MS’s move to integrate FaceBook, MySpace and Liknedin means that it really is much better to use my Outlook for my Gmail account. Linkedin Beta is already available for use. It’s interesting that Google’s experiments with real time social conversations have been a fizzle. Buzz just cracks you – as it somewhat seeks to outdo Twitter, a task that looks impossible. Orkut has long since fallen behind FaceBook – not enough content/apps. And now, Outlook looks all set to take over as the preferred client for dedicated Gmail users like myself.
Guess I should have done this before – the Gmail editor is very primitive compared to Outlook anyways and can badly screw up your formatting, especially when you use multi-level bullets.
Have been unable to update this for sometime. Shorter, more frequent updates would be more convenient. Here are a few updates (I expect Posterous to somehow screw-up the bullet-point formatting again):
The NPS discussion on MRGA-LinkedIn where I participated actively is here
Here are some good papers from peer reviewed journals on linking Customer Satisfaction/Loyalty metrics to financial performance of firms and the NPS debate:
I have been caught up with the CBC dilemma for quite some time now and this gives an opportunity to document where I am. Below is an excellent video on running a discrete Choice analysis with SPSS. A proportional hazards model (Cox Regression) is used. I have not worked through the math here but assume this is equivalent to using MNL with the time variables being appropriately defined. The last time I used a Cox regression, t stood for time to a terminal event in a survival analysis. I found the approach interesting because of the design - uses once choice task per respondent (each respondent sees each option once) and the fact that individual characteristics are explicitly modeled (as required by the random utility MNL). Watch the video below: BTW , McFadden's influential 1974 paper is available online at: http://bit.ly/73RmgR. But a much easier read for beginners is the chapter that he references in the video. It is quite detailed and starts with the basics - so if you are already familiar with the basics of logit/logistic regressions, you may skip this. Note that the key to the interpretation is in the odds-ratio which is the exponential of the corresponding beta and you look at whether it exceeds or is less than 1. The interpretation is with respect to the base chosen. The text is available at: http://bit.ly/bC9bbZ . The problem with using SPSS for discrete choice (either MaxDiff or CBC) is that you cannot look at the individual utilities like, for example, you can when running a traditional constant sum Conjoint with SPSS (where you can assess reversals at the individual level). The data would be analyzed in the aggregate. If you are using a Sawtooth Software solution with their Hierarchical Bayes module, this becomes possible. For example, in a MaxDiff, using HB, Sawtooth also returns the individual raw and rescaled scores along with an F-statistic which is the root likelihood parameter times 1000. Essentially, this is done by an assumption on the distribution of the part-worths over all respondents combined with a lower-level estimation as per MNL. This is an efficient way to assess individual cases who may have run through the survey and randomly answered the choice questions (the value of the RLH here would be the same as for a pure chance, random draw) while yet meeting time-stamp criteria that you may have set up for qualifying acceptable data. The catch, however, is that if you want to look at this by individual characteristics - intuitively, you need to segment the data first before using the HB utility estimation. In other words, one needs to allow for differences in the distribution of the part-worths over different segments of the population. The Sawtooth application however uses a simple HB model where all respondents are assumed to come from the same population of individual characteristics. This runs counter to a central piece of random utility models. Note McFadden's warning around this early on in his paper. When individual characteristics are not modeled, these characteristics are, in essence, held to be unobservable/un-measurable/absent. McFadden's approach starts with the definition of an individual with measurable attributes (characteristics) faced with a choice decision. In a paper available from the Sawtooth website, Sentis and Li from Pathfinder Strategies have argued based on their own empirical research, that this does not make a difference to the predictive accuracy of the analysis - predictions on the hold-out were not significantly improved by first segmenting the sample (by demographics and by K-means and Latent class segments) and then applying the HB estimation as compared to running the simple HB model over the entire data. This paper provides little consolation - the data comes from a single dataset. In fact, this can be something that can be picked up by researchers. We seriously need a body of empirical evidence rather than a one dataset study to validate what is definitely a counter-intuitive conclusion. Till such time as such complex HB modeling software does not become available (I am talking about user-friendly software here that allows me to set parameters with a simple GUI), we have no choice but to do one of the following: 1) Look at aggregate level analysis and use logit to directly model interactions between individual characteristics and product attributes multiplicatively - use SPSS plus an Excel simulation tool 2) Use HB estimation, assume that the same size fits all (one population, one distribution), and use averages to get at differences by characteristics 3) Plan for large samples, identify characteristics that are likely to impact choice, separately estimate utilities using HB for each sub-population. Note that unlike a Logit, you won't get statistically defined significance levels for the differences. I would certainly go for 1) or 3).
