If you’ve read restaurant reviews on Yelp, rated a vendor on Angie’s List or rated a seller on eBay, you’re already part of the movement toward Rateocracy, a world in which everyone and everything has a transparent, realtime rating.

As just one example, a vendor in Virginia recently sued a woman for what he claimed was an unfair rating on Angie’s List.  He was largely successul.  He sued on the grounds that her rating of his work would cause undue harm.  This is an early test case for Rateocracy.

If you’ve read books like Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” or Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story”, you now how these near-future, speculative writers describe worlds where reputation is currency and anonymity is a relic.

That is the world that we’re fast approaching.

There are numerous social implications (like the fact that the harshest new form of surveillance will be peer-to-peer), but I want to focus on market research broadly.

And the biggest change to MR that I can forsee is that the feedback loop between customer and marketer becomes very fast.  Don’t like the service in a chain restaurant?  Out comes the smartphone and a lower rating.  Unhappy with a new pair of shoes?  The maker and shoe model receives a low score.

“Oh, but we have a customer sat. tracker we run quarterly…”

Blank stare.

Your customers are rating you now, in real time.  No one in management will want to wait 90 days.

Yes, we’ll have huge projectability challenges to sort out.  But, we’ll eventually find ways to integrate these rate streams.

And, I have a strong suspicion that one very smart company will make a universal rating system stick.  If so, they become the largest market research vendor on the planet.

It all seems so far fetched and Orwellian, but it isn’t.  It’s really just an example of technology returning us to life in a village or small town where reputations are known.

This could evolve in several ways.  A firm could roll out one, compelling and universal rating system and we’re there.  This is the “big bang” scenario and some have tried.  Kevin Rose’s Oink tried.  I think the more likely scenario is that various social platforms and sector-specific apps will edge us ever closer to Rateocracy until, through a hodepodge of sites, apps and networks, almost everything is being rated.  Then, as this matures, I suspect we’ll see the rise of some kind of middleware solution or clearinghouse that acts as a one-stop app for all kinds of ratings.  And from there I assume there will be a standards war for the one rating site to rule them all.

One technology I look to to give this a push is image recognition software for people, logos, products, etc.  This could speed the process at Point of Rating.

My speech tomorrow morning is titled “The Once and Future Roles of Corporate Researchers”, it begins with Shakespeare (a personal weakness) and explores 5 possible future roles.

As usual, my presentation borrows heavily from strategic foresight principles and future scenarios.

And, as usual, the presentation is a bit edgy, provacative, but ultimately helpful in providing “memories of the future.”

So, what are the 5 roles?

They are:

1.  Innovation Coach (managing large, open innovation platforms)

2. Knowledge Manager (in an information abundant world)

3. Tribal Expert (Chief Ethnographic Officer)

4. Idea Virologist (understanding how product recommendations spread in a peer-to-peer world)

5. Futurist (anticipating consumer needs and new markets in a fractured, high speed future)

The speech begins with a recap of some of our roles within our organizations today, looks at some of the challenges unearthed in a clever BCG report back in 2009 and reviews their model for function development.  That’s the present.

Then we move to the future and that future does not look much at all like today.  Accelerating, discontinuous change almost assures that.  In fact, this is why I’ll lead this section with the 10 D’s that will change commerce and ultimately MR.  From there I’ll take  a look at the 5 megatrends reshaping our futures:  data abundance, asking-observing shift, democratization, convergence and the strategic imperative.  And that launches us into a discussion of new roles – which we should all be excited about.

Some quick thoughts on these roles…

Innovation Coach:  Take a look at Spigit, the Dewmocracy campaign and McDonald’s Mein Burger crowdsourcing effort in Germany.  These are weak signals of a world in which product development is radically democratized.  I’m very excited about what we can do in this space.  Who better to lead open innovation than the MR team, the team that loves listening to customers?

Knowledge Manager:  MR was developed in the industrial era when data was scarce.  Many of our structures still reflect this.  Now data is abundant.  A flood.  How do we adjust?  We create insight taxonomies and manage knowledge flows about the customer.  This is the logical extension of “big data”.  Big Data will need some kind of knowledge management structure or it will collapse of its own weight.

Tribal Expert:  How do we insulate against rapid change?  One answer is to embed our products within human ritual.  And that means we’ll need to better understand our customer tribes.  There are a number of weak signals and trends here already.  And, I think this role plays to our strong suit as researchers – our innate curiosity and our anthropological roots.

Idea Virologist:  If you’re familiar with the idea of memetics, you’ll enjoy this immensely.  What happens when peer-to-peer in a digital age flattens advertising?  How do we market products in that future?  We embrace memetics and the concept of ideas as viruses.

