Earning a Seat at the Strategy Table with Diane Hessan at C-Space

[00:00:00] MRII Announcer: Welcome to MRI eyes insights and innovators podcast, where we talk to top market research professionals to get their inside stories about innovative and enduring best practices. Today’s episode is sponsored by full circle named the panel company of the year full circle is a leading provider of high quality online insight, leveraging survey experience.

[00:00:21] MRII Announcer: Advanced tech, flexible community strategies, and unparalleled quality controls. We give you immediate access to proven data for better insights. Now, here’s your host for today’s episode.

[00:00:34] Stan Sthanunathan: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today’s episode of Insights and Innovators. I’m your host, Stan Sanonathan. Today is a special episode because it’s a two in one episode.

[00:00:46] Stan Sthanunathan: The topic is all about not just entrepreneurs who are transforming the insights industry, but it is also about a subject that is very close to a lot of insights professionals. And that’s all about how do you get a seat at the table. [00:01:00] Today we have somebody who’s at the table. So you know, you’re going to have a very interesting conversation, which is two pronged.

[00:01:07] Stan Sthanunathan: One is about an entrepreneur who transformed insights industry. And somebody who’s at the table who can give us some coaching and guidance on what we need to do to get a seat at the table. We have a perfect guest for this topic. And that guest is Diane Hessen. Diane is a visionary and disruptor rolled into one.

[00:01:24] Stan Sthanunathan: And I’ve known her for 20 plus years and she’s awesome. In this episode, Diane shares her perspective on her journey. There’s a lot to be learned from what she has gone through and what she has done over the years. I’m sure you’re in for a treat today. So sit back and enjoy. Welcome, Diane. Thanks, Dan.

[00:01:46] Stan Sthanunathan: Great to be here. Thank you. Can’t

[00:01:48] Diane Hessan: believe we’ve known each other for 20 years.

[00:01:50] Stan Sthanunathan: Yeah, I’d say, you know, we’re, we’re dating ourselves here. We

[00:01:53] Diane Hessan: must have been in high school then.

[00:01:57] Stan Sthanunathan: I would love to believe that, but my back wouldn’t be otherwise. [00:02:00] Anyway, uh, I would like to ask a few questions about you, but before that, I want your take on where you think, uh, our industry is today, the insights industry is today.

[00:02:10] Stan Sthanunathan: What are your thoughts on that?

[00:02:14] Diane Hessan: Well, look, the tools and methodologies change and, and there’s so many challenges these days, but I, I feel like, um, the biggest one that we have, uh, plays out like as a triangle. So we have to balance 3 things, um, speed of insights, depth of insights, and relevance to the business. And getting all 3 of those and striking a balance is very, very challenging.

[00:02:48] Diane Hessan: So speed, especially with AI is breathtaking these days. I mean, what we’re able to find out relatively inexpensively in real time is staggering, even compared to a few years ago. You [00:03:00] know, depth is that sometimes we get very fast information, but it doesn’t really tell us much more than we already know.

[00:03:08] Diane Hessan: Um, and of course, the 3rd 1 is that what we are learning and communicating has to be relevant. You know, to be connected to the priorities of our organizations. And I think getting all three of these to me is the holy grail. I think it’s always been the holy grail. What’s different today is that things are changing so fast that it’s, it’s breathless and you’re constantly balancing.

[00:03:36] Stan Sthanunathan: That’s a beautiful perspective in terms of balancing the triangle. So if you have to give a report card on the industry, where do you think the industry is on balancing the three corners of the triangle, as you put it.

[00:03:49] Diane Hessan: Oh, that’s a good question. I’d say, um, we are, I think speed is, I think speed is what [00:04:00] everyone’s pretty focused on and mastering these days.

[00:04:03] Diane Hessan: Not just AI companies, but I think for most solutions, we understand that clients need their results, if not in real time, you know, very, very quickly. So I think we’re all over speed. You know, depth of insights telling people something they didn’t already know. You know, I think that’s a, I think that’s a constant challenge, but we’re building really interesting tools and methodologies to be able to handle, you know, big questions that are, you know, more anticipatory and predictive rather than just reflective.

[00:04:41] Diane Hessan: And I think that’s going to really help us. I think relevance has always been the biggest challenge. I know for me, when I was a market research supplier, relevance was actually really, really critical, but you know, it’s so easy to take everything that [00:05:00] we’ve done and, you know, just work on small problems and I think being connected to what really matters in the business and what’s happening in the boardroom.