Searching for dynamic heat maps - serendipitously discovered this excellent paper on a application of a qualitative methodology designed to assist managers assess strategic uncertainty which is contextualized here in business-environmental terms (rather than game theoretic terms). The authors suggest using impact and likelihood scores from managers within an organization to assess both, opportunities and exposure, following from strategic uncertainties on each of different uncertainty categories. In step 1, a qualitative approach is proposed to understand the sources of uncertainty followed by impact/likelihood ratings on 5-point scales (I would use 10 to cover greater range and also because likelihood ratings being subjective probability measures are better captured in the wider 10-point scale, especially if you are interviewing business managers). The result is a 16 quadrant map - with the quadrants for exposure being mapped onto the 4 quadrants for potential. Each quadrant then suggests a specific generic strategy for uncertainty management which I have tabulated in the picture above.
FlipKart is the Indian or desi, as the pop-culture term goes, version of Amazon. The site is great for Indian buyers if you know what you are looking for and you will usually get a discount over Amazon prices. The flip in Flipkart is the data-mining bit. Apparently, the sites data mining capabilities are limited to a primitive word search across fields with no respect for library cataloging, leave alone market basket analysis a-la Amazon. I accessed the site for curiosity and hitting Nancy Duarte's "Slide:ology" returned a number of recommendations on 'similar' books - three of these were from the Nancy Drew series while another appeared to an attempt at Jane Eyre (Nancy by Rhoda Broughton).
Searching the site again for "Presentation" did return a number of books on the subject though the collection is not great going by the recommendations of Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds. Interestingly, Guy Kawasaki is cited as an author for PZ though the introduction makes clear that GK only wrote the foreword. Though we understand that FlipKart' ability to do a market basket would be limited by the low traffic for any one title, it's time they did something about their cataloging at least and returned serious results.
Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology took up the whole of Sunday - weekends are blessed as I get to read up and this weekend was especially blessed because of my first exposure to a text on presentation skills. I was more fascinated by the design side than the presentation side of things. The book is simply unputdownable.Raced through chapters 1 to 5 and took elaborate notes on Chapter 6 on MS Onenote - much more convenient to structure than Evernote. Chapter 6 is from where the real technical part of design kicks in and Nancy Duarte does a fabulous job of putting it across to non-pros. Dare say I am as excited as a Keats looking into Chapman's Homer for the first time.
Chapter 7 on visual elements is packed with information and worth the second read. This is what I am doing now. Found the explanation of the color wheel along with the classifications of color schemes (analogous, monochrome, complimentary, split-complimentary, triadic, tetradic) especially helpful. Also understood Serif and Sans-Serif, Kerning and Ligatures for the first time.
Nancy style is very fluid and easy and she liberally references other well-known authors on the subject which is why the book is also very informative in terms of follow-up reading. Discovered the principles behind many of the small things that one already knows from being in the practice - axis of graphs should be aligned, sub-bullets have a smaller font, consistent application of caps and application/non-application of full-stops on bullets, color gradations must be discernible on print, avoid text-heavy slides etc.
The text also led me to Garr Reynolds blog which led me to Kuler. Tried the color wheel at Kuler to come up with some designs and borrow a few others which I adapted. Reynold's Presentation Zen is third on my reading list now after Nancy's text and Aaker's "Building Strong Brands" (you can get it cheaper from the Reliance Store at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon) .
Have not managed to get back to the Morgan Stanley report on the Mobile Internet - hope to do so over the week.
