In response to skeptics about NextStage’s Technology
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Ever since I met Joseph Carrabis and started to learn about NextStage’s Technology, I’ve seen that the most common reaction to his claims has been skepticism. And to be frank I was one of the skeptics at first. I remember the discussions that Joseph and I were having in San Francisco almost 3 years ago. He was explaining me what NextStage was doing and my first thoughts were ‘yeah, and after you’re going to tell me that you’ve invented teleportation…‘ But something inside of me kept me listening, my subconscious was telling me that there was something… So, I kept listening patiently, did some research and played with a couple of his prototypes. I got convinced!
Last Friday, I published the first White Paper of NextStage Analytics and our friend Jacques Warren published a post in which he was expressing interest but also skepticism. So here is a response to him and to others that might be in the same situation.
Our technology is based on 20 years of R&D and you can read more about it for example by reading the patent given in 2008, that I could synthesize in: “Understanding how an individual is thinking through a programmable device“. You can read the patent here. Also Joseph is going to publish a book very very soon called ‘Reading Virtual Minds‘, this is going to be the first volume of a series in which he will explain the technology and his journey while doing his research.
So we can understand how a person is thinking without having to ask a question in a non intrusive manner. Our technology allows us to do many other things. For example, as we collect anonymous “brain prints” (we like to call them synthetic users) in our systems we’re thus able to predict how a ‘type’ of individual is going to react to any piece of information or marketing material (that’s what we’re using in NextStage Advertising Intelligence that will be launched soon). We can also create far more accurate ‘personas’ that what’s been done currently in Marketing that we call at NextStage Rich PersonaeTM (I’ll talk more about this in a future post).
Getting back to Jacques’ post, he wonders if we can predict if somebody is a hot prospect. Joseph has already pointed to some reports that we will provide that can help you determining this. Let me share with you another report from our prototype called: ‘The Tirekickers Report’
The Tirekickers Report (I’ve included a screenshot taken in 2003, so you can see that this is not new to us) indicates how many of your site visitors are serious buyers versus how many are just doing research, and where they are in their research. For example, the first category is ‘Grazing’ and indicates how many site visitors are basically channel surfing and stopped on your site for some reason. The different gradations then go to ‘Making a Decision’, ‘Not the Decision Maker’ and onto ‘Buyers’. Remember, this doesn’t mean they will buy from your website, only that they want to buy something while they’re on your website.
Since I’ve become CEO of NextStage, skepticism is still the main reaction that I encounter, and this is something that I expected, reason why we did the independent test presented in the White Paper to prove the accuracy of our predictions. After having presented the results in San Jose, some of the skeptics came to see me and told me that I had convinced them, even if they don’t fully understand how we do it.
My aim is not that people understands how we do it, I leave that to Joseph with his research, writings and trainings. My aim is to demonstrate that it works and develop & launch products around our technology.
Christopher Berry, one of our early fans and a tester of our technology posted recently: “You don’t need to understand it to use it” and this is exactly my point. As Jim Novo commented to that post:
If I A / B visitors, A exposed to “normal” treatment (control) and B exposed to Next Stage treatment, and B outperformas A by 25% consistently, then I don’t need to know how Next Stage works or run any kind of significance math.
All I need to know is what it costs to get me the 25% and what the profit of the 25% is to decide if the 25% is worth it.
So, bear with us, we’re preparing products which I’m sure you’ll love.
Cheers from sunny Madrid,
René
Cool to see you can identify hot prospects. To me, THAT’s the amazing news, and gender & age are rather secondary (most sites are B-to-B where we don’t really care about those characteristics in a purchase officer).
I guess the next step is to get a closer look at it. If I read you well, you’re still in the process to develop products around your technology.
And as for skepticism, I would rather see it as very positive if I were you guys (and not take it “personnaly”); this means that what you’re doing is very disruptive, paradigm changing.
Ask Galileo about skepticism…
Like René, I was a skeptic. Like Rene, it took me a little over two years of meeting with Joseph at eMetrics conferences and sometimes talking with him for hours. (Disclaimer: talking with Joseph for hours is one of the easiest things in the world to do – he’s waaaay interesting.) I was so glad to see this white paper with its iron-clad methodology because I was convinced long ago and have been waiting for others to be convinced.
