Data Gurus

Welcome to today’s podcast! In today’s special episode, Sima continues her conversation with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata in the second part of the exciting two-part interview. In this episode, Gary and Sima continue with their discussion about the things that influence the size of opportunity within the industry and discuss whether doing things faster will denigrate the research process. They also talk about standardizing the data-collection process, acquisitions, integration, and culture. The size of the opportunity for the entire Industry Up until now, many people have defined the size of the market research industry at around 80 billion dollars worldwide. However, the advancement of technology is bringing more players and different buying audiences into the space. Gary believes that two things drive the number: the changes that are going on within traditional market research from a technological standpoint and the marketing services ecosystem, which Gary sees as being continuous. The work that gets don

In today’s episode, Sima is happy to welcome you to the podcast, which is the first part of an exciting two-part interview that she did with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata. Today, in the first part of the series, Gary talks to Sima about his journey that led to where he is today. He also talks about his general leadership style and the impact Covid-19 has had on him as a leader and on his business. They close the episode with Gary giving a deeper understanding of how he views the landscape and where Dynata’s core area of focus lies within the market. A perspective of Gary’s career and how he got to Dynata Gary started his career by working his way up in the culinary world over the summers while in college. He was offered a position in a data marketing business, which he did for a summer before graduating. He enjoyed that so much that when he got offered a full-time role in the data marketing business, he put everything else aside to try out the world of data. From there, he moved on to various roles within di

On today’s show, Sima welcomes Mike Page, the Co-founder and Chief Executive of Phebi, as her guest on the podcast. The founding story of Phebi Phebi has been around for a little more than a year and their focus is on the insights industry. Their journey has been around the explosion in voice and voice tech when they saw the whole landscape of how people interact with technology was shifting to voice. That created a wonderful opportunity for insights specialists and researchers. It gave researchers the chance to offer their respondents a better experience while simultaneously creating a richer source of insight for themselves. Talking versus typing People talk more naturally than they type, so you tend to get longer, richer answers. The audio can get people used to listening to how people are speaking and not just responding to written word. Webinars Phebi started with some webinars with friendly companies, like Askia, which were very well received. Then, a London company wanted to try what Phebi was offer

In today’s episode, Sima is excited to welcome Gangesh Ganesan, the Founder and CEO of PeerNova, as her guest on the show. This podcast is typically about data and the data ecosystem. Today, however, Gangesh takes us into the area of the financial market. In this episode, he explains the importance of ensuring that data has good quality and is accurate. PeerNova PeerNova is a Silicon Valley-based data company founded by Gangesh Ganesan about five years ago. They have offices in Silicon Valley, San Jose, London, and New York. Although their themes mostly get distributed worldwide, the core is in Silicon Valley. Some of their development happens in Eastern Europe and they also have a theme in Brazil. A global company PeerNova is a global company. They are venture-funded and raised a substantial amount of capital to develop their software platform. Software platform The PeerNova software platform is called Cuneiform and offers data quality for financial institutions. Data quality Data quality means ensuring

On today's show, Sima is excited to host a panel of three powerful and well-respected women as her guests. Tiffany Hays is the CEO of FUEL Global. She is and also CEO of The Focus Room. Aryn O’Donnell is the Vice President of Corporate Services of Fieldwork. And Kelli Hammock is Senior Client Solutions Manager at L&E Research. Tiffany, Aryn, and Kelli are all in the qualitative space in which Covid-19 greatly impacted. The impact of Covid-19 on Fieldwork Fieldwork has in-person qualitative research spaces that got impacted by Covid-19. At Fieldwork, they have always been solving their clients’ problems, and right now, they are solving new problems. They got forced to think differently, ask questions, and find new ways to connect with their industry colleagues. The impact of Covid on L&E Research L&E Research had to make a big pivot to learn how to get proactive around the changes that happened within the industry and the company. They had to come up with solutions to apply to the new problems that their cli

Today, Sima welcomes Andy Davidson from the Engine Group as her guest. Andy is the Head of Analytics and Data Strategy at Engine. The Engine Group The Engine Group is a full-service marketing services firm specializing in a range of things from insights and analytics to planning and content and distribution. Background Andy has been with the Engine Group for about two years. Before that, he spent twenty-five years in various assignments across research analytics and data science. He worked on the client-side as well as on the agency side. His focus has been on helping advertisers and their agencies in addressing business problems with data analytics. He spent a lot of time helping his clients develop marketing strategies. And then personalizing the customer experience and measuring those efforts in the returns they are getting. Engine specializes in three areas Insights and analytics: This function supports both advertisers and agencies in making better decisions using data and analytics. Planning and cont

