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nuaxia, a healthcare information technology platform announces that it has launched the third generation of its proprietary technology platform​. nuaxia has made significant enhancements in five key areas: First, the development of an enterprise level system for storing and managing video data. Second, AI-powered analysis functionality to allow businesses to make fast, deep insight on visual information. Third, an extended suite of behavioural economics capabilities including tone of voice and word sentiment analysis to add to its facial coding capability which was launched at the start of this year. Fourth, a suite of reporting and collaboration tools to support the sharing and engagement in its video stories. Fifth, the development of API functionality to allow for easy integration of information into and out of its technology platform. nuaxia is now able to: ● Recruit respondents through its own HCP Membership and patients partnerships; ● Conduct both quantitative and qualitative video based research (both directly or using third party interview data); ● Create customer story libraries; and ● Provide automated analysis and reporting on video and traditional research data Peter Chopra, nuaxia’s CEO comments: “When we launched nuaxia, it was obvious that video based research would play a major role in how market research is conducted in the future. We, like the consumer video research specialists, have developed a full suite of video capture capabilities. However, no one seems to have properly realised the potential of this form of research yet. Our approach has been to focus on the analysis and reporting of visual data and our third generation platform has been developed to create an industry leading approach in this area. As the only healthcare focused video research specialist, our third generation platform not only enhances our capabilities on our existing services, it will also form the heart of a number of new specific service offerings in 2019.” For further information, please visit ​nuaxia.com

LONDON, UK: February 13, 2018 – nuaxia, a healthcare information technology platform announces that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Affectiva, the global leader in Artificial Emotional Intelligence (Emotion AI). nuaxia will combine Affectiva’s facial coding with its video capture and analysis capability to provide clients with much deeper insights into their customers’ implicit meaning and system 1 thinking. In addition to the ability to process its videos using the Affectiva processing engine, nuaxia also announces some significant new functionality upgrades to its own platform. nuaxia’s video capture capacity now allows for video engagements to simultaneously show stimuli and capture responses in real time. nuaxia is also releasing a new video dashboard that allows clients full analysis capability. Peter Chopra, nuaxia’s CEO comments: “The emotional analytics market is forecast to exceed $1.7 billion by 2022. nuaxia has long advocated the benefits of augmenting traditional survey based research approaches with deeper “system 1” driven analytics. Our relationship with Affectiva will open this capability to the healthcare sector.” Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, Affectiva co-Founder and CEO, commented: "We're very excited to be working with nuaxia, a pioneering company in the healthcare sector. Emotions predict customer behavior, brand perception and brand loyalty. Our emotion recognition technology is perfectly suited to nuaxia’s unique strengths in capturing video and voice responses. Both organizations are focused on gaining a far deeper insight into the reasons behind decision-making and this partnership is set to benefit the world’s largest healthcare brands and their customers About www.nuaxia.com: nuaxia is a healthcare focused marketing, information, research and recruitment business. It currently offers businesses and institutions in the healthcare sector the ability to launch Video Interviews and Micro Engagements with healthcare experts and patients using its technology Platform. nuaxia processes work "at the speed of business" to provide better quality engagements that better impact and influence decision-making. nuaxia positions itself as putting its Members First (physicians, other healthcare professionals and patients). By putting its Members First, nuaxia is tackling the industry issue of plummeting response rates in order to provide its Clients with results that can be relied upon for decision-making. About Affectiva: Affectiva is the pioneer in Emotion AI, the next frontier of artificial intelligence. Affectiva's mission is to bring emotional intelligence to the digital world with its emotion recognition technology that senses and analyzes facial and vocal expressions of emotion. Affectiva's patented software is built on an emotion AI science platform that uses computer vision, deep learning and the world's largest emotion data repository of nearly 6 million faces analyzed from 87 countries, amounting to more than 2 billion facial frames. For more information on Affectiva, please visit www.affectiva.com.

