Tuesday, September 29, 2009, by Gerry Katz

Is the Recession Finally Over?
I'm not an economist, but the signs we've seen in our business are extremely encouraging right now. Because we conduct on Voice of the Customer studies in so many key U.S. sectors - such as health care, building products, consumer goods, and industrial products - our recent experience in growing inquiries and sales points to an end to the recession. Continue...
Wednesday, July 29, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Comments Section Removed From Blog
After repeated hackings into this blog, we were forced to remove the "Comments" feature from all posts. This is disappointing, as we intended the blog to be a source of information from us to you as well as from you to us. Continue...
Monday, July 13, 2009, by Michelle Harris

VOC Training Planned for October
AMS typically offers a 2-day VOC training program twice a year - once in the Spring in Boston and again in the Midwest sometime in the Fall. Our next course has now been scheduled for October 27th-28th at the Omni Chicago Hotel. This is an ideal way to "get your feet wet" with VOC training to begin your research process or determine whether to conduct additional group training at your own office. Continue...
Wednesday, June 17, 2009, by Carmel Dibner

Innovating During the Economic Recovery
As companies become increasingly optimistic that a recovery from the recession is in sight, many are wondering how they can most efficiently and effectively ramp up to full speed again. Continue...
Wednesday, June 3, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Are Things Picking Up For Your Business?
Is it safe to say that we may be turning a corner in terms of the recession? I don't want to jinx us, but it seems that things have become quite a bit busier around the office in the past few weeks. Continue...
Monday, May 18, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Another Year, Another FEI Conference
Well, it's off to the Front End of Innovation Conference at the Boston World Trade Center today. Hear that the number of attendees is down somewhat from last year (no big surprise there), but I have to hand it to IIR for recruiting its usual roster of outstanding speakers, including Jim Collins, Author of "Good to Great" and "Built to Last," and John Kao, Innovation Strategist and author of "Innovation Nation." Continue...
Wednesday, May 13, 2009, by Marina Gil-Santamaria

My Take-Aways from VOC Training
I recently attended AMS's public training on VOC in Boston, well actually in Cambridge. It was a pleasure to interact with all attendees, everybody was really engaged, and of course our instructor Gerry Katz was superb! Continue...
Thursday, May 7, 2009, by Carmel Dibner

Social Media
Social media are becoming an increasingly integral part of our lives. I recently heard a National Public Radio segment that discussed the continuous evolution of social media. Continue...
Tuesday, May 5, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Truth serum pops up on last week's Survivor
Anyone happen to catch "Survivor" episode last week? The first challenge the tribe faced was based on the same type of methodology as our very own REALYST tool. Host Jeff Probst called the Survivors in and asked them questions, like "Who is most trustworthy?" and "Who has lived up to his/her potential least?" First, each team member wrote their own answer on a tablet, and in the second round of play, they chose the player the other members thought would garner the most votes. The "best guesser" won a luxurious feast and swimming getaway. Continue...
Monday, April 27, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Did You Attend Our Recent Webinars?
Over the past few weeks, we have hosted two webinars that have been very well attended by both clients and prospects. "The 10 Most Common (and Deadly) Traps in Innovation" and "Ten Ways to Screw Up Your Voice of the Customer" were both complimentary 1-hour sessions led by AMS Executive Vice President Gerry Katz. Both were intended to provide hands-on, practical advice for those embarking on designing or improving their New Product Development and Innovation processes. Continue...
Friday, March 20, 2009, by Carmel Dibner

Online Ideation
We have recently added a new feature to IDEALYST, Applied Marketing Science's online ideation software, that allows participants to take a survey, providing us with real-time feedback during a brainstorming session. The survey lets participants write about their experiences and will help AMS to continue to listen to the voices of our customers. Continue...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Hauser Paper Cited by ScienceWatch®
Congratulations to Professor John Hauser of MIT, an AMS Co-Founder and Senior Consultant, whose paper on innovation in business (Marketing Science, Nov.-Dec. 2006), was recently selected by Thomson Reuters' ScienceWatch as a featured "Fast Breaking Paper." Continue...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009, by Carmel Dibner

IDEALYST Used With MIT MBA Class
MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Glen Urban is using the IDEALYST brainstorming tool for his class entitled "Design and Marketing New Products". His MBA students are using IDEALYST to collaborate online in order to design hydrogen fueled vehicles. The team was instructed to make realistic concept vehicles (vehicle type, features, target segment, product positioning, etc), define entry strategies, test the concept with customers and create an initial marketing plan (advertising, selling, price, dealers, etc). Continue...
Wednesday, February 18, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Steve Gaskin is Named Principal of AMS
My colleague Steve Gaskin has just been named a Principal of AMS, and will join the Executive Committee of the company. Steve first joined AMS as a Senior Consultant in 2004, and has been a reliable "go-to" guy for complex quantitative analysis, speaking and teaching gigs, product development work, and survey research for litigation. Steve and Bob (Klein, our president) go way back though, having worked together at various companies over the years. We won't ask them about their "young and crazy" days, back in the '70s.... Continue...
Wednesday, February 18, 2009, by Steve Gaskin

