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Q U A L I TAT I V E R E S E A R C H C O N S U LTA N T S A S S O C I AT I O N 13 "Customers and citizens increasingly want transparency, recognition and reciprocity." C harles Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that sur- vives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." As qualitative and mixed-method researchers, adapting to change is in our blood. We continually experiment with new techniques and tech- nologies and creatively combine an eclec- tic mix of theory and practice from the social sciences, business, and mathematics to help our clients solve problems and dis- cover opportunity. Some of our most effective qualitative research methods are many centuries old, yet we're not afraid to also mix in new approaches when they support our quest for actionable insight and meaning. Democratization of marketing A significant phase of change and adapta- tion is at our doorstep once again: the democratization of marketing. Customers now have an unprecedented level of influence in the marketplace. In the tradi- tional market research paradigm, the people we study are typically described by terms that suggest a response to stim- uli, including respondents, samples, pan- els, and/or subjects. Our terms are evolv- ing to embrace the emergent phenome- non of empowered consumers who self- identify as proactive brand fans, service quality chroniclers, product design col- laborators, and innovation co-creators. This growing segment of proactive con- sumers (or prosumers) is comprised of marketing participants who expect to be actively engaged as individuals by brands and regularly acknowledged for their unique contributions and ideas. Customers and employees who contrib- ute to private and public social networks are generating unprecedented volumes of unstructured text and visual qualitative data. In the early attempts to find meaning in these streams of data, moderators scanned and coded written and visual con- tent for patterns and themes. As the volume of data increased and became known as Big Data, software-enabled sentiment analysis and social media monitoring companies claimed they could automatically under- stand the overall tone of these online con- versations. However, these attempts were "crude, often focusing on individual words that don't account for context at all." Harris, Derrick. 2013. Stanford researchers to open-source model they say has nailed sen- timent analysis, (blog), October 3. Although sentiment analysis software algorithms are improving their automated understanding of communications context every day, qualitative researchers have an essential and important role to play. We can help transform Big Data into Meaningful Data for our clients by moving beyond the search for mere positive or negative overall sentiment. We can also elicit implied knowledge, emotions, and motivations from our program partici- pants through the thoughtful design of evocative questions and creative activities. Crowdsourcing emerges The participatory trend is perhaps best embodied in the rise and evolution of crowdsourcing, a term first coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe, an editor at Wired magazine. In his prescient article (and a subsequent book), Howe described the participation of enthusiasts (the crowd), ranging from amateur photographers and videographers to Wikipedia writers and semi-retired sci- entists, in an economic shift, which has radically changed labor relationships, innovation funnels, and pricing models. This shift is underpinned by the global network effect of the Internet, as well as by growing social media and digital collabo- ration capabilities. The "Participation Economy" By 2009, Tim Brown, CEO and president of the global design firm, IDEO, began speaking and writing about the Participation Economy and its impact on innovation. IDEO is well known for popu- larizing "design thinking," a human-cen- tered approach to the design of new prod- ucts and services, which includes ethno- graphic research and the subsequent rapid prototyping, testing and iteration of new concepts with potential users. In a series of blog posts at the time, Brown imagined the further evolution of the interconnected and Internet-fueled economy in which customer and citizen "participation is key to the next big wave of innovation in busi- ness and society" and that no one would "participate in a system that does not serve his or her needs." This democratization of research, devel- opment, and design was amplified by the impact of the 2008 global economic reces- sion and a rising tide of disaffection with conventional corporate and government power structures: "Established power rela- tions between consumers and companies are reversed as the former, empowered by social media, exert influence on the behavior of the latter by either using their spending power or the power of their social influence." (Alarcón 2012) Making an impact on the future of cor- porations has become almost as vital to some stakeholders as influencing their local governments. This growing desire for pro- active marketplace stakeholders (customers, citizens, employees, suppliers, etc.) to authentically and persistently participate in the research, development, and design pro- cesses of the companies, brands, and cities they care about has resulted in an impor- tant opportunity for qualitative researchers. From incremental to disruptive innovation Researchers seeking predictive insights that could lead to disruptive innovation have found ethnographic methods to be especially useful. The observation of study participants in a social setting, interacting naturally with each other, and noticing emergent patterns of behavior over long periods of time has inspired new products and services (as well as non-profit sector

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