LONDON, UK: November 28, 2017 – nuaxia, a healthcare information technology platform announces that it has completed its Series A fund raising which has successfully raised £0.5 million. nuaxia announces that it has successfully completed its latest round of fund raising. The funds will be used to accelerate product development leveraging its technology centre in Budapest, Hungary. nuaxia also announces today the launch of its “version 2” Platform. This Platform is a significant improvement on the original platform providing improved functionality, greater flexibility in service capabilities, easier integration with other systems and fast processing of large data sets. nuaxia is also extending its video services with the launch its Video Discussion Group capability which allows its clients to conduct online video focus group meetings. Peter Chopra, Founder and CEO, commented: “The launch of the “version 2” platform is a landmark for nuaxia. It will allow us to launch a series of new products, starting with the Video Discussion Group service announced today, and continuing into 2018. The success of our Series A funding will provide the investment funds to support those developments. We continue to see our video and micro-engagement services as representing the future direction for healthcare research.”

Friday, 23 December 2016 nuaxia is an information technology business serving the healthcare sector. nuaxia has successfully closed its seed funding round, raising an impressive £1 million for the new business. The funds will be used to finance nuaxia’s technology platform, develop its proprietary databases, and provide working capital for its launch and initial trading activities. “I am very excited that we have successfully completed our fundraising exercise” said Founder and CEO, Peter Chopra. “We have been working on the development of this new business for more than a year and it is fantastic to be so close to our official launch.” For further information, please visit nuaxia.com For media inquiries: Peter Chopra, peter@nuaxia.com

Friday, 20 January 2017 nuaxia, a multimedia short survey platform for healthcare professionals, officially goes live today. nuaxia offers businesses and institutions in the healthcare sector the ability to launch short surveys to healthcare professionals through its easy-to-use, self-serve, automated platform. With questions launched in minutes and results dashboarded in as little as a few hours, nuaxia brings customer insights into decision-making in real-time and at a cost that all businesses can afford. nuaxia is the first company to provide Do-It-Yourself (“DIY”) video, picture and voice responses. The company focuses primarily on empowering its users through quicker and better quality responses to impact and influence decision-making. In another first, nuaxia positions itself as putting its Members (physicians and other healthcare professional respondents) before its Clients. nuaxia is tackling the “inconvenient” industry issue of plummeting response rates head on in order to provide its Clients with results that can be relied upon for decision-making. The service, designed around mobile devices and promising to fit into the lives of its Members already boasts over one million Members. “I am delighted to be able to announce the development of our Platform, databases and the launch of our first service in such a short timeframe,” said Founder and CEO, Peter Chopra. “We are major advocates for using technology to empower our Clients and Members and for a business model that respects the way that our behaviors have evolved. Now that we have a demonstration of that ethos with our new product launch, we are looking forward to collaborating with both our Clients and our Members to evolve the Platform into new and exciting areas.”

Friday, 23 December 2016 Former Synovate UK CEO Peter Chopra is opening a new business called nuaxia, offering market research, marketing services, recruitment, and information services to the healthcare sector. The firm has already closed a £1m seed round of funding. Chopra previously served as CEO of pharma services group P\S\L and its healthcare fieldwork services arm Medefield. Prior to this he was a Partner at online community specialist Verve, and he was CEO at Synovate UK, having previously been the company’s Chief Financial Officer. The new funding will be used to finance the firm’s technology platform, develop its proprietary databases, and provide working capital for its launch and initial trading activities. Commenting on the news, Chopra said: ‘I am very excited that we have successfully completed our fundraising exercise. We have been working on the development of this new business for more than a year and it is fantastic to be so close to our official launch’. Source: mrweb

