The process of corporate innovation is often left to outside consultants and internal/external teams specializing in the invention process. Market researchers are all too often neglected in this process, even though the newly emerging tools of researchers can accelerate innovation. What may be needed is a researcher-friendly system with five properties: rapid and user friendly (days and weeks); consumer-based (to ensure ongoing inputs from the end user); knowledge-based (using data, not guesswork); reality-based (using observation to identify actual behaviors leading to these new products); and modularity (to allow flexible sequencing of specific steps in response to new learning). This paper demonstrates the integration of current tools into a flexible innovation system and deals with the creation of specific types of products (sandwich, car features, respectively), responding to the increasing use of the car as a place where food is eaten and beverages are drunk. This approach is 'boundary crossing' as we go beyond the current boundaries of cars as vehicles for transportation, and look at cars as venues for food consumption.
The authors of this paper argue that the rise of new technologies such as databases and the Internet offer both new challenges and opportunities to the market research industry. At a time when CRM is reported to have grown more than 30% a year with projected total revenues of $12.1 billion by the end of 2001, it is noteworthy that few traditional market research firms have seized the opportunity. Despite embracing the Internet for data collection, few research companies have been able to translate research technology and talent to take advantage of this huge business opportunity. Although data collection is a key benefit of the Internet, a bigger potential benefit is the delivery of information and insights to decisions makers via the Internet. The emerging CRM industry makes this a central goal and is reaping the benefits. The paper presents both theoretical and case study findings that offer a new way to relate to market research that can potentially bring the research industry to the top of executives priority list.