Forget the Seat at the Table and Come off the Bench

As I get ready to attend the Corporate Researchers Conference next week, I’m bracing myself for the inevitable lament from researchers that they don’t have “a seat at the table”—a place of influence with senior executives. They feel they aren’t getting the respect...

Boring Charts Are Often the Most Informative

Too often data is dressed up in ways that distract from the underlying message. Take this infographic about donations to fight diseases vs. the annual mortality rate for those diseases: The first problem with it is that you have to look in three places to understand...

Surveys a Century From Now

In a post entitled “No more surveys in 16 years?” Ray Poynter writes: Back in March 2010, I caused quite a stir with a prediction, at the UK’s MRS Conference, when I said that in 20 years we would not be conducting market research surveys. I followed my conference...