A recent article in the Wall Street Journal observed that a recent trend in offices seems to an increasing use of whiteboard space, as well as visual props like sticky notes and construction paper during team meetings. Companies are pushing their employees to put down their smartphones and tablets, and instead draw out their thoughts the old-fashioned way.

With newly-popular products like IdeaPaint, which can be painted on most surfaces to create custom whiteboard space, practically every part of an office floor could be written on. And, if our always scribbled-on (often indecipherably so) whiteboards at the Corporate Executive Board are any indication, your colleagues will love the freedom to sketch out ideas wherever they please.

The theory is that allowing people to doodle freely has many beneficial effects. It not only fosters creativity by helping people get their ideas down right when they spark, but also eases communication between colleagues and conveys emotions to make ideas stick. As a universal language to fall back on during a meeting, doodling can help surpass barriers such as differences in language and technical familiarity.

Looking for other creative ways to achieve these same results? Take a look at some of the best practices we’ve uncovered:

• P&G and Amway’s Gust-Busting Experiences: P&G and Amway each developed multi-sensory, realistic, and interactive sessions with business partners to create powerful learning moments that allow them to internalize new ideas.
• H.J. Heinz Co.’s Interest-Provoking Tactics:  Heinz pulled together a series of engaging interview and pop culture videos in their presentations to easily communicate their insights and ensure that they will stick in executives’ minds.
• Corning’s Hypothesis-Based Research Process: Corning fostered idea generation by creating a team of market researchers and R&D scientists, and encouraging them hypothesize novel ideas and insights as early and often as possible without waiting for data to come in.

Related Resources:

• Engineer Learning Moments
• Communication Skills Development
• Insight Generation Toolkit
• How to Teach a Know-It-All
• Don’t Try to Overpower Other Info Sources, Co-Opt Them

Time recently summarized a reading comprehension entry from New York’s eighth grade standardized test that is beyond all comprehension.  It sounds more like one of those “a pineapple walks into a bar” jokes than a multiple-choice test entry: a talking pineapple challenges a hare to a race, and the other animals bet that the pineapple will win because he wouldn’t have challenged if he didn’t have some trick up his sleeve to win.  When the pineapple loses because (shocker) he didn’t move, the animals eat him.

The test writers then go on to ask these poor 13-year-olds crazy questions like “which animal made the wisest comments?” and, my personal favorite, “why did the animals eat the pineapple?”  And remember, this wasn’t an essay test; this was a multiple-choice, yes-Virginia-there-is-a-right-answer test.  Good luck with that!

Does this situation remind anyone of some of the questions you receive from business partners?  The questions we receive can range from the uber-specific (and un-important) color preferences for billing envelopes to the unanswerable, let me break out my crystal ball to identify the next fashion trend before it happens.

The good news is, unlike these stumped eighth graders, we can re-scope our business partners’ questions to make sure that answers will actually inform strategy.  We have a few ways to go:

• Identify true unknowns: conduct analysis to understand what your business lines know and what they really need to know in order to succeed.  Johnson & Johnson actually puts together an information inventory to before setting its research agenda.
• Make existing information usable: with all of the existing data at most companies many questions asked can be answered without new work.   You just have to make sure that this foundational knowledge is accessible.
• Just say “NO”: sometimes ad hoc requests of low value are not even worthy of re-scoping.  Have a very specific process for vetting project requests, and if the question doesn’t merit investment let your business partner know.

We would love to know: what is the craziest research request you’ve ever received?  Please share in the comments section below.

Over the past decade Timothy Judge at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business has studied high performers, and he has discovered a set of four characteristics that seems to set these folks apart from the rank and file, regardless of industry, level, or situation.  “Core self-evaluation,” an individual’s fundamental evaluation of their own abilities, has a huge impact on job performance.

A recent article on ERE.net dubbed those with a high core self-evaluation “Deciders,” because their belief in their own abilities means that they aren’t afraid to make decisions.  And since the best way to improve judgment is experience, this willingness to decide means those with high core self-evaluation develop good judgment faster.  So what attributes do deciders share?

1. Self-Efficacy-believing that they can overcome challenges
2. Internal locus of control-taking control of their own work and responsibilities
3. Confidence, not narcissism-caring about others and pitching in to help rather than thinking they are above others
4. Emotional stability-keeping a positive attitude, not becoming discouraged, making them less likely to burnout

Test your own core self-evaluation score here.