[00:05:12] Diane Hessan: Um, is, is always a challenge, so I’d say that’s the one we have to work on the most.

[00:05:16] Stan Sthanunathan: Awesome. So, you know, you’re saying speed is largely a kind of solved problem, but let’s talk about the depth and the relevance, you know, because those are two areas where, you know, you have done some pioneering work, particularly when it comes to depth.

[00:05:32] Stan Sthanunathan: So why, you know, just segueing from depth, why don’t you give the audience a quick intro into your career? And, uh, sure.

[00:05:42] Diane Hessan: Well, you know, in the beginning of my career, um, after business school, I worked in marketing at General Foods, which was eventually sold to Craft And I’ll, I actually, um, only was at General Foods for about a year, but I’ll tell you, it was a very, very transformational experience for me.

[00:05:57] Diane Hessan: And I’ll tell you why. So I don’t know what I wanna do. I [00:06:00] go in, they say. Diane, what product do you want to work on? I mean, we’ve got coffee, we’ve got lemonade, we’ve got stovetop stuffing, pebble cereal, Gainsburgers at the time. I mean, we had all of these products and I said, play me wherever you think you really need the help.

[00:06:17] Diane Hessan: I’m absolutely happy to be there. Great. I said, do me a favor though. Just give me a product that I understand. Like, don’t give me decaffeinated coffee because I just don’t get that. Like, why would anybody drink something that tastes awful, but that doesn’t deliver the primary benefit? So, of course, General Foods, um, in all of their wisdom, puts me on brim decaffeinated coffee.

[00:06:42] Diane Hessan: And it was the beginning of my love affair with trying to understand people who are different from me.

[00:06:49] I mean,

[00:06:50] Diane Hessan: I, we, I did, you know, 50 cent coupons in Reader’s Digest and all those promotional things. But I loved it. Trying to [00:07:00] understand the people who liked brim and who were engaged with the problem that it solved and all of that.

[00:07:08] Diane Hessan: And I think that was the beginning of my, my love of the research business. After that, I joined a small startup in the training and development space where I spent a big chunk of my early career training and development. I was a brand new arena and I learned a ton there and I got a front seat and how to take a startup and grow it fast and manage it.

[00:07:28] Diane Hessan: Well, I eventually left to start my own company, which ended up being community space. And now in the next phase of my career, I have more of a portfolio life. I’m on four corporate boards and a bunch of nonprofits. I invest in and support startups. And I also parlayed my love of market research into the political arena where I’ve been in conversation with a panel of 500 voters since 2016.

[00:07:59] Diane Hessan: And [00:08:00] that’s, that’s, that’s, here we go. Here’s the advertisement. And that’s, What I wrote my book about and it’s really funny this book did really well when it came out a couple of years ago and then the sales kind of went down and now, you know, people are buying it again because of course, everyone wants to know what’s going on with all of those voters who are different from them.

[00:08:22] Diane Hessan: So, yeah, now I have a portfolio life.

[00:08:25] Stan Sthanunathan: Awesome. Awesome. That’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. You know, we both met many years ago and I’ve been following your journey very closely. Truly an inspiring one. There are a lot of budding entrepreneurs you can learn a lot from. So tell me, what prompted you to start Communispace?

[00:08:42] Stan Sthanunathan: How did you identify the need in the marketplace to begin with?

[00:08:46] Diane Hessan: Yeah, you know, we started CommuniSpace, Dan, in the beginning of the internet era. I

[00:08:52] mean,

[00:08:53] Diane Hessan: we talked about what the internet was going to be, and it was the three Cs, content, commerce, community. And honestly, [00:09:00] I fell in love with community. I mean, from the first day I logged on to America Online, I mean, remember?

[00:09:07] Diane Hessan: I was captivated by that. I mean, I thought it was incredible that you could, you know, get online and connect with people from all over the world about issues and projects and ideas that you were passionate about. And so our team became convinced that online community, uh, could be used for a lot of things, not just like, let’s all share how much we love tennis or whatever, but.

[00:09:38] Diane Hessan: Could transform the way that companies got insight and inspiration from their consumers that we could build on. We could leverage that notion of online communities to be the equivalent of a focus group on steroids and, um, Our first client, uh, who was Tom Brailsford at Hallmark, [00:10:00] um, had agreed to like test our prototype software.

