Better, Faster, Cheaper? You Don’t Need All Three To Innovate Successfully

The tortured history of this topic within the GRIT Report attests to just how difficult it is to conduct research among any audience on the subject of emerging ‘technologies’, or methods in our case.

Firstly, the use case for any new method needs to be established, and this is not always obvious, nor shared among the potential user base. Nor is it obvious what the new method might replace, if anything, or if it represents a whole new way of doing things.

So, the survey writer struggles to know what to include for consideration, while the survey respondent struggles to understand what it is they are being presented with.

And then you need to know when something emerges from buzz and becomes emerging, and then when it stops emerging and becomes mainstream – not an easy task. The irony is not lost when the report states that “Some of our methods have been emerging since 2014….”

A particular problem for new method adoption in market research is that we invent very little from within. What we tend to do is take other innovation trends, and see how we might adapt them to our needs. We can think here about things like Neuroscience, Prediction Markets or the Internet of Things. All of these have had their buzz moments, and yet they have not found a foothold in mainstream research. So today, we might wonder whether other “technologies in search of an application”, like Blockchain or Virtual Environments, perhaps might go the same way.

The old adage for successful innovation is better, faster, cheaper – and you don’t need all three to succeed. So, what is a better way to measure the emotional response to a stimulus – ask question or use Heart rate variability/Galvanic skin response? Perhaps the non-questioning methods are better but who would you get to do it? Would a participant have the equipment? Is a fitness monitor sensitive enough for our needs? It’s all a trade-off.

Maybe the best way to read this data is to consider whether you are using the methods that over 50% of your colleagues or clients are. If you’re not, should you? Do you even understand it? Perhaps you should.

For the less common techniques, think: what are they, really, beyond the hype? What could they do in a market research setting? What technique could they replace? What could they do that you’ve never done before. Be open-minded about them. They don’t have to change your entire business model – just be better, faster and/or cheaper.