A pet-peeve of mine is that many (way too many) market research professionals talk about “actionable insights” and I almost never know what they are talking about. I suspect most of them don’t either. The more our clients complain that research reports are sitting on shelves collecting dust, the louder every research firm starts proclaiming that it delivers actionable insights. Some even claim to have tools that, with the click of a button, deliver actionable insights right to your desktop.
Besides the ugliness of taking a verb (to act) and turning it into a noun (action) and then forcing that into an adjective (actionable), “actionable insight” just doesn’t mean much in our industry. Now we have clients with reports full of “actionable insights” collecting dust on their shelves.
In our view, the problem is that few research professionals make an explicit link in the design phase of their research between the data that will be generated, and the specific decisions that need to be made. If that link is not specified, then even if the report is rich, detailed, and full of insight, chances are it will not be used. And if it is not used, it probably was not “actionable” to begin with. (more…)