsolete. And according to Kurzweil, we need to buckle our seat belts because
the wild ride is just getting started.
