We've got a crush on...
Great thinkers. We’re inspired by their brains & their views of the world.
Roger Martin
The man who thinks about thinking. The man who made our heads hurt with his breakthrough theories in integrative thinking and design thinking. In keeping with this cerebral theme, he placed 3rd on the 2013 Thinkers50 list. And we think he’s just getting started.
Delaine Hampton
What can we say about this market research thought leader who always seems to be 20 years ahead of the rest of us? She has certainly contributed heavily to Procter & Gamble’s past and future growth – but it’s her uncanny ability to understand human nature that enthralls us. That, and her drive not to redefine but rather to re-contextualize human behaviour in a technology-driven world. Tell us more, Delaine.
Hilary Austen
As we launched Mizzouri, we revisited Hilary’s theories. The idea that communities see things in a similar way, whereas innovators see things in a very different way. The idea that innovators are, by definition, ahead of their time – making them hard for communities to assess and easy to dismiss, which is why so many new ideas are lost just when they’re needed the most. We channel our inner Hilary as we tell both our clients and our competitors that the research world is actually round, not flat.
Byron Sharp
We would say that this director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science has consistently lived his personal brand promise to deny nothing, but doubt everything. He is fearless (and shameless) in calling marketers’ actions into question, and he certainly put everyone on notice with How Brands Grow, where his contrarian view challenged everything that marketers hold true. Maybe we just love a good, smart fight.
Kim Dedeker
Her 29-year career at Procter & Gamble is storied. Her list of market research industry awards is long and impressive. But this visionary leader rocked the industry (and stole our hearts) when she raised the debate and uttered the words, “Without transforming our capabilities into approaches that are more in touch with the lifestyles of consumers we seek to understand, the consumer research industry as we know it today will be on life support by 2012.” That was 2008. We launched Mizzouri in 2013 to meet a challenge that had gone largely ignored by the industry.
Emilio and Gloria Estéfan
This duo had a vision from the very beginning that was much larger than Miami Sound Machine, and much larger than the city of Miami or even the US, for that matter. They understood that the business of music is about intellectual property, not about making an audience happy with a piece of music. And because of this they now own the largest independently held Latin music catalogue in the world – and can lay claim to having brought Latin music to mainstream US audiences. Remember that the next time you catch yourself singing along with J.Lo.
Maureen Duffy
Talk about an impressive track record of leadership. Over the course of her colourful and award-studded career, Maureen has brought preternatural business transformation skills to JWT Advertising, BBC Television, the UK’s Newspaper Marketing Agency, and TNS. We generally find her gifted at leveraging research data to solve business problems. (Plus, we think she’s jolly good fun.)
John Murdock
A charismatic Nashville attorney and secret entrepreneur, John is also one of the first people we’ve seen take a logistics- and operations-based model and apply it to a legal practice. Operations fundamentals, project management, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints might not be the first things that come to mind when you ponder that law firm down the street, but John’s brand of efficiency is exactly what we’ve applied to Mizzouri.
Dan Merrell
It didn’t take long for this marketer in the family entertainment industry to realize that the system was broken – and that hope was the prevailing strategy for independent films. So, Dan did what any disruptor would do: he revolutionized the way independent movies are promoted and distributed by combining the best of Ticketmaster with the best of Kickstarter, creating Seatzy in the process. But he’s not just brilliant. He’s also one of the finest human beings we know.