Spent the last 2 hours reading and taking notes from the MS Mobile Internet Report (key trends). Completed 125 pages which is 2/8 trends. MS expects Mobile Internet users to reach 2x desktop Internet users by 2010. We are witnessing the early phase of the 5th innovation cycle since the mainframe was started by IBM. Microsoft, Google, Apple and CISCO well-poised to take advantage using their strong incumbent position. 5 trends converging - 3G + VoIP + Video + SCN + Smartphones. Mobile data traffic expected to grow to more than 2b tetabytes by 2013 (131% CAGR) of which 64% is expected to be video (154% CAGR) - CISCO white paper cited by MS. Here is some interesting stuff from the report:
Wi-Fi penetration only 3% in APAC; US - 31% in 2008, estimate is 37% in 2009 with projection of 44% by end 2010
3G penetration very low in emerging economies < 10% + penetration in BRIC countries is < 1%; 37% in the US and 87% in Japan
WiMAX - 86% of global population coverage + 78% of networks in Emerging Markets
The Apple iPhone 3GS launched in 2009 is as powerful a computing device as the Apple iMac G3/600 launched in 2001 - its smaller and much cheaper
In APAC, smartphone share is only 7% of total handset shipments
MS expects 2.5G subscribers to peak in 2010 - 3G subscriber base expected to more than double by 2013
Trending - Unified Communication enabled by IP networks, smart-phones and easy to use software -all communication consolidated into a single place - see the third motif in my earlier post on consumer electronics motifs for 2010. (The first motif in that one should ideally have been Augmented Reality <read the Google Books preview of the first chapter>
Bharti Airtel - 10th largest carrier in the world, BSNL at no.23. China Mobile is the world's largest carrier in terms of subscriber base. Both Indian carriers saw a year on year increase in their subscriber base of about 45% in 2009. Bharti saw a 22% fall in ARPU with BSNL's remaining stationary
Switched access lines loosing by 10-12% every quarter to cable/ wireless from Q2, 2008
Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Google.com, Youtube and Facebook together account for around 15% of global Internet time - YouTube and Facebook gaining over the other three in share of Internet time
Hope to complete the report by end of this week. Will post again.
I was typing this into Google Sidewiki on Google Chrome even as I was attending a live seminar. Here is what I had jotted down (content is edited for typos etc.) -
I am watching a live seminar on Web Science: An examination of the World Wide Web and how it is transforming our society – Arikia Millikan and Nate Silver - right now on Upstream. "Twitter was an upgraded version of Status Updates on AOL Messenger".I was earlier in a session where one of the participants had pointed out that from search engine optimization, we may be moving towards social graph optimization.
The live seminar which I am attending also allows me to use the Social Stream feature to discuss the talk with other virtual attendees using Twitter.
I think, in India, while there is a lot of buzz being created by Shashi Tharoor, we are still to wake up to what is happening - very few knowledge workers are waking up to how SN tools can be used for knowledge exchange in real time - in a seminar, for example.I say this on account of the relatively weak buzz around the new technology.
The other question, when you consider the nature of exchange here - live vs. recorded is whether Google will also come up with a similar product and link it to YouTube. Also, what happens to large organizations in the IT/web innovation space? Are we likely to see a surge in diffused innovation?
As an aside it's sad that Vodafone does not have an Indian Twitter number for texting tweets.
I had started this as a private blog (viewable only to myself) and had decided to go public with the contents well after the things had changed completely - a new semiosis had set in - meaning was being constructed in entirely different ways - and had decided initially to retain the personal rather than start a new blog because it gave a perspective in terms of old contexts - but the meanings having changed, memory came into play so that the old contexts were no longer associable to any distinct memories to the extent that one is no more aware of what/who was being referred to or why.
Remember that one allusion was to a particularly erudite and ill-behaved neighbor who liked to hold forth on everything under the sun and enjoyed beating me at chess and TT and the other, to his equally vociferous and erudite wife who enjoyed beating me at chess alone. But people move forth and what was once a particularly helpless situation of tolerance is now a correspondence of mutual learning. The old blog, therefore had to go, not the least because it was in the public sphere, but also because it's focus had changed from the inner to the outer - and this act of deletion was itself a part of the hermeneutics, a new construction of meaning.
