Off the beaten track

As a member of the Research 2011 programme team, I feel privileged to have been asked to read through each and every one of the submissions sent in from the research community. We put out a call for innovative and inspiring ideas and you duly answered that call. In spades. With about four months to go before the big event, we are confident that it will be one of the most content-rich conferences in memory.

If you want a taster of what to expect at Research 2011, check out the programme here. There will be a host of opportunities for you to interact and network. Sales spiel over.

In populating conference we sent out the usual call for contributions, inviting researchers to submit under the usual research disciplines and sectors. We also welcomed ideas that were ‘off the beaten track’. Ideas a little more unconventional.

In past years our call for less cautious ideas has not exactly caught the imagination of the market. It’s almost as though the research business fought shy of publicly committing itself to anything that wasn’t rigourous, traditional and sharply defined.

The research business wanted to present itself with a sensible side-parting, clothed in good old respectable tweed. The sort of business you’d want to take home and introduce to your mother.

However, this year was different. Very different. Within the space of a single year the research business all but turned its back on the old definitions and the majority of ideas put forward were submitted under the heading ‘off the beaten track.’ There was a stampede of organisations and individuals all of whom wanted to mark themselves out as mavericks, cutting-edge thinkers and pioneers. It seemed heresy to some to describe their idea as being categorisable under such headings as mobile, advertising or NPD research.

This bid for new categories and descriptions is both a good and bad thing. There is nothing wrong with an industry that pulls against the old constraints – one that shrugs off the old definitions. However, when trying to carve out new space you also need to ensure that you are not creating fancy descriptions for something that already exists or, worse, something that your customers can’t identify with.

You may want to ditch the tweed but nobody’s going to respect a fashion victim.

Thanks to all of those, regardless of attire, who submitted. It has been a vintage year for creative thought and we can’t wait until the very best examples of that are showcased in London next March.