Research and Insights in 2023 – Ray’s Predictions

I spend quite a bit of my year consulting with organizations about the future and helping with a wide range of projects that try to assess current trends and future possibilities. Here are my thoughts about ‘where we are right now’ and where things might be heading in 2023 and beyond. Where are we now?
Before I consult with people about where we are going, I always start with ‘where are we now’. Without knowing where we are, it is highly improbable that we will know where we are heading and how to handle it.

A letter to Santa from five countries analyzed using World Cloud Plus

In December, we launched a study using our Fastuna platform in 5 countries: USA, UK, Germany, Australia and Brazil. In each country, we asked 100 people about their happiest moment this year, and what they would ask Santa for. The people spoke and we translated their open-ended answers into a word cloud using World Cloud Plus – a new brainchild of Ray and William Poynter.

Question 1: Think back to your 2022. What is the most beautiful thing that happened to you personally?

“Coming to realization how important family really is” Female, 55

What makes a great presenter? Analysis via Word Cloud Plus

NewMR and The Future Place have recently launched the first iteration of Word Cloud Plus – a better way to create word clouds. In this post, I show how I am using Word Cloud Plus to look at open-ended comments from surveys.

The data for this example comes from a project run by NewMR a few years ago and relate to the elements that people felt contributed to a good presentation.

A new way to produce Word Clouds – Word Cloud Plus (BETA)

With William Poynter, I have been developing a better way to create word clouds. It is now in open BETA and we are looking for as many people as possible to give it a try and to send us some feedback. You can try our BETA version of Word Cloud Plus at https://wordcloudplus.com/

What is the difference between strategy and tactics – and why are tactics so important?

Too many people, too often, seem to think the future is all about strategy. People often shun the everyday needs of tactics for the glory of being strategic. However, this is often a mistake, there is usually more work to be done with tactics than with the strategic.

The Art of War
The terms Strategic and Tactical can be traced back to Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, written about 2500 years ago. Szu Tzu writes “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” This comment neatly defines the need for the right balance between the two.

What can the insights industry learn from ‘Much Ado About Nothing’?

Last week I saw an amazing production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at my local theatre (the Nottingham Playhouse). As well as being a great evening’s entertainment, it was also an object lesson in how to positively embrace DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion. I think this production contained useful pointers for my industry – the insights profession.

Lisa Wilding Brown talks about ESOMAR

Ray Poynter chats with InnovateMR CEO Lisa Wilding-Brown about here time on ESOMAR Council and about the upcoming elections. For those of you who are ESOMAR members the voting starts on Wednesday, October 12.

Factors and Premises Affecting Insights and Market Research over the Next Five Years

I am working on a new insights/MR scenario project with a time horizon of five years from now. One of the first steps in the scenario-creating process is to gather together the key factors and premises.

The Premises are things that are likely to be important and which, for the purposes of this project, we are going to assume will be predictable during the timespan of the project. The Factors are items which are also important, but where there are two or more plausible forms they might take during the timeframe we are considering.

Here is my current list of Factors and Premise

Seyi Adeoye – Radio #NewMR Podcast

Ray chats with Seyi Adeoye, the Chief Executive Officer of Pierrine Consulting – a tech-first Insight Consultancy with offices in Nigeria and Kenya. Seyi is also a candidate for election to the ESOMAR Council.

David Smith – Radio #NewMR Podcast

Ray chats with David Smith about his recollections of dealing with inflationary times and recessions. David is one of these rare people today who has dealt with inflation before, given that we have not had to worry about inflation during the last forty years.

David is a Director of DVL Smith, a former Chairman of the UK Market Research Society and a former Vice President of ESOMAR.