Thus old posts have disappeared and some have new headers and were edited
This is indeed worth the read and provides not only a wonderful introduction to the semiotics of the web and the metaphors of everyday tech language, but provides a fascinating glimpse into how real innovators think - understanding a metaphor also allows us to unravel and question it and thereby understand how things can change.
Venkatesh Raju works at the Xerox Innovation Group where he leads "technology projects that aim to invent the future of documents and information work." He has worked as a post doc at Cornell's robotics lab on command and control systems for future battlefields. He (also) blogs, among other things on the Internet as a discourse and on the construction of meaning in interaction with the web - trained sociologists would be proud to write the way he does on discourse and metaphor.
This man is a pleasure to read - a very erudite and thinking man, he writes with a fluid meta-style interweaving the technological, literary and philosophical sides of him in posts that are singularly attractive, structured (though he talks of how the hyperlink allows the construction of your own dissonant discourse) and forward looking. He is at home with the metaphysical poets (one cannot help noticing the analogy between his take on the hyperlink as facilitating dissonance in the reading experience and Donne's fantastic hyper-linking of the points of a compass or the latter's even more fantastic hyper-linking of a mosquito to the nuptial bed - famed dissonance), with the theater of the absurd and with the cinema of Lynch. Here are a few gems to get you started on Raju:
"Click trails are texts whose coherence derives from your mind, but whose elements derive from multiple other minds"
"If there is no clickable hyperlink involved, you are just using the browser as a novel reading device."
A retweet again, this report is as good as it comes and a must read for those interested in consumer research - watch out for (f)luxury, social mingling and tracking and alerting. The former has a bearing on segmentation by personality traits which I had discussed in an earlier post. Social Mingling and Tracking and Alerting are sub-trends of what I like to call "connected selves" - a movement away from fragmentation as we understood it in the post-modern sense. On a more synthetic level, this merged stream of "fragmented" and yet "connected" selves is truly a unique social phenomenon of our times and both exist happily (with connectedness nurturing fragmentation but at a more global level) without a dialectic. Get the report here:
This lady has a spectacular career - A neuro-physiologist, she also has a black belt in Tae Kown Do and is now a well known science reporter and journalist. Dr Kerstin covered the CES with Leo Laporte. But she kept mostly silent on Twitter's live coverage of the CES 2010. Leo Laporte hardly let her talk and she was more or less playing second fiddle - which was a pity as she is a very successful show-person on her own right. Amazing what Leo says when she asks "Am I too quiet?" to which Lao says she's perfect. No wonder - she was not speaking
The new Ford global car is aptly called "Focus". In a year when GM and Chrysler went bankrupt, Ford was well on way to reconsolidating, shedding flab and building new "focus" on the consistent delivery of a global brand. Refocussing from many different local designs to a global design (with minor tweaks to suit local tastes), a plethora of advertising campaigns to a few major ones, and from a dispersed hierarchical bureaucracy often at odds with each other to "One Brand...One Goal", Alan Mulally was planning strategic focus on a brand that is global and consistently so - communicating this externally to markets and internally to employees. This meant a change in work-systems and flows, product line width, engineering philosophy and a change in marketing philosophy. The Ford "Focus" is aptly named and for the first time, an American car hopes to take on Toyota in the small passenger car segment. This is likely to become the most spectacular case study in branding from the first quarter of this century.
A) 3-D HDTV: More intense experiences in a more diffused world
With 3 films including Avatar having been launched with 3-D versions in 2009, this is likely to become the biggest video trend in 2010. Those of us who have seen Avatar in 3-D would find it difficult to think of Sci-Fi without 3-D, anymore we need more comfortable glasses than the ones I got at PVR, Ambience Mall, Gurgaon).Not only Sci-Fi but anything that needs conjuring up huge cosmic vistas, panoramic landscapes or nature detail (imagine National Geographic in 3D). 3-D TV is one of featured attractions of the CES this year and YouTube has already launched its test versions.
