Over the past month, I have had the pleasure of attending three (and presenting at two) research conferences, the MRS Online Conference in London on September 30^th, the QRCA Annual Conference the first week of October in Palm Springs, and the ESOMAR Online Conference.  During and in between those conferences, I have also had numerous conversations with researchers. Rather than attempt to wrap up the specifics of each conference, I thought I'd wait, process a bit and see if I could find themes that cut across all of these conferences and reflect on the current MR zeitgeist.

I think the overwhelming sense from both the presentations and, perhaps more importantly, the many individual side conversation with researchers of all stripes,  is that the industry is changing, perhaps fundamentally.  The economic crisis has forced the industry to slow down and take stock, and in doing is forcing MR to confront issues that have been brewing for a number of years now - commoditization of access to people, sample quality and validity, engagement practices and more.

Yet, while there is general agreement that things are changing, the scope, pace and ultimate end game is the subject of much discussion, gnashing of teeth and conjecture.

In my Pecha Kucha presentation at the ESOMAR Online Conference, I used the picture above to bring to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant to explain why it is so hard to pinpoint one definition of Web 2.0.  If you recall that story, each man touches a different part of the animal, which gets described alternately as a fan, a snake, a rope, a tree, or a wall.  I think this is also an appropriate analogy for where we are in understanding where MR goes next.  It feels to me like we are all touching different parts of the elephant and shouting: It's online communities! No, it's mining social media! No it's sample quality! No, it's flash surveys!  No, it's 'listening'!

But in my opinion, no one has described the whole elephant.  I don't think anyone has stepped back far enough to see it wholly yet. But we know something big is in the room.

I confess I don't know what the MR elephant looks like, but here are some thoughts:

1. Start with Mission not Methods — First, we have to start from the MR mission, which as simply as I can express it is "to understand people to answer business questions."  The recent history of MR online is a narrative of a method oriented technology adoption.  We've taken offline methods - surveys and focus groups - and simply used technology to replicate them in the new medium.  It's time to step back, look at the mission and ask ourselves, "Given that technology has now given us access to people at the moment of purchase, consumption, use, decision, etc., how can use our new tools to best serve the mission?"
2. Data is Everywhere - We Must Master It — The servers of the world are bulging with data. Club card purchase records. Millions of tweets and blog posts.  Data marts and data warehouses on business intelligence systems. Primary research that we gather ourselves, both qual and quant. Government reporting data. Focus group video. Mobile phone logs.  Video diaries. All that data contains pieces to the puzzle.  If market research is truly about the mission, we must learn how to triangulate data from any relevant source and make sense of it. We must be equally adept with Business Objects, SPSS and qualitative analysis, text and media analysis tools, trend mapping, and other skills that that help us piece together and present customer narratives in a compelling fashion.
3. We are studying PEOPLE — Call them what you will, respondents, participants, co-creators - at the end of the day we are in the business of understanding people - from ground truth to 30k feet trends.  We have greater access to engage people in conversation than at any time in history. This is a good thing.  Let's converse.  Let's also share what we learn with them - they are interested to know about themselves and will give us even more for the bargain.
4. The Fundamental Business Questions Do Not Change — As the recent crisis has illustrated all to dramatically, the fundamentals of business do not change (as much as each generation deludes itself). Companies do not hire researchers to do surveys, focus groups, ethnographies, online communities or any other specific method. They hire us to provide answers to the fundamental business questions. These questions - developing core customer understanding, discovering opportunity,  evaluating ideas, and measuring results - are as timeless as business itself.  No matter what the elephant turns out to look like, it must be about serving these questions.

The good news in all of this is that we are researchers. We should be well equipped to figure the elephant out.  And I think we are in the midst of this process. To be sure, there is a lot of meta-research going on - research on MR. ARF and others have been focusing on sample quality. At the ESOMAR Online Conference last week, Ray Poynter presented some excellent and surprising research on what study participants find most engaging. 

One of the things about tough economic times is that they force people to re-think things that were previously taken for granted as true.  Even though it can be a painful process, I think MR will look back on this time as what we needed to acknowledge and reveal the elephant in the room.