Sima is excited to welcome Erinn Taylor as her guest for today’s podcast. Erinn is the Executive Vice President of Product and Platform at Canvs AI. He has had a breadth of experience within the field of market research. Some of Erinn’s background Erinn grew up in market research. He worked his way up at several different organizations. About a year ago, he met the founder of Canvs and was intrigued with what he was doing related to text analytics, so he joined Canvs. A great year Canvs had a great year last year. They have done a lot technology-wise, and they have grown the platform. Canvs Canvs is a text analytics platform, and they think it is the best solution in marketing. They call it an evolution of sentiment analysis because they use more nuanced emotions. They take data and analyze it and provide themes and insights directly from the consumer. The organization is about six or seven years old. They work with companies like Disney and Netflix. Speaking unnaturally With the technology they were using, t

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Hunter Thurman, the President and Founder of Alpha-Diver, as her guest today. Hunter has been in the insights and strategy world for the last twenty years. Some background for Alpha-Diver In 2011, Hunter got to a point where he felt dissatisfied with how he was doing insights and research and translating it into a strategy. (Subsequently, he learned that his approach had been model-free. And the industry had also been operating in a model-free way at the time.) Around that time, Hunter started exploring, stepping out of the industry, and hanging around with neuroscientists, psychologists, and people from the world of academia. He forged a copasetic relationship with the academics, which became the basis for the company, Alpha-Diver. They use mostly neuroscience. But they also use a lot of psychology, which they translate for business applications to answer the questions that help companies serve their consumers. A framework Hunter later realized that when you have a framew

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Kristin Luck once again as her guest! Kristin is the founder and managing partner of Scalehouse Consulting, and Kristi and I are both advisors at Oberon Securities, on the investment banking side. Where the industry is, as related to the impact of Covid The abrupt impact of the pandemic on the overall economy brought the industry to a near standstill last spring. It is unlikely to return to its 2019 turnover levels until 2022. ESOMAR Although ESOMAR initially predicted a downturn in research revenues of up to 30%, we still ended up with a stronger third and fourth quarter than predicted, particularly with tech and digital businesses. The digital side of the industry There is a lot of controversy surrounding the digital side of the industry regarding its accuracy, approach, and basis in terms of true research methodology. A revolution The pandemic is accelerating a revolution in the research space. So there were many naysayers about many of the digital technologies, part

Sima Vasa is excited to have Bob Qureshi join her today. Bob is the co-owner and managing partner of i-view viewing facilities in London. Bob talks about the history of his business In the 1960s and 1970s, most of the qualitative research in the UK took place at the home of the recruiter. Over the years, specific facilities for research were being built in the US. Then, in the 80s, that also started to happen in the UK. A game-changer In 2010, Bob looked at the UK facilities and saw that they were all laid out like recruiter’s living rooms. They lacked things like white marker boards, places to put stimulus, and the ability to screen. So Bob decided to start with a game-changer and build everything they needed on one floor, in an easy to get to location in central London, with wide doors and access for people with special needs. They paid specific attention to detail, which means they made sure that they took account of everything. Bob’s background Bob’s background was in the corporate client-side, and

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Tim Clover as her guest for today’s podcast. Tim is the CEO and Founder of Glow, based in Australia. Tim is originally from the UK and has been living in Australia for the last ten years. About Glow Glow is an online research platform, and people often compare it with SurveyMonkey on steroids. For Tim, it is about a lot more than just creating surveys. It is about the whole workflow for research. Some background As a kid, Tim was into engineering and finding out how things work. He started his first business after getting his engineering degree. He tried to use Excel macros to standardize processes and do things like process mapping. And he wanted to work out how to create channels into different markets. Although he earned enough to pay the rent and eat, he needed to gain more life and company experience, so he ended up working for a UK company, doing business simulation work. Not fitting the mold A friend called Tim and suggested that he apply for a role at the company