Thursday, 9 March 2017 Market Research’s glory days When market research was at its peak in the noughties, I was part of the senior team that pulled together Synovate. We had a tag line “Research Reinvented”. It didn’t mean we wanted to “reinvent the wheel”.   It was about offering new ideas and methodologies to existing market research challenges.  It was also about being more than just a market research company. We wanted to take the skills, expertise, assets and capabilities of market research and find new applications for them outside of the classic market research environment. Living in the present With primary quantitative research in decline, it may come as a surprise that this message seems more relevant than it ever has been.   The rise of customer-centricity has spawned the application of market research into customer experience. DIY platforms have followed the lead of SurveyMonkey in democratising market research. The proliferation of data has created a whole new range of opportunities. IIeX shows the way The IIeX conference in Amsterdam provided an excellent showcase of the wide range of creative ways of doing research in a different way or researching things we previously could not. Most were technology-led but not all. What was really noticeable is how many of these companies have emerged from nowhere in the last couple of years. Unilever rules Star of the show was not any single one of the innovation companies. It was Unilever who promoted a whole track of new companies it had engaged and benefited from. Everyone in Unilever insight, take a bow. So are the Unilever team head and shoulders better researchers than the researchers in other companies? Possibly but that is not what sets them apart. It is the willingness to take calculated risks, to do something different to make something better and make market research more relevant to the decisions its business leaders need to take. That culture comes from the top – it is a huge competitive advantage. Future’s bright – Unanimous agreement I attended several of the excellent Festival of MR webinars and on more than one occasion, presenters were asked about the future of MR. Everyone claimed the same – the future is bright. But is it? The truth At IIeX, the level of attendance of manufacturers was down on the previous year and Dave Carruthers ended his presentation bemoaning the slowness of the industry to take up new innovation. In the US in particular, Insight departments are being downsized and staff re-deployed to “Big Data” departments. The truth is that the market research industry is not changing anyway near fast enough. Stop living in the past One depressing aspect of the Festival of MR webinars was a prevailing assumption that market research has been successful. If that really were true, market research would be at the heart of marketing and commercial decision-making. It is not. The industry is in complete denial. Most research, perhaps 80% of it, is irrelevant to decision-making. If market research were truly respected, customer experience and big data units would have been part of insight departments, not “internal competitors”. You Reinvented If you are not changing, you are the problem. I have yet to come across anyone that does not realise that change is coming. Very few people are actually changing what they do and how they do it. Even fewer talk about the need to reinvent themselves. Research Reinvented requires You Reinvented. At Synovate, we talked about curiosity needing to be part of everyone’s DNA. I don’t think that went far enough. It is more than curiosity; it is more than creativity; it is more that just imagination. It is courage. The industry is so afraid of making a mistake or saying something out of turn that it is failing to tackle the big issue – changing nothing is Learn from history Most, if not all, great business leaders reinvented themselves. Steve Jobs didn’t get it right first time with Apple. Unstoppable change In the 21st Century, the most important skill that we and future generations will need is the ability to change and adapt. So many jobs will be impacted by technology like AI, unstoppable globalisation and changing demands. Just as most companies have seen reduced life spans and it being increasingly rare to see a job for life, so too will careers become more dynamic with people increasingly unlikely to do the same role in their working life. We are living longer and we all need to work longer too so it is only the 55+ who can avoid this bullet. Carpe diem It is not game over yet. There are SO many exciting ideas and innovations. Here’s the choice: (1) Continue as a Denialist – become a researchersaur (aka dinosaur). (2) Embrace change – be part of the golden age and take control of your future.

