Morning Researchasaurs!
A well written and provocative post from Peter Chopra: ‘Market research: The Serial Killer’.
“Market Research has a reputation! It’s a BAD one!! We are up there with cold calling, spammers and nuisance callers.”
Some very interesting points are raised around collapsing participation rates, diminishing reputations, and the likelihood of eventual extinction as a consequence.
Familiarity breeds anything but contempt?
Why are famous paintings, well, famous?
“If you can’t see they’re superior, that’s your problem. It’s an intimidatingly neat explanation.”
Here’s a fascinating insight into why, for example, the Mona Lisa stands out. It has some parallels with some modern research methods…. and we’ll leave that hanging there.
Pre-mortems
The pre-mortem concept is explored in this from Tim Harford, and could prove very useful in NPD…
“…an exercise in which you try to imagine scenarios in which your project fails.”
We’re seeing plenty of post mortem work when a product gets pulled – see Coke Life. But a tighter focus on the pre-mortem might help companies do less post mortems? Perhaps it will also help with disconfirmatory feedback, “the most useful feedback imaginable” (I had to look that one up as well).
Stop working so hard
Good news. To be creative isn’t about working hard, as this article about Darwin being a slacker is all about.
“…the secret of their creativity lies in understanding not just how they labored but how they rested, and how the two relate.”
With that in mind, The New York Times gives us some useful responses for people who you’ve meant to reply to, but have been too busy to / can’t be bothered to.
The bus
And finally, a lovely piece from Rory Sutherland about how someone reframed something he hated, and made him like it: the (not any more) tedious bus ride from the plane.