I provide the links here - thanks to mashable.com, - but you would need to see these on the YouTube site and not as embedded video - just hoping posterous does not embed these (use glasses - in case you did not have to return yours after Avatar - or select cross-eyed from the pull-down at the bottom right of the video screen):
Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba are all displaying their 3D products (TV, blu-ray players) at CES 2010 along with smaller players like Vizio (TV). 3-D camcorders (from DXG) and PCs (from MSI) are at the concept stage. These two are unlikely to hit the shelves in 2010. Again, the blu-ray format is likely to take some time before it becomes the standard. Look up the CNET coverage on 3D at CES:
The pessimism from some industry watchers on 3D centered around the inconvenience argument is likely not to be borne out as consumers look for a customizable TV viewing experience. The success factor is likely to be the possibility of having the ability to choose between convenience (without the glasses) and the experience (with the glasses) in the confines of consumers' homes. Also, 3-D glasses are likely to evolve with combined audio-video providing for a much more integrated and intense experience (shut-out). These are also on display at CES.
An important aside from the CES is that blu-ray seems to have won the day.
B) Simplifying the Interface - The Power of Touch:
Not many Indians use the Kindle (appears to be a judgement on value for money and reflecting reading habits of the well-heeled - for a book-reader, it is expensive) and Amazon has not disclosed sales figures for the Kindle (not even on Wall Street - see http://bit.ly/62x7ZG). Touch Screen tablets are likely to do much better because of the broader functionality and it is likely that the slate form - not really convenient for a computing device (you would still need a keyboard to write programs and syntax and it is not easy to type documents and long notes on a virtual keyboard) and more convenient as a reader, browsing and social networking device - would really do much better than netbooks have done on 2 counts, the touch factor and slate form factor. Ballmer showed two more slate PCs running on Windows 7, one of which was from Pegatron. This will obviously beat the HP on price, but brand? (Pegatron is the former manufacturing arm of Asus that is now branding itself). The Pegatron slate would be competing against the Eee PC netbooks in the ultra-portable category and the same is true with the HP slate vis-a-vis the HP mini-notebooks. The Pegatron slate is on the Intel atom unlike its smartbook which is on the ARM Cortex. This is likely to be a decisive victory for the Intel-atom over the ARM Cortex.
The F5 from Motion Computing (on Windows 7) and the Dell Latitude XT2 convertible Tablet (both with the Intel Core2Duo) are probably the most appealing. The latter supports multi-touch with gesture recognition. Watch these videos:
The move to "touch" is pervasive. Samsung came in last year with the Corby touch at INR 7,800 and the market for touch-screen mobile phones is growing worldwide. Look up this (back by a few months) review of offerings in the Indian market from dancewithshadows.com
Carrying touch forward, Samsung has also announced its highest end LED-TV with a touch-screen remote. The power of touch is everywhere. The consumer is the Midas once more.
B) Always connected - On the Clouds
Businesses have realized the importance of harnessing the social media. There is push and pull involved here. While Twitter is covering the CES live, consumers are busy exchanging notes on many hundreds of thousands of products and services. Samsung's LED TV has a Facebook page of its own - and promises first release of updates to fans on Facebook. The power of social media technologies was on full display at CES when Twitter reported Leo Laporte (The Tech Guy) gave the short shrift to a senior executive from Trend Microsystems even as the latter's CEO, Eva Chen announced taking malaware detection from local stations to the cloud. Ford is upping the sync on its Sync System - free Wi-Fi connectivity via the cloud is what it hopes will differentiate it from Toyota and Honda as it enters the small car segment riding on a new focus of consistent global delivery of the Ford brand. Web 2.0 unleashes its full potential with cloud computing.
There is also increasing evidence now that far from creating a global community of recluses, online connectivity is promoting social mingling in the physical space as well. What we have today are interconnected global "community-scapes" inhabited by consumers who are or would like to be "always on". More and more electronic gadgets and software applications on open-platforms will try to make this possible.