MREB research has also found that those willing to trust their instincts, and not rely solely on what the data shows, will provide better insights to their organization.  We have the accumulated knowledge of years of projects, so why base recommendations on a single project result?  There are a few ways that you can unleash your inner Decider:

• Take yourself from risk-averse to judgment-focused-change your perspective from one of fact-gatherer to decision advisor.  Diageo actually created new goals and characteristics to help researchers redefine their vision of themselves.
• Internalize business strategy-those focused on tactical projects lack the broad business perspective needed to improve judgment.  Kimberly-Clark requires that all projects link to overarching business goals, and has researchers document business unit strategy to ensure that they can make the connection.
• Engineer learning moments-once you’ve got experience-based insights to share, you have to know how to correct business partners’ overconfidence and misperceptions.  Companies like H.J. Heinz, P&G, and Telecom NZ know that it’s all about creating learning experiences.

Related blogs:

• 7 Questions to Tame the Information Fire Hose
• 10 Tips: Helping Leaders Relinquish Control
• How to Teach a Know-it-All
• The Key to Success: Humor?

Guest blogger Anna Bird is a researcher with the Marketing Leadership Council, a sister program of the Market Research Executive Board.

I recently saw a lecture by Jonah Lehrer, the Wired blogger and author of How We Decide about his latest book: Imagine: How Creativity Works.  He explores the seeds of creativity, covering a broad range of research on the topic and sharing findings from the wacky (blue walls and collective bathrooms foster creativity) to the practical (individual feedback is usually more effective than group brainstorming sessions).

Two themes particularly interested me:

• What distinguishes creative geniuses from everyone else
• What leads to those moments of insight when you suddenly have a great idea

First, Lehrer looks at new research on what distinguishes creative geniuses (Picasso, Einstein, Beethoven etc.) from the rest of us – and shares some pretty surprising findings.

These people don’t stand out from the average population in terms of IQ. They might not even do better at traditional creativity tests.  The key factor that sets them apart?  “Grit” — persistence and passion for long-term goals.  Grit is the ability and willingness to stick at something far longer than the rest of us – in spite of disappointment and difficulty.  The most talented people tend to be focused to the level of obsession.  Beethoven, for example, would try as many as 70 different versions of a musical phrase before settling on the right one.

“Grit” is a better predictor than IQ of:

• Who’ll win a spelling bee
• Which Ivy league students will get the best test scores
• Who’ll survive the first summer at the US Military Academy
• Which children will end up performing well at school

In fact, to see how well your child will do at school, don’t test their IQ – try the ingenious “marshmallow experiment” . This test leaves a child alone in a room with a single marshmallow on a plate – informed that they will get more marshmallows if they resist the single marshmallow for 5 minutes.  The children who resist the marshmallow end up with significantly higher IQ scores on average.

The second theme that intrigued me was the exploration of moments of insight.  We’ve all had that experience of struggling with a problem for hours on end and then suddenly experiencing an epiphany… the answer comes to us out of the blue.   New research has shed light on how this works via word pairing tests in which participants are asked to find a word that links 3 other words, e.g., Apple links Crab, Sauce, Tree.  This research has found a few common patterns.  First, when the answer comes to us it just feels right – we instantly sense that this is the solution.  Second – and more surprisingly – before we come up with the solution, we can actually tell how close we are to getting there. This is weird. We don’t know the answer, but we can accurately predict whether we’re nearly there – or nowhere near. But it’s really important.  It helps us know when we need to take a break or change tack vs. keep plugging away.  Third (and related to #2), that insight often comes to us once we’ve stopped consciously thinking about the problem – maybe in the shower or walking home for instance.

But there’s a link between this research on moments of insight and the research on grit.  When that insight comes – and it feels like it was out of the blue – it wasn’t.  Even if we have our revelation while in the shower and not thinking about the problem, the time spent reflecting on the issue beforehand will have helped.  Newton’s discovery of the theory of gravity is a great example of this.  The popular version focuses on that spontaneous moment of genius when the apple fell.  But Newton’s own explanation is almost the exact opposite: “I thought continuously until I reached the answer.”  To make Edison a little more accurate then – genius is 90% perspiration followed by 10% inspiration.

MREB members, use our insight generation tools to help develop your best recommendations.

Related blogs:

• The Best Time of Day to be Creative? Not When you Think
• 6 Creativity Killers
• Research: Turn Creativity into Insight
• Boost Your Insight Creativity the Psychological Way

If market researchers are really doing their jobs right, they should be spending a lot of time saying “no.”

