Wind turbines – the future, or a fantasy?
Posted by Richard in environment on January 28th, 2011
A new report by MarketsandMarkets describes the coming growth of the wind turbine market, particularly in Asia. China, it says, will play a key role in manufacturing.
The key problem with this is that wind turbines are not an economically viable model for producing large scale energy, unless subsidised. The extrapolations are all relevant and astute. There is no flaw in the logic. But there is a problem outside the scope of the report. Read the rest of this entry »
Nielsen Holding IPO comes to a close
Posted by Richard in industry news on January 28th, 2011
Nielsen Holding, parent of Nielsen, well known for their TV ratings surveys has come to a close at $23 a share.
Global trends
Here’s an amazing video from Youtube on global trends and the pace of technological change. It’s the job of researchers to stay on top of all this, monitor change, understand it, and help people use it to their advantage.
Grumpy people and nice people in the workplace
Posted by Richard in workplaces on June 9th, 2010
Apparently, Grumpy people think more clearly.
“While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.”
We all know the grumps who get things done, and the happy-go-lucky types who don’t.
Both personalities make a good workplace tick.
Surviving work politics
Posted by Richard in workplaces on June 5th, 2010
I found an excellent video on coping with workplace bullying and work politics by Dr Casimir. This is all great advice.
He explains what the right attitude should be to these situations, how to deal with them emotionally, and good mental tricks for re-framing the situation.
When the client doesn’t know what they want
There are two types of specifications for a research job.
a. The client knows what they’re looking for
b. The client doesn’t know what they’re looking for.
I had a client walk in the door once (literally), who had a product that was tanking. It had worked in similar markets with a similar price point, and they had done really well. But in our market in our city, they were simply not selling at all despite a media blitz. Why?
They had no idea. They wanted us to find out. And of course they wanted it done for a minimum of cost. After all, they were losing money and had no spare cash for marketing research. We’re not magicians, but we did what we could. We didn’t provide the answer on a stone tablet from the mount, but we were able to eliminate various possibilities. For instance we could tell them that
* their advertising had worked in reaching the target audience (it seemed to us);
* there was nothing particularly wrong with their advertising;
* the product was fine;
and so on.
We did find a bit of a problem with the price point, but they insisted that there was nothing wrong with it as it was selling in other markets at that price.
Okay. You’re the boss. I still think that was their problem to this day….
But anyway they simply wanted to find out “what’s going wrong.” Compare that to a job where someone says “tell us whether people prefer Cola drink X or cola drink Y”
or “how many people saw our TV commercial last night”
or “what’s the demand for product X.”
or “what do people think of our organisation? are we liked?”
Those are nice, clear goals where the client has a very specific question. Much less challenging, but less of a headache as well. At least there is a criterion for achieving the objectives in those situations.
When a client walks through the door and sort of cries “Help!” with no clear idea of why they even bothered to come there that day, you may not be able to deliver magic. The best thing to do is to break it down into bite sized chunks to add a bit of clarity.