What did I leave out?

Consultant:  I assume that we’re already pretty good consultants.  If some of us aren’t now, we’ll learn and evolve.

Neuroscientist:  I happen to think that as this field matures it will become another toolset in the toolbox and be incorporated into the mix.

DataMiner:  Big Data has one big problem and that is handling all the output.  This is why I think knowledge management will be so critical.  Every finding is not an insight.  Those familiar with the knowledge pyramid get me on this.

There you have it.

I quote Miranda from The Tempest (my favorite):  “O Brave New World!”

My speech is on, what else, the future of market intelligence…

Some points that I’m going to hit today:

1.  The Age of Disruption:  Most observers focus on the internal functioning and development of the market research industry and NOT exogenous change.  I’ll be discussing at length the 10 Ds of disruption that will change commerce and eventually MR.  These are:  disruptive tech, digitization, disintermediation, dematerialization, demonetization, data, democratization, DIY,  and demography.

2.  Scenarios:  I’m also going to walk the audience through 5 of the 22 scenarios that I developed in “Leading Edge Marketing Research”.  These will be:  Power to the People (crowdsourcing), Tribal Rituals (embedding all products in ritual), Epidemiology (Memetics overtakes MR), Portal Power (knowledge management and MR fuse) and Anticipation (MR merges with futurist, scenarios work).

3.  Some Big Questions:  I’ll close today with 3 big questions Ive been wrestling with.  These are:

a.  How will “Big Knowledge” evolve in order to harness “Big Data”?

b.  Where are crowds wise and where are they stupid?

c.  What are the limits to trend extrapolation in a time of rapid, discontinuous change?

It should make for great discussion and I’m looking forward to hearing from the audience on their thoughts.

Here’s a deep dive on the 3+1 scenarios I present today:

Tribal Rituals:  In this MR future consumptions becomes increasingly about experience and purpose and marketers turn increasingly to the creation of community and ritual with the physical product embedded at the core.  Think scapbooking parties, motorcycle weekends, tea parties, etc.  This approach works because of 3 intersecting trends: (1) social change is so fast that there is a need for stabilizing ritual, (2) the new century places a higher value on shared purpose and (3) location-based social media makes community gatherings easier.  A weak signal of this future is Starbucks’ campaign “take comfort in rituals.”

Let’s Play a Game:  In this MR future, survey research declines due to respondent fatigue, but research through gaming advances rapidly among the young.  Online shopping simulations surge in popularity.  Game design replaces survey design.  We’re seeing the beginning of this with so-called “gamification”.

Dispersive Convergence:  In this MR future the internal insights department fades away as DIY research tools democratize data gathering and knowledge management systems replace some of the knowledge sharing functions of an internal insights department.  But, interestingly, MR professionals do better in this world as they are freed to become voice of the customer consultants.  The research department dies, but the researchers do well.

Now for the +1, “Rateocracy”:

I’ve blogged about this idea before, but essentially it is a future in which everyone and every thing (including all products) have a realtime rating.  The outlines of this future already exist.  Yelp and Angie’s List are two current examples of the beggining of this trend.  Oink.com tried and failed.  Stamped.com is the next attempt.  This will happen and it will usher in an era of reputational economics.  It will also impact MR.  Just think of the change to MR if open, realtime ratings streams on all products are available.  First, this would support the “fast-fashion” model of product development.  Second, it will likely spur a tsunami of follow-on studies.  Marketers will want to know why product X’s rating dipped or why they have such poor ratings among younger women.

I’m looking forward to feedback and questions post-speech.

Here’s a preview…

Eve of Disruption:  First, business and society are facing very large, discontinuous and disruptive forces.  These I call the 10 D’s: Disruptive Tech, Disruptive innovation, Digitization, Disintermediation, Dematerialization, Demonetization, Data, Democratiziation, DIY and Demography.  Given these massive changes, we shouldnt expect much in the way of continuity in MR.

5 Megatrends:  Next, I will look at the 5 Megatrends in MR:  Data Abundance, Asking-Observing Shift, Democratization, Convergence, and the Strategic Imperative.

Future Scenarios:  Then I will topline 3 of the 22 future scenarios that I outlined in my chapter in “Leading Edge Marketing Research”:  Tribal Rituals, Let’s Play a Game and Disruptive Convergence.  Of these 3 I am the most excited about the Tribal Ritual and Let’s Play a Game scenarios.

And finally, I preview my thinking around the idea of Rateocracy, the point at which everyone and everything will have a rating and in which rating sites (think Yelp, Angie’s List, Stamped, etc.) become MR platforms and suppliers.