[00:10:02] Diane Hessan: And we, um, got a bunch of consumers and everything there, but he pushed us really hard on how to build the product. And eventually we got some other early clients who were just. Willing to go on a journey with us. Like a Jim figure at Colgate Palmolive and Gretchen Waitley at craft and Patty Waitling at Unilever, Jonathan Craig at Schwab, who’s now a super senior executive.

[00:10:28] Diane Hessan: They are, they were incredibly brave in the beginning to try early versions of what we were doing, because the idea of an online community applied to market research was extremely controversial in those days because we were building Relationships with respondents, which was a no, no, like you can’t know, you can’t ask bias, bias, bias.

[00:10:55] Diane Hessan: You can’t, um, you can’t ask a question of someone. And then the following [00:11:00] week ask a different question of the same person. Like you can’t do that. And of course, ultimately we learned that If you could build trust with your respondents, you could dramatically increase the speed and quality and importantly, the candor of their responses.

[00:11:22] Diane Hessan: So, we started finding that bias actually went down. I remember I used to say to clients, just think like. You know, if you need a haircut, who’s going to tell you, you need a haircut, someone who doesn’t care about you or someone that you have a relationship with. So, um, but in the beginning, that was extremely controversial.

[00:11:41] Diane Hessan: I mean, we go to conferences and I literally got booed from time to time.

[00:11:47] Stan Sthanunathan: That is very fascinating. Yeah. So in this wonderful, uh, you know, entrepreneurial journey that, uh, You embarked on and created an enormously successful business against all odds. What are the [00:12:00] two or three must do things that entrepreneurs should, uh, you know, can learn from you?

[00:12:06] Stan Sthanunathan: And maybe two or three watch outs based on your experience.

[00:12:11] Diane Hessan: Okay. Um, well, look, the obvious must do is listen to your customers. I mean, it’s so easy to fall in love with your product. Um, and very often you can have all of the brilliant technology in the world, but if it doesn’t respond to something a client is trying to accomplish, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sophisticated product.

[00:12:35] Diane Hessan: So. You know, listening and like, you have to love what you’re doing because you’re doing it 24, seven when you’re an entrepreneur, but being open

[00:12:44] to the

[00:12:44] Diane Hessan: fact that you might need to make shifts, I think is really important. Second must do is, you know, it’s really all about the team. I mean, I used to say business is easy.

[00:12:53] Diane Hessan: It’s all about. Two things. Finding and keeping great customers and finding and keeping great people. And the [00:13:00] people part is so important. In the beginning, you have limited resources and every employee is an investment and the consequences

[00:13:09] of

[00:13:09] Diane Hessan: hiring the wrong person, especially on your leadership team are deadly.

[00:13:18] Diane Hessan: Um, so You know, one of the benefits of starting community space in my 40s was that I had incredible former workers that I knew I wanted to hire that I knew were already a players and, you know, they joined. You know, the only other must do is it’s it’s helpful to have luck. I mean, look, the best arena is.

[00:13:43] Diane Hessan: You know, Tom Brailsford of Hallmark, who I mentioned already, he was our first client within, we just were lucky that we had great clients in the beginning. Tom had us in business week, two months into his implementation, and we had an article [00:14:00] here that was, acted as if we were this big established company.

[00:14:03] Diane Hessan: And, um, you know, we started going to conferences, and I had clients who were willing to come to conferences and talk about what they were doing. And I never really took that for granted, you know, watch outs, um, one watch out is know that you will probably pivot. So that your first idea won’t end up being what you’re offering.

[00:14:27] Diane Hessan: I mean, so many people who have early stage companies, you know, they start in one arena and then they move into another. I was actually just, um, on a call with an entrepreneur who was doing a lot of political research. And when I looked at what he was doing, I said, you know, it’s, it’s very interesting to look at all this trend analysis and all this sentiment analysis, but.

[00:14:49] Diane Hessan: You could disrupt brand trackers. Like you should get out of the political arena where it’s really, really hard to work with people and, you know, move into industry. So [00:15:00] looking for the pivot number two, if you’re trying to raise money from people, just know that it’s a second job and it will take you twice as long as you thought you would.

[00:15:09] Diane Hessan: And I think the last watch out is like, no, the space, you know, if you’re building an insights company and you don’t come from the research industry, You know, don’t, don’t be a jerk. Don’t be arrogant. Learn the language. Learn the issues. Um, I knew something about market research, but I didn’t really know the industry.

[00:15:31] Diane Hessan: I mean, I had people saying to me, you should go to an ARF conference. And I was like, what’s ARF? Um, and I ultimately hired a market research veteran early in our company. And she helped us create the slide in our deck that ended up being the one that prospects love the most, which is what communists space should not be used for.

