Beware of the complexity sellers!!

One thing I noticed while in the market research business - there's a whole lot of overly complex and obtuse concepts and products being peddled. But at the core of them, there are always rather simple, and not terribly original concepts.

Now, the need to constantly be 'new' and 'innovative' is a rather immature notion, because there actually very little that actually is new and original. And there is so much 'skimming the surface' going around that most 'innovative' and 'proprietary' concepts I see are actually just recycled concepts that incorporate and dress up the same shallow results. It's all too easy to claim 'innovation' without a complete understanding of the fundamentals.

Here's my axiom - if it's too complex, it's probably hiding some very simple and not terribly new concepts at it's core - and that will simply result in the same old tired insights.

The best solutions are the simplest ones. Beware of complexity-peddlers.

Why don't big agencies and research firms like simple solutions? Because if it's so simple, they are afraid their clients will ask - why haven't they thought of it before? It rattles their egos, and complex solutions often hide executional deficiencies and those firms' inability to differentiate themselves on the quality and depth of their work. Those very complex products and solutions put up a front, underneath is a process driven factory where there is little real insight, yet the client doesn't see that.

Complexity peddlers. The world is full of them, yet the world is actually not as complex as they would have you believe, and there's rather little that's truly new. Most complex solutions are actually reductions and reductive process driven models at their core, which are dead ends that prevent real insight.