More on the problem with brainstorming...
TIME magazine had an interesting post last week by Jeffrey Kluger with the catchy title "Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It?". The article described research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which showed that people who acted like leaders were perceived as leaders, regardless of their actual competence. Continue...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Marina is speaking at ProductCamp
My colleague Marina Santamaria was musing in this space recently whether or not to attend this year's ProductCamp for New Product Developers, which will be held this Saturday at Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center in Cambridge. Turns out Marina decided not only to attend, but to deliver a presentation on "Getting the Word Out when Your Budget is Tight (or Non-Existent)?" Who can't relate to that these days? Continue...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Are you attending the Sawtooth Software conference this year?
My colleague Steve Gaskin will be speaking with MIT Professor John Hauser and Min Ding on "A Critical Review of Non-Compensatory and Compensatory Models of Consideration-Set Decisions" at this year's Sawtooth Software conference, which will be held on March 27-29 at the Delray Beach Marriott. The presenters will review and contrast recent research on consideration-set decisions. The conference will focus on conjoint/choice analysis and MaxDiff, other advanced techniques, and general issues regarding data collection. Continue...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009, by Michelle Harris

IIR Unveils Change in NPD Conferences
Did you hear that IIR (the Institute for International Research) is planning to co-locate its Service Innovation and Voice of the Customer conferences this year? The events will be held at a combined venue on June 22-24th in Chicago and will feature separate agendas with a combined exhibit space. Attendees will be able to sign up for each conference separately as always or mix and match sessions for an additional fee. AMS will be at the event and exhibit hall as a sponsor. Continue...
Friday, February 13, 2009, by Marina Gil-Santamaria

The Problem with Brainstorming
I recently came across an article entitled "How the Group Affects the Mind: A Cognitive Model of Idea Generation in Groups", authored by Dutch professors Bernard Nijstad and Wolfgang Stroebe. Continue...
Friday, February 6, 2009, by Gerry Katz

Things to Do in a Down Economy
Our team has put together a list of lower-cost market research options that can support your company's New Product Development efforts, even during recession. Read these, and then post your own ideas... Continue...
Wednesday, February 4, 2009, by Marina Gil-Santamaria

Behind a successful innovation initiative there is always...great ideas?
Innovation is the entire process of generating creative ideas and converting them into new, viable products, services or processes. When you think about innovation, you are probably thinking about... ideas. After all an innovation initiative typically starts by exploring mechanisms to gather employees, customers or partners feedback and ideas on certain topics. So if you have the right strategy in place to gather ideas, you should be all set, right? Well, not quite so... I am spending time lately interacting with innovation teams out there, discussing what is working and what is not, so I thought that I will share a couple of quick tips with you. Continue...
Tuesday, February 3, 2009, by Steve Gaskin

Using Truth Serum To Evaluate Fine Art
I am using the Drazen Prelec's "truth serum," the foundation of AMS's new REALYST application, in an exercise to predict the selling price of Chinese art objects at a Christie's auction. Continue...
Friday, January 30, 2009, by Michelle Harris

Voice of the Customer Figures Prominently in Industry Report
Turns out that in their research of 5,000 consumers, they found that only 30-40% of respondents were satisfied with their customer experience. According to the Forrester report, "Companies must deploy Voice of the Customer programs to understand why customer interactions are lacking." Please put up a post and let us know what you're doing to improve your customer service experience for consumers. Continue...
Friday, January 16, 2009, by Carmel Dibner

Attending IXL's Innovation Panel Discussion
Innovation companies naturally search for innovative ways to come out of an economic recession on-top of their competition. I recently learned of the IXL Center which is hosting a panel discussion entitled "Innovating Through a Downturn" on January 28th from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge. Continue...
Wednesday, January 14, 2009, by Marina Gil-Santamaria

Is your innovation methodology REALYST?
Our AMS LinkedIn group had a great brainstorming session about innovation/challenges faced by innovation teams via an IDEALYST game last November. Luckily IDEALYST is an anonymous idea generation tool, because besides some discussions about lack of resources, politics, upper management not setting up clear directions, and a corporate culture of tunnel vision and unwillingness to take risks (now you get my comment about "luckily IDEALYST is anonymous", right? ), participants from various innovation roles and industries identified a major problem for them: "not having formal innovation processes or procedures to evaluate ideas and determine which ones to pursue". Continue...
Friday, December 19, 2008, by Carmel Dibner

Fast Tracking Creativity
Over the summer, we spoke with Jim Ferry, an ideation guru from the Boston Innovation Group, and brainstormed with him about how we could incorporate some of the advantages of traditional creativity exercises into IDEALYST, our online brainstorming game. Continue...
Thursday, December 4, 2008, by Michelle Harris

Way to Go!
Just wanted to give a shout-out to my colleague Kristyn Desjardins, recently promoted to an AMS Project Director. (This is Kristyn's new photo, not mine!). Continue...
Monday, October 27, 2008, by Michelle Harris

Colgate's Maria Moore Talks About IDEALYST Experience
At last week's Innovation Immersion Conference, Maria Moore, Global Supply Chain Manager at Colgate-Palmolive Company, discussed how her company uses IDEALYST, AMS's online brainstorming tool, to cost-effectively collaborate with colleagues on new product development initiatives. Benefits offered by IDEALYST include anonymity, convenience, fairness, and asynchronous access. Participants don't need to leave their offices and unnecessary travel is minimized. Continue...