[00:15:54] Diane Hessan: Um, and I learned a lot about, I learned a lot about that in the process [00:16:00] of doing it because otherwise, you know, you go in, you say, this is really great. People say, what can you use it for? You’re like, Oh, you could use it for anything. You could ask this. You could ask this. Well, actually, that’s not true. I mean, you wouldn’t use it if you were trying to make a.

[00:16:12] Diane Hessan: Very, very big decision where you needed a lot of quantitative research, you know, et cetera. So, um, yeah, that would be, those would be my watch out.

[00:16:21] Stan Sthanunathan: Awesome. Crystal clear. I think, you know, there’s a lot that I learned from that, you know, and I reflect on what I’m doing as an entrepreneur and market against what you said.

[00:16:31] Stan Sthanunathan: Thank you so much. Yeah. Now, you know, you’ve been in the industry and you watch it up close. Uh, what needs to change now and in the near future for the insights industry to become more relevant? As an entity. What needs to change?

[00:16:51] Diane Hessan: Yeah, well, I think the conversations that we have with clients need to change.

[00:16:56] Diane Hessan: I think most of our conversations now is the client wants to [00:17:00] know X. And we say, here’s the answer to X and look how fast and interesting it is. I think we need to elevate our conversation. So I used to always tell clients that their community space community would do a great job helping them make decision between the blue package and the red package or number 1, number 2,

[00:17:20] but.

[00:17:20] Diane Hessan: That they, the holy grail was to use it for the biggest issues, understanding how their markets were dramatically shifting, seeing how consumers would change, inspiring completely new products

[00:17:39] and

[00:17:40] Diane Hessan: coming up with new, really breakthrough questions. So I’ll give you an example, Stan. I just. Read an article this morning.

[00:17:48] Diane Hessan: I’ll take it out of industry and I’ll go to the recent presidential election and David Brooks of the New York Times, excuse me, wrote a great article and in [00:18:00] essence, he said, we are analyzing the results of the election and we ran our campaigns based on segments. What do you do for black voters? What about young people?

[00:18:13] Diane Hessan: How do we make women happy? What about affluent white men? What about Latinos, et cetera? And what he argued was that all of our mental models that are so focused on demographics are no longer serving us. Because if you look at the data, there is just not a vast difference between how men vote and how women vote.

[00:18:35] Diane Hessan: And how women vote, which is like hard for people to get their arms around if you think about that, but that we need to change all of the questions that we are asking about American voters because they’re not out there going, I’m a woman, and I’m only voting for women’s issues because of course. Almost half the women, you know, voted for Donald Trump, et cetera.

[00:18:59] Diane Hessan: [00:19:00] So changing the way we think about elections, changing the way we structure our data and promote our candidates. So I think that. Something that totally shifts your mental model that really gives you a headache that says the there’s we’re playing in this arena and the arena is changing.

[00:19:18] He’s

[00:19:18] Diane Hessan: exciting.

[00:19:19] Diane Hessan: So figuring out how we really work with the very biggest issues. I think it’s great. I mean, obviously, we need to be on top of technology so that we don’t lose the load on that, you know, a tech community, but. I think working the big issues, uh, is the biggest challenge.

[00:19:35] Stan Sthanunathan: Brilliant. Brilliant. Now, you know, I’ll pivot to the second subject, which is all about relevance.

[00:19:43] Stan Sthanunathan: And I think there is no better person who can provide some insights on how can insights industry be relevant and relevant. Earn a seat at the table because you are at the table. Yeah, you are in, as you said in the beginning, you are in a few boats. [00:20:00] What is the expectation at a board level that you think Insight could potentially leverage and make themselves indispensable to the board?

[00:20:17] Diane Hessan: Well, look, You sit in a board meeting and when marketing comes, they go, here’s our new ad. And you watch the ad and you’re sitting there as a board member. And I’m usually the person with the most marketing expertise in the boardroom. And I don’t even know whether the ad is right. Sometimes I, my gut feel is it’s good.

[00:20:40] Diane Hessan: Sometimes my gut feel is it’s not good, but it’s just, that’s the kind of thing we see in the boardroom. We don’t usually get a lot of context that says, by the way, you’re going to see something that’s a little different here because we have a We have shifted the way we are thinking about who is doing business with us.

