What I owe the geeks at IBM

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In the winter of 1982, I was busy writing my university dissertation. I used a word processor for the first time – some kind of precursor to the lovely Amstrad PCW 8256 that I bought a couple of years later – and I couldn’t believe I could cut and paste, and correct errors without the use of Tippex!

At that stage, I had no idea there was a world of market research and insights – and certainly, therefore, no sense that this industry would eventually be transformed by the kind of computer that had brought me so much joy. That is exactly what has happened, however.

Quite apart from the Sex Pistols and The Clash, the late 1970s and early 1980s ushered in two things – desktop computing and relationship databases. In 1977, the Apple II was among three personal computers launched on an unsuspecting public, followed, four years later, by the IBM PC. This computer was based on an open architecture that allowed third-party developers to flourish, and had 640KB of RAM and an audio cassette for external storage! People could use spreadsheets such as Lotus 1-2-3, and database software such as dBASE. Both became top-selling software products for years to come. 

A decade earlier, Edgar Codd, (be honest, have you heard of him?) was working at an IBM lab in San Jose, California, and was dissatisfied with the search capabilities in existing systems. This drove him to develop relationship databases and write the 1970 paper A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks.

Everyone I have worked with knows the importance I attach to the centrality of human curiosity and creativity to great insight work – without it, we cannot understand why people think and behave the way they do. However, it would be churlish of me not to recognise the impact computing has had on our industry.

As the cost of computing has tumbled – and its power and storage capacity have increased exponentially – we have been able to undertake large-scale, global, quantitative survey work, and to analyse and interpret the results. As relational databases became the norm, we were able to look at individual-level attitudes and behaviour, and fuse data to understand cause and effect, and become more holistic in our analysis. 

More recently, it has become possible to analyse gigantic amounts of census-level media, purchase and social data, and to use it to make our work more predictive and ‘real time’ – not to mention our ability to visualise data in ways that bring it to life and give it meaning. 

For anyone who believes research can only be considered great if it can be used to make better decisions, the past few years have been inspiring. We are able to give clients better, more holistic insights, in real time, delivered in a way that makes them want to act. 

I will always believe that human ingenuity, curiosity and creativity will continue to play a critical role in understanding why people behave the way they do. 

However, none of us can underestimate the role that the geeks at IBM, Apple and elsewhere played in giving us the tools to transform our ability to capture and interpret data in meaningful ways – and in democratising the process of market research, and opening it up to millions.

Eric Salama is CEO of Kantar Group