July 15, 2021

The Newest Edition of the GRIT Report is Here

Featuring this year’s GRIT Most Innovative Supplier and Client lists.

The Newest Edition of the GRIT Report is Here
Leonard Murphy

by Leonard Murphy

Chief Advisor for Insights and Development at Greenbook

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Welcome to the 29th edition of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report, using data collected in Q1 and Q2 of 2021. As we established a few years ago, this edition is the Business & Innovation Report wherein we focus on understanding the changing dynamics of the macro drivers of the industry, as well as the role that innovation (including the companies most identified as innovative) plays in that evolution.

 

COVID-19’s Lasting Impact on MRX

We begin the report with the “Business” section – exploring the shape and structure of the industry and its evolving constituents. The section examines technical drivers of decision making, organizational success factors, business outlook, and industry benchmarking. These chapters offer context for the second section, “Innovation,” where we explore buzz topics, innovation strategies, adoption of automation platforms, and unmet needs as areas of opportunity for further innovation. It is also where you can find the perennial favorite: the Top 50 Most Innovative Suppliers and Top 25 Most Innovative Clients.

When we last conducted this version of GRIT, the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to unfold. In this report, we apply an additional lens of how that situation has impacted the industry a year into it, with some surprising results. Who has prospered, who has struggled, and where do we go from here are questions we explore deeply and provide our take on what those answers mean for both buyer and supplier organizations.

This edition saw a return to the robust sample size we typically get for the Business & Innovation report, however, we decided to augment the buyer sample through a partnership with NewtonX. This additional effort yielded great results, enabling an even deeper analysis of the critical buyer perspective of the industry.

 

Want to Read the GRIT Report?

 

Key Topics Covered

This report tackles the nuts and bolts of the insights industry, exploring a variety of topics, some new and some that our readers have already come to depend on GRIT to cover. These include:

  • Industry scope and changing makeup
  • Evolving industry structure
  • Organizational success factors
  • Meeting project goals
  • Industry benchmarking
  • Business outlook and revenue trends
  • Buzz topics
  • Unmet needs in the industry
  • Adoption of automation platforms
  • Innovation strategy
  • GRIT Top 50 Most Innovative Suppliers and Top 25 Most Innovative Clients

 

As always, the GRIT program is evolving to meet the needs of a changing industry, and in 2021 we decided that our core mission was to provide an unrivaled depth of analysis and recommendations, while also ensuring our audience could digest everything. The reality is that the GRIT reports could easily be five hundred pages long if we included all of the analyses we think are important, but we also recognize that size is untenable for most readers. Our solution is to create three sets of “spin off” reports focused on marketing and targeting, business performance, and benchmarking. We released seven “field guides” earlier this year to help the marketing and targeting efforts of different types of suppliers, and we will be rolling the others out later in the year. This report still covers those topics, but in a more high-level (and shorter!) way than in previous editions. This has also allowed us to cover other topics in more detail than previously allowed due to space limitations.

Another change you’ll notice is that we have worked to make the online version more modular and easily navigable, so while we approach this as a single report in terms of structure and narrative consistency, we also strive to make each section “standalone” for online readers so they can ingest the information in a more flexible and on-demand way.

 

 

Acknowledgments

Although we continue to insource much of GRIT production (the vast majority of the design and analysis is now done only by the GreenBook team), GRIT continues to be a “coalition of the willing” and our commentary providers, sample partners, advertisers, and especially our research partners make it all possible. Special thanks go out to AYTM – Ask Your Target Market, CANVS, Gen2 Advisors, Infotools, Knowledgehound, NewtonX, Displayr, and Tango Card. Without their generous contribution of time, energy, and expertise we simply wouldn’t be able to do this.

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coronavirusgrit reportinnovationstate of the industry

Disclaimer

The views, opinions, data, and methodologies expressed above are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official policies, positions, or beliefs of Greenbook.

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