Day 13: Name Some People You Admire

Who do you admire, right now? Who have you always admired? Everyone has a role model or someone they admire that has contributed to what they believe in and work for. Our role models motivate and inspire us as both individuals and as organizations to grow. Continue reading to see four people we admire, starting with one of the visionaries we admire the most and followed by three industry professionals we work with on a regular basis.

Technology and Innovation

Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder of Twitter, CEO of Square

A modern technology enthusiast, entrepreneur and innovator that we admire is Jack Dorsey. He has formed not one, but two billion dollar companies in Silicon Valley. He has a vision of simplicity and to streamline social interactions and transactional exchanges. Jack (@jack) is the co-founder of Twitter and also the CEO of Square, which has changed commerce and mobile transactions as we once knew them. His vision and reverse engineering from the "outside-in" is astonishing and speaks to us as a "bootstrapped roots" private owned software company. "The future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed yet," says Jack. We love the fact that his focus is on direction over the trend of disruption. "I want something with purpose, and I want something with purpose. I want something with thoughtfulness."

Last year, he spoke to a student audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on what inspired him and how he came up with his ideas and how he believes we should all refocus. "The great companies don't have one founding moments, they have many founding moments." One of the most inspiring things to us in this speech is when he talked about the journey of Twitter and how he became a programmer as part of the big picture. And in terms of Twitter, they built, built, built and listened to monetize the system, and how they have had many founding moments since their initial idea and launch.

Development

Chandika Bhandari

Chandika Bhandari is a software veteran, development entrepreneur, hacker and advanced app developer. In the past, Chandika spent years working for Microsoft and he worked his way up to be a Senior Software Development Lead for Bing. His experience with both Fortune 500 businesses and startups gives him a nice mix of experience to develop powerful solutions. At Microsoft, he was responsible for the architecture, performance and stability. Chandika also helped us in perfecting and overseeing the initial launch of our very own SurveySwipe application in it's early ages. Today, Chad runs an app development business called Seattle App Lab Even today, Chad is still at our side and ready to assist any clients that need assistance with the instillation or customization of our mobile survey SDK.

Market Research

Ray Poynter

Ray Poynter (@RayPoynter) is the Director of Vision Critical University which is an interactive resource for thought leadership and best practices in the insights and market research industry. We admire Ray and his ability to gather and organize great speakers, truly helpful materials and host virtual events on a global scale for the industry at no charge. Ray has served over 30 years in the market research industry and is passing on all of the things he learned along the way. Ray also runs The Future Place where he provides training and consultation to some of the industry's most respected organizations such as ESOMAR, MRS and the AMSRS. From The Future Place, Ray has created NewMR (which we proudly sponsor) and it is a collaboration of co-creation for the future of the market research industry by combining the best practices of the old methods and new.

Jeffrey Henning

Jeffrey Henning (@JHenning) is a very resourceful, well-versed market research consultant and is the founder of ResearchScape. Jeffrey is also an avid blogger that manages Research Access and writes frequently for the Greenbook Blog. His Twitter feed is a must follow for the market research industry. Each week he rounds up 10 of the best tweets about #mrx and puts a fun shareable, interactive spin on them. We admire Jeffrey for being so personable and also for offering a helping hand and collaborating with us an some upcoming studies this year. He has been able to fill a gap and help with the logistics of research where we may fall short. He consistently helps us promote our content and shares the good stuff to his readers, too. Jeffrey takes the stress out of surveys and helps his clients get the insights they need quickly at a very affordable price. He is also a member of ESOMAR, AAPOR, and the MRA.