A Market Intelligence Reality Check: Key Takeaways from SCIP Intellicon 2024

The state of B2B research in 2024 presents stark challenges and opportunities. In my session at this week's Intellicon 2024 conference, discussions revealed several critical themes about how organizations can separate signal from noise in market intelligence.

The Market Research Squeeze

Budget pressures are pushing organizations to demand more insights while spending less. This creates a challenging dynamic where research providers must produce more content with fewer resources, often leading to quality compromises. One participant noted buying research reports with credit cards for under $17,000, showing how accessibility has increased while potentially sacrificing quality.

The AI Revolution: Promise and Peril

AI is transforming market research production. Some organizations are building sophisticated private models with deep training data and specific use cases, producing impressive results. However, the rise of AI-generated analysis has also led to a proliferation of low-quality research. As one participant observed, there's more terrible AI than good AI, and many professionals haven't yet developed the skills to tell the difference.

Quality Assessment

Several participants shared experiences with testing research quality. One organization tested providers by checking specific market numbers against known data points - if providers were off by orders of magnitude, they were immediately disqualified. Another emphasized the importance of transparent methodology, noting that inability to explain methods was an immediate red flag.

The Research Provider Landscape

The market includes several distinct types of providers:

• Traditional analysts and investment researchers offering broad expertise
• Boutique firms with deep domain knowledge
• Research mills focusing on high-volume data aggregation
• New AI-powered players providing automated analysis

A "Good News" Bias

Multiple participants noted a tendency in organizations to seek confirmation rather than truth. One shared an experience where pointing out obvious errors in research was ignored because a purchasing decision had already been made. Another described how some organizations only collect data from happy customers, avoiding potentially uncomfortable truths.

Practical Solutions

The discussion yielded several practical approaches:

• Use multiple sources to validate findings
• Look for providers who can clearly explain their methodology
• Consider both tactical needs (immediate market sizing) and strategic requirements
• Build internal expertise to evaluate research quality
• Maintain healthy skepticism about findings that seem too good to be true

Looking Forward

The market research industry faces significant disruption. Traditional providers must adapt to AI while maintaining quality, boutique firms must prove their value proposition, and buyers must become more sophisticated in assessing research quality. As one participant put it, you need to be able to "smell the difference between good research and bad research."

The consensus was clear: organizations need a balanced approach combining different research types and providers, always maintaining critical thinking about the insights they receive. The challenge isn't just getting data - it's getting reliable insights that drive better business decisions.