This, then, is the third major trend for this year. It has already picked up a lot of steam and what we saw in 2009 was just a precursor of things to come. A major part of movement here, among Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, MySpace users, in 2010, is likely to be the movement towards integrated social networking with applications like posterous and ping.fm providing users the ability to integrate across different social networking platforms.
This was originally a tweet from Guardiantech - The Guardian's technology blog on Twitter, so this is more like a retweet. My "normal" favorites were: the Que reader from Plastic Logic, the coverage on Steve Ballmer's keynote address at the forum (Gmail spell check does not recognize the name :-)), TV glasses that allow you to see big-screen video from your mobile device inside a pair of goggles and a video technology that senses your movements and transfers them to the digital domain (the combination is likely to sell for less than USD 100, so it's cheap). I have shared the link below (better than the link to an index page that Guardiantech provided) and a train of thought on one of the innovations on display:
The "abnormal" favorite was the video on virtual reality and how VR entrepreneurs are making money out of the medium - real money being made out of virtual commerce in virtual games. It is possible that I missed something here but while the idea might seem fantastically weird to many, I found it interesting from a different perspective. All this while market researchers, analysts and marketing professionals had been thinking in terms of serving up markets by segments that were not only different in terms of their attitudinal and lifestyle characteristics but also, in terms of a demographic separation that allowed one to serve markets by clearly assuming that certain demographic segments have common attitudes, tastes, lifestyles and product preferences. Come post-modernism and the lifestyle bit was reinforced and we were looking at consumer communities that shared common lifestyles but could be global in nature. However, demographics remained a mainstay for easily typing consumers at least in so far as age was concerned (not surprisingly, the "baby boomer" roots of much of this stuff is not easy to overcome) and stage of the household (in the US). In technology products in a developing world context, education remains important and will continue to be so and this is an obvious exception to what I ramble about below.
My take on this is (and I do need some feedback here) is whether within the same demographic, people make distinct lifestyle choices depending on different personality types which brings us back either to a second layer of segmentation once target segments by demographic type was determined or to one of two choices a) decide on your target demographic - do a preliminary MR scan on the demographic to determine receptivity to your concept/product/service and then drill further to personality types within the demographic for your positioning b) forget demographics all-together and segment on personality types. Obviously, the choice between the three depends on whether you are looking at a broad-based product/concept or a niche concept. The latter is what VR is about. The difference again, depends on whether your concept is disruptive in the same way as VR is, which determines which part of the adoption curve you need to capitalize on. Thus while the concept may have appeared, at the first, as a no-go, there obviously is a type, a segment to whom this appeals immensely. Virtual commerce, of course, has a different dimension - while many real world commodities cannot have virtual counterparts with the same utility value, recent advances in sensory technologies and real-virtual interfaces (fluid interfaces) does provide immense opportunities for providers of entertainment and social media content - virtual discotheques, adult dating services and the sex industry. These are industries where the offering is broad based in terms of not being for a particular demographic (except discotheques, the rest are for 18-60 and beyond) but where the technology itself is new and would appeal only to a particular segment (we note here that an early adopter of the Que need not necessarily be an early adopter of VR entertainment and thus, typing from the adoption curve of general technology products is not of much value here.Typing from the adoption curve for Internet dating and porn is a more reliable guidepost.) Thus personality typing takes precedence and demographic typing is only of secondary curiosity value.
Even while I was playing with this idea - (the idea track was Brand personality --> Human Personality Types --> Big 5 --> Nanogram -->personality traits based segmentation), I chanced upon a consumer trends report which suggests that this is gaining ground. I will post that in sometime (a retweet again).
It is difficult when you are handed down a paradigm and asked to fit in – especially so when you think that your data does not fit the paradigm. This can happen when you are working with an intelligent client who also dabbles in quick and ready research. Paradigms never fit neatly into qualitative data – especially when your paradigm comes from outside the research and you want to fit in your findings to relationships between broad constructs that come from elsewhere – prior work, ubiquitous commonsense etc.
