Creativity was identified as the single most important attribute to future business success in a study that interviewed over 1,500 CEOs from 60 nations and 33 industries (IBM, 2010). A range of different agencies are employing techniques that actors and improvisers use to create believable characters and scenes to both explore and create business opportunities [...]
Much qualitative research is conducted (like many meetings) as if we only had brains and no bodies. Typically 8 people sit around in a circle. And answer questions. Sometimes look at photos. Other times close their eyes and imagine. Usually they don’t move. Embodied cognition is the idea that the mind is not only connected [...]
Over the last few months I have consulted to an international project which involved online co-creation. Interestingly, it was preceded by social media monitoring – listening to what people had discussed online in relevant populations and on relevant topics. The outputs of the first phase were compelling – for a different future. I realised that [...]
Have we got stuck at the same level of the online qualitative discussion for too long? It’s time to move on from discussing focus groups vs bulletin boards (which is like comparing hammers and saws). The paradox of online qual is that while it is all about the technology (because of the impact on participant [...]
I am reading the excellent ‘Thinking fast and slow’ by Daniel Kahneman which illuminates the human element of decision making. In the book Kahneman cites Klein’s premortem as a partial remedy to overcome some of the problems with optimism and decision making. Gary Klein came up with a proposal to overcome the overconfidence that strikes [...]
Alex Osborn developed with Sidney Parnes the Creative Problem Solving Process and set up the Creative Education Foundation at Buffalo. One of the people who attended the training was Min Basadur who worked at P&G. In what could be termed a brainstorming meeting (using tools influenced by the creative problem solving training), P&G developed an [...]
I have read a great deal of academic research on group creativity (for someone not at university) in preparation for a paper for Esomar on improvisation and its value for research. A spate of recent blog posts on brainstorming seemed mildly uninformed… (especially the blogs that quote blogs which quote blogs). Sometimes I laugh when [...]
I sat beside a guy from the Ministry of Education in Singapore at a presentation in the US. I realised half way through that he was creating the most amazing visual map of the key points that was actually more attractive than what was being shown. When I quizzed him about it later, he turned [...]
What changes for MR? The use of communities will grow; but media agencies rather than MR agencies will be the core suppliers. More clients will be starting to understand campaign success through social media monitoring. Expect to see a continued shift away from what some clients see as comparatively slow and expensive classic tracking studies [...]
Technology is enabling us to triangulate findings more quickly than ever before. The old U&A two step process sometimes led to qualitative assumptions or patterns that shifted with the greater volume of data gathered in a quant survey. Increasingly it is easier to use qualitative to illuminate data with context; stories and answering some of [...]