Wednesday, 25 January 2017 nuaxia, the new venture from former Synovate UK CEO Peter Chopra, has officially rolled out of stealth with the launch of a short multimedia survey platform for healthcare professionals. Last month, the firm raised £1m in a seed round of funding, which has now been used to launch its self-serve automated platform. Chopra (pictured) says this can be used to launch questions in minutes, with results ‘dashboarded’ in a few hours. The service, which has been designed around mobile devices, specifically to gather opinion from physicians and other healthcare professional respondents, already has more than one million members. Chopra says of the launch: ‘I am delighted to be able to announce the development of our platform, databases and the launch of our first service in such a short timeframe. We are advocates of using technology to empower our clients and members and for a business model that respects the way that our behaviour has evolved. We now have a demonstration of that ethos with our new product launch’. Source: mrweb

Wednesday, 15 March 2017 Never in the past twenty years or so that I have been involved in market research has the industry been presented with so many new opportunities to evolve and grow.   It is the Golden Age of Research Reinvented. So why have market researchers missed the boat on leading growth areas like customer experience and big data?  So why do most independent prognoses for primary market research involve a significant reduction in the number and size of quantitative research programmes with the consequential loss of jobs for both manufacturers and agencies? Gateway or Gatekeeper One of the mantras of a former CEO, Adrian Chedore, was that market researchers needed to be the gateway to market research not gatekeepers.  A gateway is of course an open environment that suggests a strong awareness of what is on both sides.  A Gatekeeper’s focus is on the door! Manufacturer vs Agency An agency is just as capable of being a Gatekeeper as someone in a manufacturer.  As a leading CEO put it to me at IIeX: “An agency has a duty to constantly offer their client new ideas”. Which one are you? No one admits to being a Gatekeeper but as an industry, almost everyone is one.  I have done a little table looking at some of the key indicators of each.  Be truthful, if you are in market research, your actions class you almost certainly a Gatekeeper! Opportunity is still knocking I am sure that there are a large number of cleverer people than me who would design a better table.  All I want to achieve is to get market research out of denial and into acceptance of how the industry is behaving.  Why?  Because there are still a huge number of opportunities to benefit from IF the industry can grasp change rather than avoid it.  Here are some examples of opportunities that are available now and which gateway organisations are already using: (1) DIY and Automation: “Give a person a fish, and you feed the person for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed the person for a lifetime” There are still significant unmet business needs for market research.  There is a stream of DIY and automated solutions now available that are fast, cheap and easy to use.  Not all market research questions need to be conducted by market research departments and not all questions need market research consultants/agencies. Being a gateway does not erode control and influence, it enhances it.  The Gateway approach moves from doing to empowering.  It will result in more decisions being impacted by market research, not less.  The role of a market researcher doesn’t disappear, it changes.  Someone still needs to review what is best in class and implement it; someone is still needed as a subject matter expert and consultant.  What you lose is the obligations of project management and administration– and if that is all that you can do, you really need to re-train urgently. (2) Shared knowledge platforms: “Knowledge is Power; Shared Knowledge is Power Multiplied” Think of the market researcher of the future as head librarian.  Empower people to know what is already known.  Unilever implemented a knowledge sharing platform and it paid for itself just in the amount of research that they no longer had to repeat. (3) Visualisation and storytelling: “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.” Market research has consistently failed to influence decision-making.  This is not because the research was necessarily bad.  It is about the way it is presented.  Powerpoint decks do not resonate with business users.  They are fine if someone wants to dig into the detail but they fail to drive any emotional engagement – engagement that is needed in order to make decisions. Think instead about video summaries – the voice of your customer telling a story.  It is not expensive – there are DIY solutions that can provide authentic, “in the moment” clips.  Infographics are a much better form of visual summary than an executive summary in Powerpoint. (4) Beyond direct questions: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The gap between what people say they do and what they actually do is well documented.  Technologies and techniques that drive towards understanding system 1 thinking like eye tracking, facial analysis and sentiment analysis present huge opportunities to properly understand what customers are really thinking.  AI is not there yet, but it will also become a powerful tool in the future where the situation is appropriate. (5) New technologies, new opportunities: “Creativity is contagious, pass it on” Mobile research and online communities all give new opportunities to get insight that we previously could not.  These do not have to be seen as a “replacement” to traditional research, although they may be.  These present many more “and” opportunities.  So, combining big data with traditional qualitative interviews or short video qualitative interviews to understand why or short quantitative surveys to calibrate or verify data. Carve out “Gold time” Exciting changes are here. Right now. If you want to be part of the new MR world, then you need to learn about it, embrace it and implement it. It is important for you and important for your organizations. So, put some aside in your diary. Every week, carve out two hours for your “gold time” (important but not urgent work). Never cancel it and ignore your email during that time. If you think you are too busy, you are just getting distracted by urgent and unimportant or unimportant and non-urgent tasks.  And that is just being incompetent…sorry, but I am just saying it as it is. Gateway to the future or Gatekeeper of the past? The good news is that you have a choice. It should be a no-brainer so why is 90%+ of the industry “Researchersaurs”? Just remember, it didn’t end well for the dinosaurs. And you don’t have 165 million years to make up your mind…

