The GRIT Top 50 List Signals Our Industry’s Direction

The GRIT Top 50 list signals our industry’s direction: increased supplier diversity, tech-led growth, and an emphasis on real innovation.

The dawn of a tech-accelerated qualitative era

Qualitative research, often overshadowed, is primed to deliver exponential growth in value, so it’s exciting to see more suppliers focusing on qualitative research. It only underscores that qual should be included in more workflows, and this is growth that the industry needs.

Historically, its adoption has been hindered by complexity. At Remesh, we've been shouting from the rooftops how valuable qualitative data is, and have been on a quest to make it more accessible. Artificial intelligence has been instrumental in our pursuit. The current technological advances are shattering previous limitations—capabilities improbable for qual research only a year ago are already becoming an established part of workflows.

Moving forward, there's room for everyone

The research industry is huge, and there's a multitude of providers, from DIY enthusiasts to those seeking full-service solutions. The GRIT Top 50 reflects this varying need in its rankings. What stands out to me on this year's list is how diverse it is — suppliers of every size and offering can be found.

While currently nobody owns more than 2% of the market, it's probable that a few will carve out a significant market share (20%+). Recent acquisitions, take-privates, and roll-ups suggests as much. These could be providers who can do it all and serve a wide variety of research customers. And still, there will be plenty of room for us all at the table. In fact, there's opportunity for services-leaning organizations to leverage the innovative capabilities of smaller tech solutions, creating a harmonious ecosystem where collaboration trumps competition.

Fraud has no place in research

Fraud has no place in research. Ironically, while technological innovations are making fraud more and more prevalent, they’re also making it less necessary. There is a place for synthetic sample—where exactly is still unknown. What is clear is that it must be abundantly transparent that they are not real, human responses. The path forward demands high integrity and accountability from vendors; representing simulated populations as though they were real takes us all down the road to ruin. There’s ample opportunity to leverage technology to provide true innovative value (with a healthy dose of competition).

Where the GRIT Top 50 could go from here

The GRIT team has done a phenomenal job of evolving with the industry, which is why they’ve maintained such a high level of respect. At Remesh, we’ve experienced first-hand the benefits of being recognized on this list, and consider it a high honor.

I hope to see the GRIT Top 50 ascend to the next level of industry insight. Instead of just highlighting marketed innovation, the GRIT Top 50 could elevate true industry changemakers. Let’s use the data to reveal who is delivering on their promise to identify who to lean on in the future.

Elevating research and researchers

At the heart of all of this, we are enabling researchers to do their jobs easier and with greater efficiency. Technology enables us to achieve faster, cheaper, and higher quality work, so let's do more, and let's do it right.