Mind Genomics
Alex Gofman, Ph.D.
It’s slightly embarrassing that humans have nearly the same number of genes as potatoes. And although we can boast 3.4 billion DNA base pairs (the total amount of unique information stored in our genes) vs. a mere 840 million for potatoes, the fact that we are only four times more complex than a plant that does not even qualify as a real vegetable simply adds to the insult. The only consolation is that we can map our own genome and potatoes cannot (at least as far as we know). Feeling better?
It’s difficult not to appreciate the almost billion dollar, 13-year multinational effort to map the human genome, whose resultant amount of information could be compared to a book of over one billion words long (a dollar a page – sounds like a deal), bound in 5000 volumes, each 300 pages long. However, a suggestion to systematically map the human mind, even if limited to consumer perceptions and preferences, could easily dwarf it. Unlike DNA code, which is virtually the same for every person in the world and omnipresent in practically every cell of our bodies, people’s mindsets are individually unique. So, multiply the amount of information of one person’s preferences by the population size... Sounds daunting?
A new science called Mind Genomics™ (MGs), introduced circa 2005 by a group of academics and practitioners, boldly aims at exactly that. As one of these eccentric individuals, I must ardently demur insinuations that the idea should be shunted to the psychiatric department. Indeed, one critical argument in defense of the founders’ sanity is that, unlike the genome project, which became usable mostly after the completion, MGs builds the corpus of knowledge in the process of commercial utilization by collecting and databasing structured information, topic by topic, usable immediately.
To get that deep understanding of consumers, the astute marketer could, of course, peer into a crystal ball or hire a trends consultant to scope out what’s coming up. The business objective is to intercept the trend, ride it with novel offerings, and, hopefully, succeed by being there first.
In real business, especially nowadays, there is little time or money, yet knowledge needs to be available in “Google time”, at the press of a button, predigested and ready to be used in nice, neat buckets. Today’s marketers and developers need off-the-shelf, almost shrink wrapped, systematized knowledge—organized insights about the customers’ mind in specific topic areas, to guide development on one hand and messaging on the other.
Enter MGs, which is modeled on the emerging science of genomics and the technology of informatics. The goal is to better understand how people react to ideas in a formal and structured way, using the principles of stimulus-response (from experimental psychology), conjoint analysis (from consumer research and statistics), Internet-based testing (from marketing research) and multiple tests to identify patterns of mind-sets (patterned after genomics). This formal approach can then be used to construct new, innovative ideas in business.
Instead of having a database of activities summarizing what information is known from who buys what, economic trends, and so on, MGs creates a ready-to-use, simple-to-interpret, affordable, and immediately available database about mind-sets, using communications that the marketer might use for advertising, product development, and merchandising.
What is the future of such a database? One can begin creating many of these databases fairly simply to ultimately develop a marketer’s library. Such a library could be updated on a regular basis, comprising the collections of the mind-set related to different topics. Each database might pertain to one topic, such as shopping, insurance, the fast food experience, or the automobile experience. Each study in the database would deal with one specific aspect. For example, in the case of automobiles, we would have separate studies concerning comparison shopping on the Web, layouts of the automobile showroom, test drives, financial payments, car design, car advertising on television, and so on. Each of these separate studies would, in turn, be comprised of experimentally designed vignettes to understand the algebra of the customer’s mind, as well as extensive self-profiling classification. Unfortunately, the full practical details of MGs implementation are outside the scope of this column, but more information can be found at www.MindGenomics.org.
With these databases available, there might be a simple pay-as-you-go digital, searchable library that can quickly reveal what consumers think about ideas, know what to say, and how to say it. Online tools could even be created to invent new ideas by recombining old ideas and novel, inputted ideas into new mixtures using the recombinant genomics approach (combinatorial innovation).
A good companion for MGs might be Google Trends (www.google.com/trends), which dynamically tracks the most searched information on the Web. By picking up such fuzzy signals of possible emerging consumer interests and analyzing the MGs’ database of the related existing consumer perceptions and preferences, a researcher could spot a promising next ‘big thing’ and give it an immediate spin to generate new product ideas.
Although the concept might elicit Sci-Fi images of Tom Cruise in Minority Report, researchers at Indiana and Northeastern universities along with companies such as McCormick, Symrise, Guardian Life Insurance, and Wild Flavors are already implementing the approach using MGs data as initial seeds for ideation, brainstorming and multicultural marketing, and building other applications not yet imagined.
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Alex Gofman is Vice President of Moskowitz Jacobs Inc., a company that decodes the consumer mind through science and technology. You can contact him at axg@alexgofman.com.
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