Monday, 27 March 2017 Back in the summer of 2006, on a boozy boat party, I remember a bright 20 something staff member coming up to me and talking about how happy he was to work in an ethical industry; that he didn’t work in an industry that made things that killed or hurt people. I am not sure that is true today. Out of touch I read the latest GRIT survey report concerning the key drivers of sample design with a fair amount of dismay. Top of researcher concerns is reliability (74%) but only 8% see fair compensation for respondents as important. As the report states: “Both Clients and Suppliers rank trust and quality as the drivers of research design decisions, but respondent experience are almost afterthoughts. It seems that few grasp the relationship between quality and respondent experience.” “Market research surveys are increasingly alienating customers and citizens. As a consequence, response rates for commercial market research are fast reducing below 1%. This means most surveys annoy people and it means they are reflecting the views of a tiny minority.” Ray Poynter 2016 Market Research industry reputation The essence of Market research should be about bringing the voice of the customer into the heart of company decision-making.  That is never going to happen if the industry continues to “serial kill” respondents. Market Research has a reputation!  It’s a BAD one!! We are up there with cold calling, spammers and nuisance callers. Sociopathic behaviour At the IIeX conference in February, a presenter asked who would respond to a market research questionnaire and, tellingly, no hands were raised.  Yet the next day, no one will have changed their behaviour. Rather like a sociopath, the market research industry feigns empathy with human beings but does not really understand what that means. Serial Victims There are already key respondent groups that the industry has critically damaged: millennials, teens and high value respondents to name a few. Specialist physicians for example rarely respond; the number of responders has fallen by two thirds in the last three years. Almost all quantitative, ethical healthcare studies include “professional respondents”, and because one data collection company can rarely fulfil the sample by themselves, the professional respondent is often completing the same survey more than once.  If primary data is not reliable, what use is it? Lack of respect I have seen an increasing amount of comment about a fall in the level of research competencies at both client and agency side.  At the same time, the general level of respect that surrounds the industry has fallen.  Whether it be the respect that market research is held in general by the marketing, procurement and commercial teams.  And indeed, the level of respect between clients and agencies, and agencies and data collection agencies. Personality traits Most researchers are quantitative by nature and probably only thought of entering market research after they graduated.  In general, the attraction of the professional is around its semi-academic discipline, slight divorced from the harsh realities of the commercial world.  Perhaps that also explains why there is a lack of empathy with the great “unwashed”. “Qualies” not innocent either! Anyone that has ever tried to organise IDI’s will know, the most likely reason for the common occurrence of re-scheduling is not the respondent – it’s the “qualies”! Justice Rather like a long-time Serial Killer, the industry is losing all self-control.  It is doing the opposite of what it should be doing almost as if our system 1 wants us to get “found out”. No more heroes anymore Once you lose trust, it is exponentially harder to win it back.  That process cannot even start until the industry takes ownership of the problem.  I would be happy to be found wrong, but no such leadership exists.  The best we get is a bit of“hot air” but no action. Evolution Evolution will, instead, play its part as it did with the dinosaurs.  The “researchersaurs” will die to be replaced by Big Data departments and technology companies.  It is happening now.  The majority of primary quantitative research jobs will disappear. Redemption? The only route to redemption is to go back to our roots.  A key foundation of Market Research is being an expert at customer contact.  To be experts, we need to learn to empathise with them.  Market Research needs a total makeover where what we do fits into the lives of respondents rather than work against it.  Our behaviours and attitudes as human beings have changed significantly since the 1950’s.  Isn’t it about time that Market Research changed too? Rebuild around the respondent Tinkering is not going to cut it.  It will be as effective as putting a band aid on a gun shot wound.  We will need to rebuild the idea of questions and answers around a process that works for the respondent first. “In the future, no interview will be longer than two minutes.” Jannie Hofmeyr Trust as a competitive advantage In an era where we will increasingly be in a fight for the attention of the respondent, building a trusted relationship is key.  It should not be viewed as a cost – rather a competitive advantage.  Technology, especially that empowered by mobile devices, will enable us to provide far great insight than we have ever being able to do.  But they will require the respondent to trust us with the information that they provide.  No one is going to trust a Serial Killer.  A trusted partner, yes. Winners and losers Darwinism will prevail and the fittest organisations who adapt to the new paradigms will prevail.  Serial Killers won’t survive in a future requiring trusted relationships.  So, what do you think that means for you? Apology My intent is to provoke thought and debate so I do apologise if I have caused any offense.  The real apology, however, belongs to the millions of respondents that have not been respected, especially over the last 5-10 years.

