The Market Research in the Mobile World conference kicked off on May 27th with interactive workshops that got client-side and supplier-side researchers together to solve for real-world needs.
We facilitated a session that sought to articulate the real, core challenges the Market Research industry faces, and then build actionable industry strategies relevant to both vendor and client side organizations. A focus at the business model level helped the session move higher up on the ladder above the “new method” space that the industry so often stays at.
The workshop provided both stimuli and structure for coming up with innovative business model solutions.
Stimuli for Innovation: Understanding Real Needs and Potential Solutions
Simon Chadwick of Cambiar, Lauren DeRaleau of Groupon, Sirlei Waterhouse of Kao USA and Kim Duncan of Givaudan were panelists for a candid conversation about needs at the business model level today, and in some cases, how their companies are going about solving for these needs through gutsy, startup-like mechanisms. Current barriers to innovation that the panel mentioned include:
- Budget and measurement required for stagegate qualification
- A reactive atmosphere where client-side researchers only suggest methods they know well and may or may not have the freedom to test new options out
- “Project” thinking instead of solving for holistic business needs
Stimuli for Innovation: Analogs
Quick case studies under several areas were presented: Partnering with Startups, Leveraging Design Thinking, Learning from How Startups Innovate, Experimenting via Labs, Opening Up the Innovation Process and Setting Proactive Innovation Portfolios & Priorities. Case studies included Nordstrom Innovation Lab, British Airways World’s First Innovation Lab in the Sky, Campbell’s Hack the Kitchen and Heineken Ideas Brewery.
Structure for Innovation: Templated Business Model
The “Innovation Ecosystem” worksheet above provided structured guidance with buckets like key enablers, competencies, tools and processes. These buckets helped participants anticipate what would need to be true of the future organization in order to be successful.
Table teams worked together to present out on their ideas, which were based on the intersection of an assigned analog and the Innovation Ecosystem. Many teams noted that they could directly apply the analog assigned, but with their objectives in mind:
- Better understand the user/client by tapping into empathy principles (inspired by Design Thinking)
- Run a Startup Bus with a specific need (inspired by Learning from How Startups Innovate)
- Give a set of startups their challenge and see how they solve for it (inspired by Partner with Startups)
We did not have to stray far from the analog inspiration to see how business models could be impacted for the good.
Participants in the workshop agreed that they could not keep doing things as they are today. We were excited about the opportunity to influence our industry to think in smart and scrappy ways to enable the Market Research industry to move into a mode of sustained innovation.