[00:20:56] Diane Hessan: And that shift is way more important to me [00:21:00] than seeing one more ad, you know, or we’ll get, um, you know, we’ll see the funnel. So we’re looking at leads that are coming in and how those are converting and how they relate to business and everything. Again, you know, that’s interesting, but I think board members are much more interested in Why have we done that with the ad or even with conversions and everything in a funnel?

[00:21:27] Diane Hessan: What’s going on there? Who are the people who are responding to what we’re doing? What are we doing? What’s the insight that we can get from how our deal flow is coming in to the organization? So what I would say is think about the fact that the board members Are looking for context, they’re looking for the why behind who is buying, who is not buying, who is winning competitively, [00:22:00] who is not winning competitively, right?

[00:22:02] Diane Hessan: Um, what products are doing well, what products are not doing well. Um, so if there’s an opportunity, for instance, with customers to completely rethink who core customers are and why they buy, that’s super interesting. So the role of any presentation in the boardroom is to enlighten the board, not so that they think you’re great, but to, I mean, I’ve heard insights presentations that have just been, you know, here’s our personas.

[00:22:30] Diane Hessan: Here we go. And I’m thinking, all right, here’s some new personas. Um, but I’ve heard insights presentations that have changed the boardroom conversation for the entire meeting. So the question to think is not what am I doing? That will be. Might be interesting to the board. What am I doing? That’s interesting to me.

[00:22:50] Diane Hessan: It’s how can I because I kind of own the why behind a lot of what’s going on in the business. How can I make the [00:23:00] board more effective and more insightful because I’m about to present. You I would literally say to myself, you know, the couple of days while I’m preparing. For this board meeting. Um, if this, if my board presentation is a home run, what are the things that board members will understand that they probably don’t know now?

[00:23:23] Diane Hessan: And I know that sounds like, I mean, I think in times that can sound like you’re being, it’s not about condescending to the board, but it’s just What, what do I know and what’s happening in the business that will allow board members to make better decisions and have more rich conversations if I have, if they’ve heard the insights that I’m about to share and that’s the standard that I would use.

[00:23:49] Stan Sthanunathan: So that’s a question people need to ask themselves before they stand up and present to the board so that you can. I think

[00:23:54] Diane Hessan: so. I think so. I mean, literally the exercise I would go through Stan is. I would [00:24:00] literally say as I would literally start my presentation by saying, look, let me start at the end at the end of this 20 minute presentation.

[00:24:10] Diane Hessan: I am hoping that you will say you will understand three things about the current state of our business. Uh, and then go into, but literally say, I want to change your mind. I want to enlighten you. I want to, you know, do whatever, and you want to use the right language there. You don’t want to sound like, you know, you’re better than the board or whatever, but it’s at that level.

[00:24:35] Diane Hessan: And I’d start my presentation that way. Awesome.

[00:24:39] Stan Sthanunathan: I have a couple of last questions, but I think the, the, the one that I’m going to ask you now is probably the most important one, given that, you know, this is your core strength as a. Know it based on our 20 year relationship, you know, you’re not about tools and technology.

[00:24:55] Stan Sthanunathan: Yes. Of course, tools and technology are important and you always brought some great technology to the [00:25:00] table. What softer aspects should entrepreneurs focus on to create a strong business? Because sometimes people think that, you know, if you have a great tool, great technology, everything will fall in place.

[00:25:12] Stan Sthanunathan: It doesn’t. There is something else. There’s a um factor. What is it? What is it that entrepreneurs should be thinking about from your experience?

[00:25:23] Diane Hessan: Well, look, I guess two things. Number one, I’ve talked about customers before, Stan, but a community space with all the money that we put into our technology, which was probably about 15 million.

[00:25:32] Diane Hessan: It was a lot in those days. Our competitive advantage was that our clients loved us. And they, you know, we were obsessed with them and we did everything we could to help make them heroes. So at least in our space, you know, our clients, our corporate clients are super busy and they don’t have time to take sales calls from 100 vendors and [00:26:00] look at people’s websites and learn the ins and even if they’re buying from you.

[00:26:05] Diane Hessan: They and their teams don’t have time to learn the ins and outs of what you are offering. So they will pay you to take the complexity and the details off of their hands if you deliver. So we had, and many people who are listening to this probably have, we had a subscription model. And so for us, Think about it.

[00:26:26] Diane Hessan: The happier our clients were, the faster they grew. So we had a subscription model. They’re paying us a certain amount of money a month. Um, if they love you, they sign a three year contract instead of a one year contract. Or if they really love you, I mean, we used to find that if they really loved us, they didn’t just have one community.

