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.

Rosie Campbell – Radio #NewMR Podcast

Rosie Campbell shares her memories and experiences of the inflationary 1970s and 80s – focusing on the world of the qualitative researcher.

The conversation between Ray and Rosie is designed to enable today’s researchers and leaders to learn from history, given that it is forty years since the West faced inflation.

Viki Cooke – Radio #NewM Podcast

Inflation is a major challenge facing managers and researchers around the world. Most of today’s leaders have zero experience of inflation as we have had low rates of inflation in the West for forty years.
This is your chance to learn from leaders in our industry who have been there before. In this second podcast in our inflation series, Viki Cooke, Co-founder and Chair of BritainThinks shares her recollections of the 70s and 80s, starting with her experience in the advertising world and then market research.

Simon Chadwick – Radio #NewMR Podcast

In today’s podcast Ray Poynter chats with Simon Chadwick. Simon is Managing Partner of Cambiar Consulting, a change management consulting firm he founded in 2004. Prior to this, he was Global CEO of NOP World as well as of four research companies within Kantar in Europe and the U.S.

Simon’s experience of inflationary times includes his time with Research International, an agency owned by Unilver at the time, which went on to be a key part of Kantar. In the podcast Simon highlights ‘cost of living’ salary adjustments (at times twice a year), proposal to clients that said the price was good for two weeks, and contracts where the final price depended on the prevailing exchange rates.