From Verbatim to Product Innovation

If you’ve ever worked on a product or campaign, you know this moment.

A participant in a focus group says something so genuine, so perfectly phrased, that it hits everyone in the room. The quote ends up in the debrief slides, maybe even on a wall during the presentation. And then… it’s gone.

That’s how qualitative insights used to work — fleeting sparks of truth that rarely survived beyond the report.

But that’s changing fast.

Modern research teams don’t just analyze qualitative data. They activate it.
With tools like Insight-lab, you can now explore hundreds of interviews or open-ended responses and instantly extract verbatim quotes by theme, emotion, or barrier.

This is the new rhythm of qualitative work. What used to take hours of manual reading now takes seconds — without losing the nuance of real human expression.
Suddenly, qualitative data becomes something you can search, filter, and activate.

And that activation is where innovation starts.
Because when you bring authentic voices into early strategy discussions, concept tests, or creative thinking, they do more than illustrate — they inspire.

AI is not replacing the craft of interpretation.
It’s giving us superhuman listening skills — the ability to hear patterns across hundreds of stories at once, to find the quotes that carry emotion, tension, and possibility.

When those voices enter the innovation process — in workshops, sprints, or product brainstorms — something shifts.
People stop talking about consumers. They start thinking with them.

The most innovative teams today don’t see verbatims as “proof points.”
They see them as raw creative material — the sparks that turn insights into ideas, and ideas into action.

So yes, quotes still belong in reports.
But their real power begins when you bring them into the creative process — where emotion meets strategy, and insight becomes innovation.

Do you still use quotes only to illustrate findings — or already to power your next product idea?