Tag Archives: market research

Innovating on Facebook

Customer feedback represents a rich source of ideas for product innovation. However, the traditional methods of customer feedback collection– surveys, focus groups and ethnography–are labor-intensive and costly, so that only large and resource-rich firms can take full advantage of this … Continue reading

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Why Do Startups Fail?

I came across a March 2015 TED talk by Bill Gross, founder of the business incubator Idealab. He set out to identify the “single biggest reason why startups succeed” (or fail). To do so, he considered the five major factors: … Continue reading

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Start-ups as an enemy of entrepreneurship?

On July 27, The Telegraph published a column offering a blistering criticism of start-ups and what it’s calling a “start-up culture.” As the column author, Lucas Mikelionis, argues in the header, “Start-up culture is corrupting our youth and killing real … Continue reading

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On Henry Ford, Toyota and Faster Horses

A consensus seems to have emerged that customer feedback, gathered through market research, is a key to successful innovation. And yet, dissenting votes can still be heard. Some folks claim that paying too much attention to customers can stifle innovation, degrade … Continue reading

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Crowdsourcing data analysis–and everything else

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a troubling finding questioning the objectivity of the traditional market research. A team of scientists from Imperial College London conducted a study on how marketing managers choose products and services. The study showed … Continue reading

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Don’t blame crowdsourcing for your own faults

There is a Russian saying: to break into the open door. It describes a situation when someone is trying to solve a problem that simply doesn’t exist. I’m always reminded of this saying when I hear complaints that crowdsourcing isn’t … Continue reading

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Is it time to replace market research with crowdsourcing?

We all know the drill: In order to innovate, you need to know what your customers want. In practice, companies either create marketing departments in house or order market research data from outside. The idea is that once you focused … Continue reading

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