• Project Scoping–getting to the right question is tough, and we have to make sure that we are spending time on the most valuable work.  Not only is it important to screen out low value work, but we have to help our business partners ask smarter questions.
• Insight Generation–a fact about your customers or competitors does not an insight make, and sometimes we need to tell our team members or business partners that the information they have isn’t enough
• Taking Action–communicating research often turns into a war against conventional wisdom.  We’ve got to break down business partners’ existing understanding to help them internalize insights

A couple of summers ago I asked whether research departments were too nice, and judging from the popularity of the post we might benefit from some training on disagreement.  A recent article on CBS MoneyWatch outlines five smart ways to disagree with your boss, and I think that these lessons translate nicely to help you take a stand with anyone in your organization:

1. Ask clarifying questions-sometimes a well-placed question or two can help guide someone to the realization that their plan isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 
2. Pick your time and place-know your audience and pick the time that will work best for them.  And of course, avoid public places to make sure your feedback isn’t taken out of context.
3. Accentuate the value to the team-phrase your feedback as an improvement that will help the group—lead with the value that your suggestions will create.
4. Speak up early and often-if you have provided feedback consistently you will not be viewed as defensive or negative when you have a counter-opinion to share.
5. Ask permission to provide feedback-for those with a more formal relationship, asking if it’s ok for you to share some feedback sets the tone for the conversation to come.

What do you think?  What are your favorite tactics for sharing tough feedback with your business partners?

Change, as they say, is good. Some of us require convincing of this seemingly self-evident truth, and there’s a whole industry devoted to helping people move their cheese. This weekend, as I did laundry and was greeted by a noise that sounded like an animate robot desperately trying to claw its way out of my dryer, I was still thankful that I didn’t have to go down to the stream with my washboard. Change, specifically innovative change, is good.

In the world of market research, however, good change can be hard to come by. How do we know which new methodologies are going to stick around and which innovations will instead share the fate of the Segway and Honegar?

In a perfect world, every new methodology would be faster, cheaper, and better at providing deep and relevant insight. In the real world, methodology innovation is more likely to succeed when:

• It is done purposefully, with a business need in mind. Teams can innovate selectively by identifying questions that cannot be answered with traditional methods, or by finding gaps in existing knowledge.
• There are structures and processes in place to support and encourage innovation.

Unilever was able to reduce new products’ time to market by 20% with their Standards-Based Methodology Innovation Cycle. A detailed set of best practices provides a benchmark against which new information sources can be evaluated, and helps to create clear innovation priorities. Ideas are solicited from a select group of suppliers and screened through a resource-efficient evaluation process.

Unilever created a great support structure around smart methodology innovation by tying change to business needs. Stay tuned to hear more ways new and better methodologies can be successfully integrated into your active portfolio, and in the mean time, check out our latest observations on methodology innovation.

Related resources:

• Unilever’s Standards-Based Methodology Innovation Cycle
• Illuminating the Unconscious: Using Neuroscience Techniques to Gain Deeper Insight
• Applying Neuroscience to Business Decisions

I imagine consumers of the 1960s would be horrified if they knew what marketers can do to them now. To think that their thoughts can now light up a monitor screen in the form of brain activation or retailers might know their daughter’s pregnant before they do (et tu, Target?).

50 years later, we have computers, and algorithms which used to take days to run now only take seconds. While analysts of ages past were often slaves to Excel and had to build their own bridges, data analysis nowadays is easy and comes complete with nice intuitive graphic interfaces. This democratization of data has made marketers happy and market researchers somewhat weary.

Why? Because market researchers think it their prerogative to keep tabs on what’s going out to their business partners. When marketers brought home an analytics team, often conveniently embedded in their own function, market research sulked over their loss of control. When the analytics team started brandishing social media listening tools and data mining algorithms, some marketing functions started wondering if market research will go the way of dinosaurs with their surveys and focus groups. This premature tendency to ditch established methods is what one might call the Shiny Object Syndrome in analytics.

In reality however, this war of methods is much less a fight to the death than it is a simple redrawing of boundaries.  Some toes may be stepped on, but no one’s head should be rolling. In fact, on a higher level, it is driven by a common urgency to better understand the consumer and the ecosystem he/she lives in. Read More »

My colleague Liz Barrett has blogged a lot recently about the decision making process and the real sources our decision makers turn to when it’s crunch time.  And the answer, oftentimes, is that they turn to themselves.  I think that’s why this recent HBR blog about democratized expertise resonated so much with me: as researchers we spend a lot of timing trying to determine if our knowledge sources are trustworthy and accurate, and it seems that we can apply similar screens to the partners that we work with.