Market Research in the Mobile World
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Date: July 18-19, 2012
http://www.mrmw.net/MRMW-North-America-2012/speakers.html

Social, Local, Mobile Market Research Innovations Congress
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: August 14-15, 2012
http://www.marketresearchinnovations.com/

Corporate Researchers Conference (Marketing Research Association)
Location: Dallas, Texas
Date: September 19-21, 2012
http://www.marketingresearch.org/2012-corporate-researchers-conference

Market Research Day
Location: Oslo, Norway
Date: November 1, 2012

We’ve had some great presentations and discussions about mobile research, emotional hot states (BrainJuicer), passive measurement and privacy.

And today I’ll be talking about (a) futuring tools and (b) market research futures.

With this in mind, I’ll give a sneak peek on my presentation.

In a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) the future is less continuous with the past and we’re in a much less predictable environment.

With this predictive ability in doubt, it is best to look at futures drivers, sketch the most plausible futures and strategize accordingly.

A lot has been discussed in terms of internal analysis of market research and its structure. But, the industry is facing massive, exogenous change to our commercial system and this change will impact MR. This is where I will highlight the 6Ds that will change commerce – and ultimately MR:

1. Disruption Ethos
2. Disintermediation
3. Digitization
4. Dematerialization
5. Democratization
6. DIY

After this, I’ll be discussing the 5 megatrends specifically facing our industry (based on my chapter in “Leading Edge Marketing Research”):

1. Data abundance
2. Asking-Observing Shift
3. Democratization
4. Convergence
5. Strategic Imperative

And then I’ll wrap up with a tour of several MR futures from my book chapter:

1. Power to the People
2. Portal Power
3. E-Agency

It should be a fun and thought provoking session.

And, that rating will come from other people – users, consumers, citizens, colleagues.

That is the premise of my article in The Futurist magazine. You can read it online here.

This is already happening now with Angie’s List, Yelp, Glassdoor, etc.

Oink experimented with this with their app.

Stamped is trying a version of this now, but only on things people “like best”.

To my thinking, there are several BIG and open questions about how this develops:

1. Will one, universal rating system and app emerge? Or, will ratings systems simply multiply and specialize?
2. How will these ratings systems merge with augmented reality? They will, but how? Will we use different rating layers on our heads up displays? This is not far fetched. Think Google’s Project Glass.
3. How will the data streams from these ratings systems be used by institutions, marketers and manufacturers?

The consequences for people, institutions and marketers (and by extension market researchers) are huge.

First, we can expect some social discomfort with having the prospect of everyone around us rate us. Cory Doctorow explored this best in his book “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” with the concept of social currency based on a rating scheme.

Enter Barry Wellman’s concept of “coveillance” – surveillance by our peer group or digital tribe.

My money is on a handful of rating sites becoming the global standard and integrating into augmented reality tools at the end of the decade.

What are the implications for marketing research?

First, these emerging rating systems could disrupt EFM systems or possibly be harnessed by them.

Second, marketers will have a team monitor these rating streams and associated comments in real-time in order to optimize the product and hunt for new need states. Plenty of ethnographic work will be launched based on these real-time ratings and their associated comments. I would expect Disney to take a lead role here with their culture of “plus it up.”

Third, there goes the tracking study. The future of marketing research in a data abundant world is not managing research projects, but managing information flows and laddering them up to strategy.

But, one thing I don’t think we talk about enough are the aesthetics of our reports and presentations.

I think this is because MR grew up in a world where data was scarce and valuable and simply churning out large presentations with numerous bar graphs was enough.

But, I am now convinced that aesthetics and knowledge compression via “infographics”, “data visualization” and good design will quickly become a make-or-break differentiator for both suppliers and departments.

There are several reasons why I write this:

1. Time compression: No one has the time to methodically go thru a 120 slide “super deck”. Certainly not executives.

2. Democratization of Design: Seemingly everyone these days is looking to leverage quality design to aid the sale of their products, and this is as true in tangible products as it is in professional services. The tools are now widely available.

3. Complexity: Along with time compression things have simply become more complex and “infographics” can help cut through the clutter and complexity and simplify large amounts of information.

4. Story: As an industry I believe that we are generally weak at telling the story inside the information. Advances in data visualization fused with storytelling can bring a complex set of insights to life for time compressed executives.

5. Competition: With so much open source information, firms that can simple arrange syndicated work with open source data, glean insight and communicate with clarity (and flair) can challenge traditional (data collection focused but aesthetically weak) incumbents.

Here are some books I recommend for their thinking on this:

1. “resonate” by Nancy Duarte
2. “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink
3. “Visualize This” by Nathan Yau
4. “The Substance of Style” by Virginia Postrel (also one of my favorite authors)

RPM

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