I am happy to welcome Ken Roshkoff, the CEO of AMC Global, as my guest for today. Ken’s father started AMC Global Ken’s father started their company in 1979. He was a true researcher who loved working with data, doing analytics, and working with project staff. The competitive component Ken always loved the competitive component, so he spent much of his childhood focused on sports. He loved tournaments and competing, so he knew that he would eventually embark on a career with competitive elements. Getting involved with AMC When Ken initially got involved with AMC, his father started training him to crunch the numbers and become an expert in running projects. However, Ken quickly realized that was not going to be his thing. He felt that for him to be excited about what he was doing, he had to bring his clients into a space that would be more interesting to him. Giving the business another shot After less than a year, Ken left the business to go to grad school to get an MBA. Coming out of that, he decide

This is the first episode in our MRX Podcast Network series. I am excited to kick this year off with an episode focused on perspectives and thoughts related to our industry for 2021. A year like no other 2020 has been a year like no other. As an industry, we collaborated, we called on each other for help, and we were there for each other, both personally and professionally. That was an important statement, and it showed me that, as an industry, we are resilient, we can adapt, we can pivot, and find a path forward. No playbook We have no playbook to follow. And we can’t look at history to know what will happen with consumer behavior, consumer attitudes, consumer perceptions, and the decisions and choices that companies will make, both on the supplier side and the in-client side. The good news The good news for our industry is that people need information and insights to inform the decisions they have to make. I think that 2021 is going to be a vital time for our industry to get more engaged and to focus

I am excited to share some news with you today. Some of my fellow podcasters and I came up with the concept of an MRX Podcast Network. The main mission of the podcast network is to be able to podcast on a topic on our respective podcast channels, and provide multiple points of view, perspectives, and formats on how we address the specific topic, and give all our listeners in the industry a broader perspective as it relates to that topic. We are starting this year with what we think that 2021 holds for our industry. These are not predictions or forecasts. They are about what each one of us wanted to share, related to 2021, and our thoughts about the market research industry, data, and analytics space. We hope you enjoy what we have to share. We will be publishing the first series over the next few days. For this podcast, we have put together a teaser to showcase some of what will be coming up in each of our podcast episodes, related to the outlook for 2021. Stay tuned for more! 2020 We will remember 2020

We are excited to welcome Steve Schlesinger, the CEO of the Schlesinger Group, as our guest for today’s show. Join us today to learn about Steve’s journey. You will hear the story behind the Schlesinger Group and find out how it got founded by Steve’s mother back in 1966. Steve’s mother’s story The Schlesinger Group […] The post Leadership, Growth and Management with Steve Schlesinger | Ep. 118 appeared first on Infinity Squared, LLC.

We are excited to welcome Dave Shanker as our guest for this episode. Dave is the CEO and Founder of David Shanker Consulting. Dave’s journey Dave’s career spans more than thirty years, and he has mostly been involved with market research, running different market research agencies. He has also been involved in startups and has […] The post Leadership, Transformation, Integration with David Shanker | Ep. 117 appeared first on Infinity Squared, LLC.

I’m happy to welcome Rebecca Brooks to the show. She’s the founder and CEO of Alter Agents, a full-service, strategic market research consultancy reimagining research in an era of shifting decision making. Rebecca has enjoyed an amazing trajectory to her successful career, and her work has never been more relevant and necessary than it is […] The post The Impact of Covid-19 on Consumers with Rebecca Brooks | Ep. 116 appeared first on Infinity Squared, LLC.

Sima’s goal for this two-part podcast series is to help senior leaders understand the mindset and psychology of sales. She would like to help sales leaders understand how they need to think about sales as a profession, how sales integrate into an organization, and the psychology behind what makes a salesperson tick. So many companies […] The post Understanding the Psychology of Sales (Part 2) with Julie Kurd, Rick Odello& Kenny Thompson | Ep. 115 appeared first on Infinity Squared, LLC.

One of the biggest components for scaling any business is sales, and yet so many companies tend to struggle with it. It involves finding a balance between the right personality, the right leader, and ensuring that there’s lockstep with the product. Adam Jolley is joining Sima in presenting this two-part podcast series on sales. Much […] The post Understanding the Psychology of Sales (Part 1) with Calista Corley and Tacie Avedikian | Ep. 114 appeared first on Infinity Squared, LLC.

We are excited to welcome Tim Hoskins today. Tim is the President of Quester, an insights and strategies company. He is joining us today to talk about his journey and driving business results. Tim’s journey While in college, Tom needed a job, so he answered an ad for a lead-generation specialist at an information security startup. […] The post The “Quest” for Purpose with Tim Hoskins | Ep. 113 appeared first on Infinity Squared, LLC.