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Use Big Data to Predict Your Customers' Behaviors

Harvard Business Review

Traditional market research generally involves unnatural acts, such as surveys, mall-intercept interviews, and focus groups. They can also glean intelligence from the exploding social media sphere, whether it consists of blogs, chat forums, Twitter trends, or Facebook commentary.

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How to Design a Corporate Wellness Plan That Actually Works

Harvard Business Review

A company like Dow Chemical is a success story in this way. The most common approach is to conduct regular surveys or focus groups to determine which aspects of health and wellness are important to employees, and which initiatives are not a good use of time. This, of course, takes time and support.

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Memo to the CEO: Customers Are the Key to Growth

Harvard Business Review

In a wide variety of industries — from computers to chemical processes to a whole range of service businesses — the source for most of the commercially successful new products is customers, not R&D. It's not that hard, or expensive — but it does take more than forming a few focus groups.

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