I’ve recently started reading The Barefoot Investor, and it struck me that there were a lot of lessons that I could take into many walks of life, including my chosen profession of market research.

Now I caveat this with the fact that I am only a few chapters into the book, but it strikes me that the crux of barefoot investing is all about getting down to the basics and cutting out the crap. No more arduous budget spreadsheets and convoluted bundled accounts that seem like a good deal but have hidden fees. Go for the no frills account with no fees and save the money.

Barefoot running is similar. A great book that I have finished reading is Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, uncovering the secrets of long distance running and barefoot running. Again, the premise here is to get back to basics and not to over complicate your running with highly evolved and padded shoes that just treat the symptoms of injuries rather than the underlying cause.

Maybe it is driven from a need to stand out in a very competitive market, but so many times in market research I see solutions that have been massively over thought and over engineered. Yes, there are occasions when market research solutions need to be complex but let’s not make them complex for complexities sake. A great analogy I heard last year was “don’t sell me a Ferrari to do the school run”.

I think there is now an opportunity to stand out by getting back to the basics.

Let’s start doing our market research barefoot.