Research & Development departments conduct a fair amount of business with the outside expertise they find in Maven’s Global Knowledge Marketplace. And they’re not the only ones. Corporate Strategy, IT, and of course Innovation departments, among others, also find great value in our network. Lately, we’ve been seeing more and more engagement from Marketing departments as well. I find this to be an interesting trend, and I’d like to share a couple of recent conversations I’ve had with folks at two different organizations, one involved directly in marketing, the other owning a consultancy with a marketing slant. Each of these two individuals attended open2012, and both came away from the event with new ideas for their respective organizations.
The first open2012 attendee is a Marketing Director at a global company. Following the event, she and I spent some time on the phone discussing her department’s needs related to outside expertise. It came to light that Maven’s Global Knowledge Marketplace is an excellent resource for such marketing functions as focus groups, market insights, and consumer and product trends. Each of these activities can be addressed to a hyper-targeted group of Mavens within the network, and they can be addressed hyper-efficiently through Maven’s survey product.
The second attendee owns a consultancy that helps its clients understand if there exists a market for its product. What I found interesting in this conversation was this individuals use of the VOC, (Voice Of the Customer), process. This process, as defined by Wikipedia, is a market research technique used to “describe the in-depth process of capturing a customer’s expectations, preferences and aversions.” Per this attendee, his current process of conducting the VOC process is quite arduous, and he also found great potential in Maven’s survey product to more efficiently and effectively conduct his VOC market research.
So what is my point in the above examples? Outside expertise has been relied upon within certain business functions, (R&D, Corporate Strategy, Innovation, etc.), but don’t let the historical use of outside expertise keep other departments within your organization from gaining advantage from the obvious benefits of the Maven Network.
Whatever your need or challenge, Maven’s Global Knowledge Marketplace holds the answer!