This is where I would turn against myself and ask about for micro-research – unified fields are good for the synthetic imagination but what if they do not exist? At the micro level – what if the data fit into smaller chunks (many factors) – unless you are able to replicate the research many times or follow up on certain hypotheses, it does look improbable that you will be able to tie these factors together. But if the number of such factors is not so large as to become unwieldy, overarching theories may not be necessary and a peace-meal digestion may work better by ensuring that the details are not lost in overarching theory. In practical business problems, this may be of great help until new facts pour in. But most of us will not be able to resist the tendency to come up more intelligent than we are – grandiose is a virtue we Indians adore. But to hell with the facts?
Look at it this way – most grandiose theories are but commonsense made more presentable – unless they contradict something that we would have considered intuitive and have data backing this contrary finding. If I can give you 5 action points to push sales of your skin care product in Salem, does it matter to you whether I present them to you neatly packaged under people, processes, strategy, promotions etc.(worse still, under the 4Ps one gets to see in business analytics presentations) and then bring in some folk wisdom to hold them together? There is nothing wrong with the packaging –in fact, these packages serve as useful mnemonic guides. The trouble starts when you start brining in your pet theories (or your manager’s) to tie together different parts of the package.
I am tempted to believe that most research remains in the boardrooms – they are discussed, presented, clapped for (now, you need real hot looking theory building for that) but rarely acted on. This is mostly true for small and medium companies. But theories can be important when you need to reinterpret findings to fit your pre-decided action plan. Then you say – look data says this (it doesn’t – there’s no data, there is theory) and I am all for scientific management!
The above sounds pathetically phobic. However, I am beginning to believe that qualitative data is a serious threat to sound management practice until we learn to do the following:
·Build theory only the basis of prior work where substantial prior work exists
·Where prior work does not exist, test your hypothesis – follow-up with more research
oMore intensive and focused research around a few key unanswered questions
oA larger research piece with more cases (larger sample) and more stringent hypothesis acceptance criteria
·Post-code and go only as far as a numerical frequency analysis of codes if none of the above are possible. Linking codes into a theoretical network is risky unless
oThere are clear co-occurrence patterns
o There is earlier empirical work validating your links
In most real life commercial problems, one is working under short timelines, prior work in the specific project area is rare to come by, the research is very context specific and one does not have the luxury of a full-fledged research program. Clippings from industry publications and the general business press can, however, feed into your research armory (its convenient to have web-clipping tools here rather than rely on manual copy-paste – try Evernote). This can be bolstered by interviews with select industry experts, trackers. It is best to run your code networks through a couple of industry experts – look for dissonances and rely on a quick Delphi to generate your final network of codes. BTW, I love Atlas.ti and its features for creating codes, meta-codes and code networks.
Build all this beforehand into your research proposal – anticipate areas where you might need to fill in the blanks. If you proceed with care, you can still come up with something useful for managerial decision making. Also, at the end of the day, you would have a good night's sleep!
One does not get to hear too much about utilities like tweetdeck or posterous or ping.fm in general conversation in physical space - perhaps because not many of those I know there are really interested. This is convenient - I have just added Facebook (which I hardly ever visit on the web), linkedin, twitter and blogger on posterous. A focussed post on Jennifer Aaker's Brand Perception Scale led to Evanreas, an ex-Stanford student following me and I following him which led to my finding tweetdeck and then by following Percival whom Evanreas was following, posterous.
I am not surprised by the learning path - Social Networking is also one of Aaker's teaching and research interests which accidentally got me to the right information I wanted. I bet that if I were to follow David Aaker (assuming he is on Twitter too), I would serendipitously (or now, not so serendipitously) end up with loads of information on Branding Strategies and Brand Research. I'll try this track or a similar one in a few days and keep you guys posted.
However, it would have been much better had I had posterous as a desktop icon. I strongly recommend posterous to all of you - its much more convenient to attach photos, Videos and MP3s to your email then having to upload this stuff to these sites. What's more, these guys also support Picassa and Flikr and YouTube.
Looks like, I can now be more regular and not have to disappear every once in a while. Also, I need to be able to post to evernote using my email and then sync between the web and local versions when I find time.