[00:26:48] Diane Hessan: They’d say, I’d also want to have this kind of a community and this kind of a community. All of a sudden we’d be working with clients. And they had five communities. So happy clients were the most critical thing we [00:27:00] needed to grow. Um, and of course, what’s behind that, I guess, is the second softer thing, which is that you have to create a culture of Within your organization that is consistent with your business.

[00:27:16] Diane Hessan: So, um, what I mean by that is not sitting around writing at your values. I don’t mean having pizza parties. I’m saying literally what kind of company do we need

[00:27:27] to

[00:27:27] Diane Hessan: be able. To deliver for a client. So obviously, if I said to you before that, you know, we were obsessed with our clients. I mean, when I interviewed people, especially in the early days, I would ask them questions like, um, you know, you’re on the soccer field watching your child play.

[00:27:46] Diane Hessan: And all of a sudden you get a text. From a client, what do you do? And if the person said, look, work life balance is really, really critical to me, and I will get back to that. client first thing Monday morning. I didn’t [00:28:00] hire them because I, I didn’t need somebody to say the client is more important than my kid, but I needed somebody who was willing to get back to that client in short order and say, how big is the problem?

[00:28:12] Diane Hessan: I’m on the soccer field. Do you need me to call you now, et cetera. So creating a culture,

[00:28:18] um,

[00:28:19] Diane Hessan: the client was number one was really, really critical for us because we were trying to invest. And I think, you know, the culture was a key source of that.

[00:28:31] Stan Sthanunathan: So, you know, I’m so aligned with that soccer ground example.

[00:28:37] Stan Sthanunathan: I think it’s critical. It is critical obsession with. Yeah.

[00:28:44] Diane Hessan: Yeah. I mean, look, you don’t have to be obsessed with customers. You could have a technology that is different from everybody else in the world. You could have a brilliant engineering team and it could be delivered. You could be delivering things that no one.

[00:28:56] Diane Hessan: You know, maybe your team doesn’t matter. There are certainly [00:29:00] aspects of the technology industry where it doesn’t matter that much. Or I remember, um, my husband and I bought a Tesla like five years ago and the product was so much fun and so cool. It was great. I didn’t really care who the salesperson was.

[00:29:15] Diane Hessan: Um, the irony is that when we had a problem with the car, Don’t even get me started on how horrible the service was. I couldn’t figure out how to call. No one would call me back. We brought the car in. All of a sudden, no one knew where it was. I could go on and on. But the point was that all of a sudden, I wasn’t so happy with the car anymore because there was nothing with it anymore.

[00:29:37] Diane Hessan: Other than the product.

[00:29:38] So

[00:29:39] Diane Hessan: most of the time you have to really think about who is there for the client and the client team and how you can kind of use that to leverage what you’re doing.

[00:29:49] Stan Sthanunathan: Awesome. Uh, any, uh, threats that we as an insights industry need to plan for? Well, look, [00:30:00] I

[00:30:00] Diane Hessan: think the biggest threat right now is the rate.

[00:30:02] Diane Hessan: Of change. Um, I’ll tell you, Stan, I have seen that on my boards. I mean, you get a great idea with technology or not. And you work your tail off to create the best and most innovative product in the world. And everyone loves it. Fast forward 18 months. It’s a commodity. Everybody’s doing it. Um, you know, you try to master something.

[00:30:28] Diane Hessan: I, I, I talked to companies that are trying to, um, do artificial intelligence in the, um, research industry a lot. And, you know, in January, they have something that nobody else has. And by April, everybody else is getting into the space. So I think we’re gonna have to pick our shots. But thinking through, I have something unique, but what happens when everybody and their brother has the ability to do the same thing?

[00:30:55] Diane Hessan: Not because I wasn’t visionary, but because You know, chat [00:31:00] GPT came and all of a sudden everyone’s able to deliver that. Um, really, really matter. So it’s not the fact that new technologies are coming on board. It’s more just the rate of that kind of change. Biggest threat.

[00:31:13] Stan Sthanunathan: Awesome. Awesome. Diane, this has been an incredibly stimulating, I learned a lot personally, and I’m sure people who listen to this are going to learn a lot from this.

[00:31:24] Stan Sthanunathan: Thank you so much. Thank you, Stan. Well, I’ve

[00:31:27] MRII Announcer: learned a lot from you, so that makes me feel great. Thanks for joining the Insights and Innovators Podcast for Market Research Institute International. Click subscribe to never miss an episode and visit us at MRII. org for more market research insights.