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Contextualizing and Translating – the post-insights age?

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Take a couple hands-full of researchers and marketeers, mix in a good amount of client-side representatives of various Business Intelligence and Consumer Insights departments, add a large amount of knowledge input and conversation and let simmer for two days under constant stirring.

It seems that the Merlien’s InsightsValley Event in Amsterdam got the recipe right, as we left the event with full heads and sparked enthusiasm. This was not only an interesting (and impressive) crowd due to the mix of researchers and clients, of industries and expertise, but also a well-organized and fun event.

The presentations covered a range of topics from co-creation and big data to different approaches to mobile research and what that means for us as researchers as well as for our clients. All of these themes got us thinking and offered food for more thought. Some of the hot topics immersing throughout the lively debates were the following:
• What do we do with large quantities of data and how can we maintain a focus on actionable research, rather than a focus on alone-standing insights?
• How can we maximize value in our research?
• Can lateral thinking and qualitative research help us connect the dots when it comes to ‘big data’?
• What are the benefits and shortcomings of co-creation – how do they fit in the world of research?

As you can see, food for thought was provided plentiful at the Sheraton Amsterdam-Airport Conference Centre.

Maximizing value – Are insights yesterday’s currency?

Many of the talks reflected the current economic climate and strongly promoted the need for actionable research and for research to fulfil different purposes. Both researchers and clients working with researchers agreed that providing findings alone is not enough anymore. In order to remain relevant as an industry, we need to generate added value. In order to provide added value, researchers can’t simply highlight ‘insights’ but instead need to translate findings into actions. Additionally, we see a need for new ways to recycle and incorporate previous research into our working routines.

In his presentation Bert Nijhuis, Consumer Technical Insight Director at Unilever, re-defined the term ‘insight’ based on the following three characteristics, challenging the industry to re-think what makes our input valuable. According to Bert, the three key ingredients for an insight are that it is truthful, looks differently to what we already know or reveals the unknown and it offers new opportunities. The first part here seems self-understood, but the second and third simple-seeming points are loaded with rich and complementing flavours. His second point is important, as an insight does not have to be something new, it can be something known, looked at from a new perspective or through a new lens, thus revealing a greater depth of field. And Bert’s third point, just as was the message in many of the presentations, is a call for actionable research. In order for us researchers to offer value, we must go beyond to find the opportunities.

Now more than ever, clients think twice before commissioning new work and the trend is moving towards recycling data from previous projects. So, as an industry, we need to ask ourselves how we can ensure that our research provides truly actionable research for our clients and partners. How can we adjust our focus to look for solution and ideas rather than findings or insights?

So as researchers, we must generate added value. This also became evident in Erika Fattori’s talk. She is the Head of Community Intelligence at UniCredit and called on researchers to “dedicate efforts to communicate all key findings in the most attractive way and to refresh information to avoid crystallizing.“ She adds that we also “need to integrate information as much as possible. Companies have a lot of data that are used in ‘silo-departments’. The more information that is concentrated in one repository, the better it is to mix it up and use different data.” Dr Pamela Pauwels of Phillips Healthcare spoke about the challenges with the dissemination of insights and suggested for example creating a depository with knowledge cards/issue 
cards, creating a network of experts and using case studies or shared point databases.

Big data and qualitative thinking – The perfect match?

According to an IBM article, ‘big data’ describes the large amounts of data being collected from literally everywhere (this includes social media posts, cell phone GPS, from sensors gathering climate information, or even purchase transaction records.) “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone”. [IBM]

As researchers, we run into similar challenges. Through the possibilities that for example mobile research opens up, we will be able to gather more information faster and more immediate from our participants. In a sense, we are gathering ‘big data’. Some great presentations about the present and future of mobile research were shared by Kay Schneemann, who talked about some of their mobile research at Guner+Jahr and Dave Kaye of Kiosk, who presented some of their work for BBC Global News. The re-occurring theme during these two days however was that big data is only valuable if we can figure out what to do with it. How do we sort and index all this data, how do we make it accessible? How do we analyse large quantities of data and create something that is valuable and actionable?

Today we all collect ‘big data’ because we expect that we will be able to find a way to analyse and capitalise it in the near future. As it looks now, big data might have the chance to come up with a replacement for some quantitative and observational techniques (to some extent). As we all know, people are bad witnesses of their own behaviour: What they do, what they say and what they think they do are three different things. So while big data may be the means to bypass information errors, what will be needed are the brains to connect the dots, to contextualise and to ‘humanise’. Big data will not be able to provide us with the internal, subjective views and/or the underlying motivations for the observed behaviour. We took this as motivation to continue a focus on contextual research, which will be needed now more than ever to connect the dots.

Co-creation and research – A contentious relationship?

Co-creation is still a hot topic, even after years in the spotlight. And at this event we saw the theme come up in many of the presentations and discussions. Maybe partially due to the interesting mix of client-side participants and researchers, we saw a slightly heated debate develop about the relation of co-creation to research.

A great example of involving the consumer was shared by Joëlla Marsman, Consumer Insights Manager at Heinz and Anouk Willems
, Senior Research Innovator at InSites Consulting. Their shared presentation focused around building online communities at Heinz and using the community to gain a sense for their consumer base, but their conclusion let back to ‘big data’ and the challenge around getting to clear and targeted results. Another very successful example for co-creation was presented by Jan Van Helden of KLM and Martijn Pater of Fronteer Strategy, who shared the KLM social seating concept Meet & Seat. And if you have not heard about their project yet, check out the video below and find out how you could sit next to Wubbo Ockels on your next flight. Now we wish we had chosen KLM for our trip to Amsterdam…

Throughout this event, we observed an overarching pattern around consumer-centricity and the ‘hip approach’ seemed to be through co-creation. This lead us to ask ourselves, what is our role and what should it be in these rising waters of co-creation and collaboration? Ray Poynter, who co-chaired the event, asked some tough questions and pointed out that often co-creation may be more focused on moral superiority, rather than efficacy. How can this be avoided, and how can efficacy become part of the co-creation equation? Has this been true in your experience?

raypoynter

Refresh…then bring the heat!

As a pleasant surprise, the last presenter Gitta van der Meer, Head of Finance and Legal Affairs for Research Africa was able to join the event on a last minute notice. Her presentation was one, which added some spice and got us to rethink new ways to approach consumer-centric, pulling our focus to different cultures and different needs. Her presentation, while following this red thread of consumer-centricity, slightly shook the crowd awake by challenging us to rethink what this concept means in different contexts and forced us to extend our euro-centric understanding of our industry and look beyond.

Gitta prompted us to think about the different cultures and contexts in which we work. In yet another culture Mexico, street vendors sell cucumber sticks coated in chilli powder to offer ‘refreshment with a kick’ on a hot summer day. We believe the same goes for events such as this. There is nothing like a refreshing bite of new knowledge and ideas coated with a bit of heat to leave us wanting more…


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