With Leading Edge Marketing Research now published and my piece of the book in print, I now want to share two big ideas that came to me months after I had already submitted my manuscript – way too late to be added to the book.

Here they are:

Big Idea #1: Beyond the Database

I alluded in the book to the fact that we have moved from a world where information is scarce to one where it is abundant and that this has huge implications for MR. One consequence is the idea of “the river” of information. Another is so-called “Big Data”. And yet another is the primacy of screening, sifting and analyzing over collecting. So far, so good. Any reasonably clued in observer gets this.

But, there are two very big problems we’re going to get hit with shortly that I don’t hear enough about.

Problem #1 is that the amount of information we have is going to explode in a way that will astonish even the experts. RFID tags and their progeny will be in EVERYTHING. Smart phone ubiquity will make user-generated content explode. Location-based data will explode. The “river” is going to be more like an ocean. Assuming privacy concerns in some quarters are navigated (and I think they will be), “Big data” is going to be very big business.

Problem #2 grows out of the success that we will have in solving the first problem. We will harness this information. We will make life better because of this – in targeted products, in better efficiency, and in wellness applications. But, the weak link is going to be our knowledge management systems. There is data. It becomes information. Then we turn it into knowledge. The challenge is going to be banking, and organizing this knowledge in ways that allow us humans to build on what we know. I think that three things will flow from this challenge:

1. We will spend a considerable amount of time developing insight or knowledge taxonomies (I spent the last year developing one for StrategyOne).

2. Insight Management will play a critical role in the coming decades.

3. We will build systems in which the insights in an insight management system are programmed to find and communicate with the right people in the organization. You’ll have an insight management dashboard capable of displaying insights by domain and by category (building blocks, gamechangers, outliers, etc.), but the insights will also find you. Individuals within the organization will be tagged for alerts of new insights in their focus areas. This will come to you in video-game format as an avatar contacting you with new knowledge you should absorb.

We talk about “databases” today. We will need to develop insights management systems and the language to describe them. Just as we use the term “database” today, we will have common words for this insights system in the future. The more success we have in uncovering new knowledge through “big data”, the more we will need to strengthen our insights management systems.

Big Idea #2: “Rateocracy”

Everyone recognizes words like “technocracy” (rule by a technical elite), “democracy” (rule by the people), “theocracy”, etc.

But freedom, ubiquitous personal computing, and social networks are ushering in “rateocracy” – rule by raters. Today you can rate restaurants (Yelp!), employers (Glassdoor.com), bosses (eBossWatch), eBay sellers, college professors (ratemyprofessors.com), and other people (honestly.com).

At some point everything and (almost) everyone will have a rating.

Don’t believe me?

Think about Facebook “likes” today. Now think about what can be done as Facebook expands this to other “verbs”.

Rateocracy will give marketers a very tight feedback loop. I suspect that it will drive the growth of RIMEing (rapid, in market experimentation). But, it will also drive the use of in the moment, follow-up research clarifying why a consumer rated a product or experience as X. This will make the current net promoter score look rather quaint.

RPM