Michael Lowenstein

A recent post by colleague Richard Vanderveer, Ph.D., an expert and respected senior executive in healthcare-related research, took me to a somewhat disturbing article in Quirk's magazine, by Richard McCullough: http://rbv3.com/blog/wanted-research-methodologist/?utm_source=feedburne... (see internal link to Quirk's article).

Per Vanderveer, and as a read of the article will confirm, what McCullough postulates is that the role of 'research methodologist' is morphing into an individual who reviews enormous Big Data sets to identify what variables correlate with each other. As Vanderveer notes, one potential consequence of this is that: "Theory, causality, experimentation,...

This is a statement, and not a question. It is a partial response to Steven Walden's blog about what's wrong with quantitative marketing research: http://www.customerthink.com/blog/the_10_things_wrong_with_quantitative_...

My perspective is that there are some truths in the content he presents, but there are also differing points of view on what works and what doesn't. Namely, the bottom-line objective of most research, especially brand equity and customer experience research, should be to help optimize (through actionability) an enterprise's, product's, or service's strategically differentiated value proposition. And, in reviewing many business-to-consumer and business-to-business customer...

This must be the month to be informed about professional online achievements, real and otherwise. Last week, LinkedIn emailed me that my profile has been visited with a frequency that places it in the top 1% of their 200 million members. Today, I received a message from SlideShare saying that my content had been viewed over 10,000 times.

With regard to LinkedIn, my reaction was that, because I regularly post new customer-focused and corporate culture material (such as CustomerThink blogs) to the almost 50 groups which I follow, it is gratifying to see the professional response, caibrated by profile visitations. And, having it reflect on personal reputation and image can't hurt either. However, I've read some fairly skeptical, even negative, reactions by others to the same news from LinkedIn. Most of this, at least from my point of view, has to do with questioning the real value of such an achievement - even at financial and monetizing levels - beyond contributing to,...

Recently, LinkedIn informed me that my profile is among the top 1%, of their 200 million members, for 2012: http://lnkd.in/tsXCtH . To me, this is largely a reflection of desire to share insights and new information in key areas of enterprise direction, in my case particularly with respect to organizational culture and stakeholder behavior.

Building an extended network of business contacts and a personal brand (employers use b2b social sites like LinkedIn as a part of their candidate scouting activity) are important reasons for participation; however, posts to LinkedIn and portals like CustomerThink are critical, post-graduate venues and sources for time-constrained professionals to stay abreast of, and contribute to, thinking about new trends and emerging issues. This represents a true worldwide learning community, where colleagues in related fields get to objectively share information and knowledge they...