The technology is sound. The results are amazing. I was serious when I called it “disruptive.” This is some serious competitive edge.
@Jacques
I’m glad you liked the report. One of the cool things about Evolution TechnologyTM is that it can answer so many questions… really! As with any disruptive technology it takes time for people to accept and this is why we decided to test Age & Gender. Even if I agree with you that there’s much more interest in other reports, Age & Gender was something that we could easily test. And well the results of the test are there…
Yes you read me well, we’re currently in product development as the prototypes were developed in the early 2000’s thus the coding is not scalable enough. But we’re working on new versions and new products.
Regarding skepticism, we don’t take it wrong, no worries. As I said in my post I was expecting it.
@Jim
Agreed talking with Joseph is very interesting
Thanks for commenting and happy birthday!
I’m sorry I am one of those people that has to understand how it works. I see Jim Novo’s point but I am in the fortunate position of having curious clients that will ask the question.
My interest goes way back too. I have read a lot from Joseph whom is a very smart man and a deep thinker. That is something anyone can find out by engaging in a debate with him.
I have looked at the ideas and I think (I am not sure) that this is some kind of technology based loosely on Persuasion Architecture or the Myers Briggs “Types” of persona. There is a huge difference between these kinds of persona and the typical design personas.
I think that the technology is a predictive model based on segmenting these types and predicting how they will act based on relative behaviours. If it is then it’s unique in the industry today.
Am I along the right lines or way off?
Our Rich PersoanaeTM classification is similar to Myers-Briggs, but imho it goes beyond as we have up to 144 Rich Personae so far in our systems (we usually use 72) as if my memory serves me right MB has 16 types. So we could say that yes, it’s related to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, you’re not way off.
Evolution TechnologyTM though is a lot more. You can read some more information here. One of the most disruptive things about this technology is that it’s completely passive and automated. By passive I mean that people don’t need to take a test or answer any question, and by automated is that it can be used without human intervention. The latter is in my opinion one of the big differences with Persuasion Architecture. You don’t need a specialist to use it. It’s somehow a kind of artificial intelligence. But again, my role is not to explain the details of the technology as I’m not a researcher and I’d rather let that to Joseph that does it way better than I
. I’m sure that he will reply more in depth when he gets back later this week from his 25th anniversary trip he’s currently enjoying with Susan.
Cheers from already hot Madrid,
René
Hi Rene,
Fascinating information and I am sorry to have missed the presentations at eMetrics.
There is, however, something that I do not understand. The paper quite rightly shows the scatter diagram which presumably is the delta from the actual age. It then states how many of the test sample is less than a half year and a year away from the actual. The paper then goes on to say that the results are 98% and 99% accurate but it does not say anywhere in your paper what the upper and lower limits of acceptable results were. It is the definition of acceptable which determines the accuracy. If the acceptable error was only half a year then only 36 age predictions out of 300 are accurate.
I look forward to the scientific paper when it is published to look at the methodology as, like Steve Jackson, I like to see what is under the hood. If Jim Sterne, whom I greatly respect, believes that you are on to something, I am sure that you have a rigorous methodology and I should probably go watch the videos and read the paper when it comes out.
Many thanks in advance for your explanations.
All the best,
Brewster
Hi Brewster,
Thanks for commenting. I took Joseph’s scientific paper and simplified it as this one is for marketing purposes and a business audience (vs. academic). You’ll be able to see in the Scientific White Paper that we had a very solid testing protocol that we defined before starting the test. I didn’t include it in this paper as it would have been ‘too boring’ for a marketing audience.
To answer your question, we defined 10 years intervals for the accuracy (I should have mentioned this though, Touché
), this is where we get the 98% accuracy. If you’re looking for the average error our technology had in this test (it’s mentioned in the WP) we’re at an average of a bit over 3 years error, which imho is very accurate.
As you note I’ve included a graph that shows the 300 data points for age, so you can see what the accuracy has been for every single person that took part of this test. In addition, the auditor made some extra comments that are also included in the document.
Regarding gender, well, it’s either A or B
Don’t hesitate to ask me any further question.
Cheers,
René
P.S. The presentation I did at eMetrics San Jose is available in another post of this Blog.