Is Market Research Overrated?

This is a question I’ve asked myself over the years and I do flip flop on my feelings about market research, but here are a few things that I know for sure:

A.  Market research isn’t necessary to create great products or services.  When I first got involved with nightclubs, I was working on a concept that involved 3 clubs in 1. 

No one was looking for 3 in 1 nightclubs with dance/hip hop, rock and disco. 

But when you have a big space, you have to do something with it.  So why not give people a little bit of choice in one complex. 

B.  When I was a buyer for a large ticket broker and also owned my own ticket brokering company, I didn’t go with market research to buy tickets. 

I went with my gut. 

More often than not that would find me making bets that other brokers weren’t making and that my boss and partners would question until the money started coming in, but having a strong sense of where the population is moving or what is going to catch fire is way more important than what people are going to tell you that they want today. 

C.  Lately I’ve been using the iCloud to link everything in my apartment together.  Including using the awesome Jawbone speaker. 

The original idea of cloud computing came out of a need to have greater access to files and documents while moving around the world.  Not out of market research because I’m sure that the corporate bean counters would have ‘we need more security of our intellectual property’ the life right out of the idea, but now, we have clouds and interconnected networks that allow you to seamlessly link all of your data to your devices or access anything from anywhere. 

Market research might have shown that this was a great idea, but it also might have killed it. 

In closing, I’m not sure that market research is overrated, but I am sure that it isn’t the be all and end all. 

Of course, my examples are limited and there are tons of examples where market research worked. 

So your mileage will vary with these.