Peter Harris, MD of Vision Critical in Australia (and on Twitter @peteraharris), wrote an excellent blog post that summarises the issues with research and how we can learn from of all people ‘Vanilla Ice’.

His blog post- Stop, collaborate and LISTEN, focuses on the issues with research and those that do and do not use it- and those that should.

In addition to this he talks about needing to break out of the ‘traditional’ way of thinking for researchers and moving to the idea of ‘Listening’.

Full blog post here and definitely worth a read- http://peteraharris.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/stop-collaborate-and-listen/

Not exactly article from just this week, but definitely some here that are worth a read:

Knowledge Management and Social Business Transformation. Guest post by Jenni Beattie from Digital Democracy over on Market Magazine.

The fundamentals haven’t changed just the tools and technologies! Post by David Wesson over at his personal blog Digital Culture. Video from this post is below:

For those that have not seen it yet, the image below is an excellent visual representation of social networks and micro communities.

It is a perfect example of just how many sites, platforms, ecosystems, etc.. are out there, and need to be utilised by organisations in a constantly shifting landscape.

For more info on the Conversation Prism, check out the post on Brian’s blog.

This is something that all of us have know for some time, but until recently very few companies have been doing.

Have a read of the blog post over at the Vovici blog called Closing the Feedback Loop: Sharing Results with Online Community Members & Respondents.

Not content enough with being incredibly busy and sleep deprived with the birth of our second child, I have decided to try my hand at contracting/ consulting through my own business. This is something that I have never done before and due to current circumstances (having my position made redundant at my previous job), I have decided to take on a new challenge.

My aim is to help clients realise the potential of online research and online communities, and how they can greatly benefit a business. Not only a market research organisation, but any organisation that is willing to research themselves, their clients and customers and their industry.

The barriers to entry are much lower than in recent years, and thus these types of insights are more attainable than ever. Companies just need a little bit of a helping hand to realise the potential of this medium.

In addition to this, I am going to be working to help organisations gain further insights from their existing databases, through custom panels and online communities. There is a vast untapped wealth for may companies in existing databases that needs to be explored sooner rather than later.