Thursday, 20 April 2017 Who the hell is MarlaJan and where does she work? Well, she is not a researcher or employed by the healthcare industry. She is a nurse, patient, survivor, patient advocate and an inspirational lady. What is her story? MarlaJan was born with congenital heart disease and defied the odds to become a nurse and help patients like her who are dealing with serious medical conditions.  Just as her life was approaching something we might term as “normal”, she was diagnosed with lupus.  The combination of that, her long and continuing medical treatments and the issues associated with her congenital heart disease has meant she has had to deal with physical and mental difficulties that I am really not sure that I would have been able to cope with.  Although she looks well enough in this photo, every day is a challenge and clearly there are good days and bad days. Her experience has motivated her to become an advocate for patients suffering from her condition.  She talks openly and with humour about her “fake boobs, and an out-of-order baby maker” although it is plain to see there is a lot of hurt and pain. And through this story, we get real insight not just into the issues of coping with a disease like lupus and its treatment, but also the physical and mental side effects, the impact of other conditions and how we can better address these to provide not just longer life but a better quality of life too. Emotional impact I have attended a great many conferences over the years and this was the first time that I saw a presenter getting a standing ovation.  There were people fighting back tears, not in sadness or pity, but because we were inspired.  Inspired by the honesty and bravery of MarlaJan and inspired to try to be better in our jobs to help MarlaJan and all those who lives we can positively impact. "Notwithstanding the commercial purposes of what we do, I am fundamentally in healthcare to help people live longer, better lives." Giving voice I must apologise but I have done a terrible job of conveying MarlaJan’s story and the impact it had on the audience.  In my defence, it is a mission impossible task although I acknowledge a writer of any talent would have done better. It is not practical have respondents sitting in an office next door, so what can we do that we are not doing now? Beyond a one-way written question and answer It is impossible for me to write about her presentation and convey its nuances and emotions, so it is impossible for any research to do the same with customer views. There are additional difficulties to overcome. First, respondents often struggle to find the right words to convey what they mean. That means for example, moving away from asking to listening and observing. Second, it is often a “system 2” response that we get back and measure and not a “system 1” response. For example, a “system 2” response may aim to please by responding with the answer they think they ought to give rather than what they really think. Third, the market research industry continues to bore people with over-long, over-complex questionnaires which most people in data collection agencies know have lost the respondent’s interest and attention after a few minutes. Furthermore, as I have written about previously, this causes a serious bias in the respondent sample. Stop defending what is not working! There are lots of new, innovative agencies that are offering services that seek to tackle the current inadequacies of what we are currently doing.  So why is it that for most organisations, 90%++ of their spend is on the same discredited methodologies as they have utilised for the past 10 years?  Marketeers don’t buy into the change?  It is so hard to get Medical affairs/compliance approve it?  The straight-line on my tracker might not stay straight?  I can only bring in new things to low risk projects – I just don’t have many of these at the moment? "If you are in your job for more than money, then you need to learn how to influence change for the better." How making the respondent the “star” can help you So much research is based around the researcher trying to demonstrate how smart they are, that we have lost our way.  Market research is nowhere near as important and influential as it should be.  If you think of how you make the respondent the “star”, what you are really doing is putting the customer first.  To do that, we need to bring them alive, make the research feel authentic and create an emotional reaction. Power of video A key way to do that is though the use of video.  We all walk around with a portable recording studio in our pockets.  We are attached to our smart-phones and almost all of us have learned to use the video capabilities as part of our personal lives.  There is nothing we love to consume more than video.  76% of all internet traffic is video.  This is going to rise to more than 90%! Influence and activation Perhaps the biggest single issue that the market research industry faces is its inability to influence its internal clients and activate what might still be good research findings.  It is no use blaming others – blame ourselves.  We need to communicate in the way that people want to consume data – visually.  If I had shown you a video of MarlaJan, you would get as close as possible to “the moment” that those attending the conference experienced.  It is not just the words, it was the tone, the eyes, the facial expressions, the body language than conveyed her story. All of that builds an emotional connection.  As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio proved, we need emotion to make choices. And the star is…. To me, video is the most obvious “no-brainer” in the list of “no-brainers” that the market research industry should be taking on.  Our job should be about making the respondent the star of the show.  That is the most effective way for us to get our own star to rise again.

