Supernova: Research & Relationships

I moderated a workshop yesterday at Kevin Werbach and Wharton Business School’s Supernova, called “Research and Relationships. Joining me were Aaron Coldiron of Mircrosoft, Amy Shenkan of McKinsey and Ellen Konar of Google (thanks, folks!). The description:

When it comes to relationships, research is about more than metrics. How can businesses measure the value of their relationships? And, with the massive amounts of content being generated by individuals, how do they harvest it into meaningful market analysis?

My opening addressed my ten disruptions and opportunities in market research, measurements and insights:

  1. Digital network adoption
  2. Attention erosion
  3. Speed of measurement
  4. Democratization of data and analytics
  5. Observational measurements
  6. Unstructured data
  7. Beyond demographics
  8. Customer-centric measurements and planning
  9. Data integration comes of age
  10. Reevaluating relationships with whom and what we measure

One of the interesting tangents of our discussion was the sharing of data and insights across organizational silos — something each of the panelists was passionate about. Ellen Konar noted that at Google there is no top-down, highly structured method of sharing insights work, such as her experience at other large companies. “At Google, it happens through search, dugh!”

My translation: More than ever, the output of market research, intelligence or analytics must be relevant, impacting, search friendly and tell a good story with an angle; it must lure people and be optimized for word of mouth and pass-along by employees and departments within the enterprise. In fact, the potential value of market research depends largely on its ability to embrace a pull-marketing model, at least in part.  It’s all about the marketing of ideas — in this case, internally.

Thanks to Supernova participants who chimed in, including Sanford Dickert, Mitch Ratcliffe, LaSandra Brill and Richard Derks.

Published by Max Kalehoff

Father, sailor and marketing executive.

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