Thinking about what comes next.
Perspectives on customers, brands and innovation, and the judgments that shape what a business does next.
Featured thinking
AI and innovation 4 min read
AI can make an idea look finished before the thinking is.
AI can make a concept tangible sooner. The risk is a polished image that settles product and commercial choices the team hasn’t yet made, and that persuades a gate review, a retailer or a test before anyone has agreed them.
More thinking
AI gives teams new ways to explore ideas, connect evidence and develop products. These pieces look at what that makes possible, and what still needs to be understood before a business decides what to do next.
What could people value? Where could the brand go? Which ideas are worth taking further? Perspectives on finding opportunities, developing propositions and deciding what to back.
How people choose, what they expect and what changes across situations and markets: thinking that connects customer understanding with the choices a business needs to make.
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Brand strategy 4 min read
Does the brand need a new message, or a new direction?
A new campaign can improve how a brand is understood. Sometimes the harder question is what it needs to stand for.
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Developing ideas 4 min read
The innovation brief that starts with pleasure
Enjoyment, anticipation and self-expression can shape an innovation brief from the start. The commercial test is whether they add up to something people have a reason to choose.
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AI and judgment 4 min read
What gets lost in a convincing AI answer?
AI can help teams explore and interpret more. The risk is losing the differences that should change the decision.
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Growth choices 4 min read
Would this grow the business, or just the range?
An idea can appeal to customers and still add little to the business. Its value depends on what it changes across the whole offer.
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Customer choice 3 min read
What would customers have to give up to choose you?
An offer can be better and still ask people to give up something they value, from a routine that works to the certainty of the familiar.
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AI in products 4 min read
The AI feature is useful. How much control will customers give it?
Customers can welcome the benefit of an AI feature and still want to approve what it does.
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Product development 3 min read
Your product is only part of what the customer is judging
A product team and its customers can assess the same product carefully and still judge different things. Research helps most when it links technical performance to the experience customers judge.
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Innovation discipline 3 min read
Five different ideas. One shared assumption.
Different ideas can depend on the same uncertain change in customer behavior. Seeing that shared assumption can sharpen the research and make the choices across an innovation pipeline better informed.
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AI and judgment 4 min read
When AI creates the idea and judges it, what have you learned?
AI can generate concepts and rank them in the same session.
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Growth choices 3 min read
Which market is worth entering first?
The largest market is not always the best place to begin.
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Product development 3 min read
A product promise has to survive first use
A persuasive promise and a workable first experience are separate questions. Product development needs evidence on both, at a point when that evidence can still change the work.
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Innovation discipline 4 min read
Why the same research leads to different innovation decisions
Colleagues can accept the same evidence and still recommend a launch, more development or stopping. Often they are weighing different commitments, which more research alone cannot settle.
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Customer choice 4 min read
When customers say “quality,” what should you change?
Customers can use the same word and want quite different things. Knowing what they mean tells a team what to improve, what to communicate and what to measure.
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Brand strategy 3 min read
Where could the brand go that customers would welcome?
Familiarity can make a brand extension easy to imagine without giving anyone a reason to choose it.
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AI in research 4 min read
Your research is easier to search. Is it still answering today’s question?
AI can bring past research back into use.
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Brand strategy 3 min read
What should stay the same when a brand enters a new market?
Keeping everything identical can weaken relevance, and changing everything can lose the reason to enter.
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Innovation practice 3 min read
The pilot worked. What is ready to grow?
A pilot can succeed under conditions that change at launch.
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AI and innovation 4 min read
The idea arrived in seconds. Who understands it well enough to back it?
AI can produce a convincing idea quickly.
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Customer choice 3 min read
When a concept wins with an unexpected audience
A concept that scores best outside its intended audience raises a strategic question.
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Growth choices 4 min read
Will this launch leave you a second chance?
A market test can teach a team a great deal and still use up an opportunity, such as a retailer’s shelf space or a buyer’s first impression.
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Research strategy 4 min read
What would have to be true for this forecast to be right?
A research model can make a choice clearer. Before its output becomes a sales commitment, the conditions behind the number need to be as clear as the number itself.
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Customer choice 4 min read
Who else has to say yes?
The person who wants a product may not be the person who pays for it, approves it or has to make it work.
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Innovation practice 3 min read
The technology works. What should it become?
A capability that works can support several applications.
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AI and judgment 3 min read
If your competitors have the same AI, what gives you an advantage?
AI can help a team look further and check harder.
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Research strategy 4 min read
Can you reach the customers your segmentation recommends?
A segmentation can identify the customers who matter and still leave teams unable to find them.
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Research strategy 4 min read
Which part of the customer journey is worth changing?
A journey map shows plenty to improve. Choosing where to invest depends on which obstacles change what customers do, for which customers, and whether the business can change them.
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Research strategy 4 min read
When sales data and customer interviews disagree
Two sound pieces of evidence can seem to tell different stories. Understanding who, when and what each describes can change the decision they support.
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Research strategy 4 min read
When is a research difference big enough to act on?
A higher score is a starting point.
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Product development 4 min read
What would customers miss if you simplified the product?
A feature customers rarely mention can still be one they rely on. Understanding that dependence helps a team simplify an offer and keep what makes it worth choosing.
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Research strategy 4 min read
The customer story everyone remembers
A vivid interview can show that a problem exists and how it happens without showing how many customers share it.
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Research strategy 3 min read
Who isn’t in the research?
Research describes the people it includes.
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Customer choice 4 min read
The pricing decision starts with the offer
Customers weigh a price against what they believe they will get.
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AI and judgment 4 min read
More than a decade of working with AI, and what our 2017 forecast got right
We have been working with AI for more than a decade.
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Research strategy 6 min read
What can digital ethnography see that a home visit can’t?
Digital ethnography follows people for weeks, so routines repeat and the gap between what people say and do shows.
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Innovation practice 4 min read
What decides when a trend arrives?
In 2016 we mapped 34 trends in how people would live with technology, money and data.
Every piece here is written and reviewed by the antedote partner named on it. We use AI to help research and draft; the thinking, the judgment and the checks are ours.
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