Entrepreneur Daniel Gulati outlines five “everyday experts” who like to provide advice that they may not really be qualified to dole out.  How many of these profiles to you encounter in a given week:

1. All-Star Adviser: They are successful, so think their recommendations should work for everyone, in any situation.  Screen statements for situational applicability to avoid taking bad advice here.
2. Blog Bandit: After reading all the latest business resources, they present conventional wisdom as their own.  Always make sure the claims take all information into account, and that folks aren’t just following the herd with their theories.
3. Failed Forecaster: Always assumes that what happens tomorrow will follow linearly what happened today.  When assessing forecasts, remember that most perform no better than dart-throwing (i.e., distribute your grains of salt liberally).
4. Partial Pro: Slants all recommendations with some built-in bias.  This screen is an oldie but goody: always consider your source and what motivates them.
5. Deluded Directionalist: The correlation versus causation conundrum.  Just because one thing preceded another, doesn’t mean it caused the it.

I think Daniel’s descriptions provide a valuable checklist for interactions with our suppliers, our business partners, and perhaps even ourselves.  Do you have a system for assessing the validity of recommendations you hear?  What about the advice that you provide your partners; you don’t want them thinking of you as an “everyday expert”!  We’d love to read your thoughts in the comments section below.

Related resources:

• Don’t Try to Overpower Other Info Sources, Co-Opt Them
• How to Teach a Know-It-All
• EMC’s Peer-to-Peer Presentation Review
• Engineering Learning Moments
• Optimizing Content for Resonance and Shareability

Since the rapid growth of its economy in the early 1990s, India has charted a path of robust economic growth. Even during the 2007–2009 recession, India maintained impressive growth rates of more than 8%.  With a median age of 26.2 years, the country has one of the youngest populations in the world; Sixty-five percent of India’s population falls in the working age category. 

With the many changes India has seen since the 1990s, companies have a number of emerging segments to focus on:

• Rural India: With 151 million households increasingly diversifying in their occupation, rural India contributes to 54% of India’s GDP and 55% of the country’s monthly expenditure.
• Youth: The economic boom has resulted in more income opportunities and higher wages for the youth entering the economy. Unlike their parents who led a frugal life, the younger consumers have a limited savings mind-set. They live for the present and are willing to live on credit.
• Women: 16% Indian women, especially in cities, are economically independent and work outside of their homes. A recent study by supplier IMRB also showed that in the past decade the average income of the urban Indian woman has doubled.

For more information on these segments and researching this region, see our newest whitepaper: An Introduction to Conducting Market Research in India.

Related blogs:

• Conducting Market Research in China
• Conducting Research in Russia
• Brazil: What to Know before Researching Latin America’s Biggest Market

Guest blogger Corey Mull is a researcher with the Marketing Leadership Council, a sister program of the Market Research Executive Board.

According to some, the world is in a state of stagnation when it comes to innovation. Last year, in reaction to that, I asked if there weren’t still pieces of low-hanging fruit in management – are there things that innovation processes don’t consider? Places managers don’t look for innovative ideas?

We’ve noted that ideas and products that derive from customer-focused innovation processes are most likely to survive and succeed in the marketplace, so part of our recently-launched Marketer’s Playbook (which anyone at a company with an MLC membership can access using the same username and password you use for the MREB site) is a section on innovating with customers in mind . We think if you can convincingly cover all three of these bases, you’ll be well on your way to creating great, consumer-focused innovations:

Incorporate customer insight. There are limitations to using existing products as a point of reference for insight generation, but companies have seen great success by harnessing the creativity of lead users during the product development process. You can also use existing customers to surface underappreciated needs and market trends.  Surface unstated customer needs by focusing first on the task your customer is trying to accomplish with your product and then on how your customer measures success once they’ve completed the task.

Incorporate employee insight. Your customers aren’t the only ones that should be involved in the innovation process – employees are a great source of ideas about where to go next (as GM harnessed with their intelligence network) , but not in the ways you might think. You need to leverage employee insight and creativity across the organization in focused ways, and establish sensible guardrails to ensure employee-generated innovation stays relevant to the brand.

Build an effective team. Insights from customers and employees aren’t enough; an effective innovation process ends with a great team that turns insights into defensible products and services.

Related Blogs:

• Right People, Right Question is the Mantra of Open Innovation
• Need Innovation?  Look to the Humanities
• Lego’s Building Blocks of Innovation