After more than twenty years spent in the market research industry, organizations are still coming to me with the same problem: thanks to dead-end product development, uninformed marketing strategies and a host of other avoidable mistakes, money is pouring out the door and the principals are ducking for cover. We often imagine that large corporations and enterprises somehow come preloaded with solid business practices, but it just isn't true. The North American car makers and Air Canada offer recent cases in point.
My greatest pleasure in the past year has been working with a family-owned Manitoba business on a new product development concept. They came to me with an idea and some government cash support, wanting to know if and how it might work before committing their full resources. We went in search of a market and came back with solid intelligence about that market and its product requirements. Thanks to a modest initial investment in research and development, they are now reformulating and regrouping before striking out again with information that can make their new product successful. This is the best business story I can tell this year.
Every time I hear or read about another big corporation taking a slide, I imagine all those MBAs, lawyers and accountants bumping their heads as they crawl under their desks. Canada's big business would do well to take a lesson from Manitoba's entrepreneurs: calculated risk taking is an art form, and research is an essential and powerful tool.
Katherine Devine
President