Friday, 5 May 2017 The Times They are A-Changin’ Does anyone not believe that market research is in the process of going though a significant period of change? In none of my recent articles*, have I got feedback arguing that it is not going to change significantly. What is far less clear is the exact nature and timing of the change. The Denialists will argue that it is 10-15 years away so there is no need to panic. There are some commentators who argue that the change is taking place and the environment in 5 years will already be very different to today.  “People are slow to change behaviours but the change may be more profound than any of us realise.” From what I see, there is so much money and investment being poured into technology that I can’t see the industry being the same in 5 years time as it is today.  Remember IBM personal computing? There was a time that a significant part of IBM’s business came from manufacturing personal computers. Indeed, there was a saying amongst the IT community that “no one got fired for buying an IBM”. Roll forward to today and IBM does not make any personal computers. Companies like Dell, Apple and so on took over with cheaper and better alternatives. When it turned, the saying changed to “you would only get fired if you bought an IBM”. IBM knew they would never be able to compete and sold the business to the Chinese firm Lenovo. How profound is profound? Ray Poynter predicts that 40-60% of jobs in market research will go and 20-30% of new jobs will be created. A net loss to the industry of 10-40%. That seems a pretty reasonable estimate to me but it could be larger if the change is more profound. That doesn’t sound too bad? Does that mean you will be safe if you are not in the bottom quartile of performers in your company? Well no. I am afraid the starting point is that if you are a quantitative researcher, the risk is at least 40-60%. Those are not great odds! Is Qual safe? Only from a relative point of view! Technology, changing behaviours and commercial requirements will seriously impact on traditional in person interviews. Why gross not net? Here is the problem. It is not just new skills, new knowledge and new approaches that market researchers need to learn. Researchers need to become “young” again. Agile minds, comfortable with change and managing innovation without dragging progress back into the present/past. Many researchers on both the manufacturers and even worse on the Agency side are currently resisting innovation even when it is a “no-brainer”. New skills can be acquired so perhaps they think they can re-train when the time comes. For those folks, I have a very clear message - the new market research world will not want to employ “Researchersaurs” whatever their skill sets. “Innovative companies do not hire those whose attitudes drag their organisations back from their goals.” Look at how many of the new companies entering the market research space - both founders and their staff - are coming from outside of the industry. “you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone” Becoming innovative and being able to deal with change is not something you can suddenly decide to do. It is a skill that is fuelled by experience. There are risks in bringing in innovation that need to be managed and benefits that need to be sold into (internal or external) clients. Most of all, it requires a creative, curious, problem-solving mind and a “can do” attitude. Don’t panic At this point, perhaps you are panicking! Don’t. Panic can cause you to distance yourself from the problem rather than solve it. Panic breeds fear and fear drives inaction and denial. Nothing good is going to come from panic. What should I do? Take a lesson from IBM. They re-invented themselves into a software and consulting business. To do that, they moved from being a fairly conservative hardware manufacturer to a much more innovative, people-focused organisation. And they are also one of the technology businesses that will have a significant part to play in the market research environment of the future. Personal reinvention Just as IBM needed to reinvent themselves, so do you need to reinvent yourself. No panic – just calm and logical analysis. Build objectives, identify skill gaps and build an action plan with SMART goals. Plan to innovate Part of your personal reinvention plan must involve a plan on how you improve your ability to do new things or the same things differently. Market Research will evolve for the better We are naturally suspicious of change. It is an instinct that has helped us to survive. But we are naturally more curious which has helped us to evolve. So, don’t panic; think, plan and act.