Elon Musk is the richest man in the world – at age 49, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is a multi-billionaire many times over. He does what he wants. He says what he thinks. He has disrupted the status quo again and again with his relentless innovation and refusal to follow the tried-and-true path of established U.S. corporations. The guy who quit Stanford after one day is doing things his way – and it’s not about the money. It’s about creating something new; creating real value.

It’s been a challenging year, to say the least. As we wrap up 2020 and look ahead to 2021, we wanted to uncover the biggest challenges currently facing market researchers. So we did what we do best: designed and conducted a study of 145 insights pros to learn more about the difficulties they’re facing – and then provide ways to address them. Here’s what we learned.

Market research has changed tremendously over the past few years. Advances in technology are making it faster and easier for research teams to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research in-house. What used to take weeks and a specialized team of experts can now be done with a few clicks of a mouse.

Today’s leading organizations are increasingly employing agile approaches to developing new marketing programs, product or service innovations and customer experiences. By leveraging agile market research methods, your organization is able to simultaneously design, test and build new solutions before going to market. This approach speeds time to market, while still ensuring your go-to-market strategy fits with consumers’ changing lifestyles, situations and needs.

Today’s leading organizations are increasingly employing agile approaches to developing new marketing programs, product or service innovations and customer experiences. By leveraging agile market research methods, your organization is able to simultaneously design, test and build new solutions before going to market. This approach speeds time to market, while still ensuring your go-to-market strategy fits with consumers’ changing lifestyles, situations and needs.

When consumer insights leaders come together to talk shop, it’s a good day. I recently moderated a panel of four insights pros who discussed how they deliver innovation at their companies.