Editor’s note: Steve Phillips is CEO of market research firm ZappiStore, London.
I’d like to introduce you to Peter Diamandis. Diamandis runs Abundance 360, a future-thinking organization. He’s also the co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University and the co-author of The New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. What do Peter Diamandis’ ideas about abundance have to do with market research?
The core idea of abundance is that innovative technology becomes so plentiful that it has a positive, cost-effective set of ramifications across the planet and for all its inhabitants. Most of the companies involved at the moment are digital and they’re trying to scale at a global level. They’re changing traditional systems by being faster, cheaper and better in their space.
I was lucky enough to attend a Singularity University conference recently where a chart was shared showing the changing costs of solar energy over the past 30-to-40 years – from $76.00 per watt in 1977 to less than $1 per watt now. Prices are continuing to shrink. We are entering a phase of abundant energy where solar power will eventually become almost free for the user and, as such, their demand for fossil fuels will collapse. This, in turn, has dramatically positive knock on effects for the welfare of the planet.
This set me thinking about market research. We are now entering a world where abundance is the primary way of thinking about anything digital: the cost of innovating something for the first time is, let’s say, £1 million. But by the time this process is replicated one hundred times, the cost is far less. That opens a world of possibilities.
Market research should be accessible to everyone running businesses of any size. It’s been pointed out many times that we currently service only a tiny portion of companies and organizations – at most 2 percent. This abundance that we’re seeing in digital could open the data and insights up to small and mid-sized enterprises that have never had the chance to really take hold of the value of insight. Departments of brands that have always struggled with research budgets can now double or triple their research output, or even start doing research from scratch. It’s an incredibly exciting time for insight teams.
This is a fairly radical step for the industry, potentially providing services to every company on the planet and hopefully involving ourselves in every important business decision being made.
How do we go about making market research as universal as this?
Transformative technology will keep coming into play, leading to seismic shifts in how professional roles are defined in our field. The democratization of survey data is inevitable so the MR workforce needs to brace itself for far less time spent on number-crunching and trade it in for quality consulting and strategic planning, hopefully in a digital format to allow this thinking to scale.
Tech changes the daily routines within organizations . Many huge businesses are adopting a more agile work mode in their insight teams as their staff can now test and learn at speeds previously unheard of.
As market research practices become more advanced and more accessible, the voice of the consumer will be far better represented in the boardroom — generating growth and, hopefully, many innovative products and services.
So, welcome to this new world of abundant research! What role will you play and how much are you going to bet on it? Are the biggest changes a year away or maybe as far as five? Will this evolution herald changes for all aspects of research — or just a few?
There are lots of questions, theories and concerns, but there’s no arguing: it will certainly be an exciting time for the industry.