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Looking Outward in All Directions

Insight

by Robyn Minor

How Sylver Consulting Helped PineMelon Level Up Their Go-to-Market Strategy

Recently, we had the privilege of collaborating with PineMelon, a Denver-based online grocery delivery service, on refining their go-to-market strategy. As a business that champions local vendors and farmers, PineMelon sought to fine-tune their approach after a year in operation.

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Practices

by Micaela Shoemaker, Brianna Sylver, and Peter Bűrgi

How Collaborative Sensemaking Supports Strategic Innovation in Business

The “Sensemaking Session” is one of Sylver Consulting’s standard workshop types. More specifically, it’s a key process milestone for how Sylver Consulting repeatedly delivers strategic innovation outcomes that are actionable to our clients.

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Practices

by Brianna Sylver

What is LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and How Can It Help Tune Your Strategy?

“I feel like we have all the puzzle pieces for our strategy, but, with the way things are changing, we just can’t put them together right and move forward.” Heard this before? Sound like something you’ve said about your own company’s strategy?

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Practices

by Brianna Sylver

Unlocking New Vision with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®: A Journey with Arity

At Sylver Consulting, we thrive on partnering with forward-thinking, growth-oriented organizations. Our mission is to empower leaders to courageously embrace change and future-proof their offerings.

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Practices

by Peter Bürgi

The Plague of “Should-ing”: Are you sabotaging your own market growth?

There is a Plague of “Should” in many organizations, and, most alarming of all, that plague may be at its worst in Marketing departments.

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Research

by Robyn Minor and Sheysel Sanchez

Take the Guesswork Out of Your Market Positioning with Symbolics™ (Full Webinar)

We are proud to share our webinar on Sylver’s proprietary methodology, Symbolics™, featuring Brianna Sylver and Peter Bürgi.

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Practices

by Robyn Minor and Sheysel Sanchez

Test-and-Learn: An Approach to New Product Development

Do you have a product idea or solution forming in your head, but you’re not sure what to do next?

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Practices

by Robyn Minor and Sheysel Sanchez

Setting the Stage for Success - Workshop Highlight

Setting the Stage for Success Workshops are designed to create a collective understanding of what it looks like — functionally and emotionally — to succeed in the project at hand.

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Insight

by Robyn Minor and Sheysel Sanchez

5 Ways to Cultivate "Power With" Energy in the Workplace

#PowerWith leadership aligns with Sylver’s three core values of shared appreciation, collaboration, and personal responsibility. We apply these principles both in our company culture and in the relationships we build with our clients.

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Align

by Jean McDonnell

What Does Authenticity Really Mean to Millennials?

Utilizing the Power of Symbolics™ for Deriving Deep Meaning on a Quant. Scale

Authenticity has become the “it” word for marketers attempting to connect with Millennial consumers. Hundreds of thousands of articles have been written on this topic. Many different traits (such as honesty, integrity, and transparency) have been used to define the quality of authenticity that Millennials seek. An even greater number of “top 5” lists have been created for guiding brands on how to be and be seen as authentic.

Yet, with all this information swirling about, why is it still so difficult for marketers to “crack” the authenticity code in a way that delivers real impact with Millennials? Why are companies and brands still asking, with increasing frequency and volume ...

“How can we authentically connect with today’s Millennials?"

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Essential Reads

Insight

What Does Authenticity Really Mean to Millennials?

Focus

Five Reasons Why Innovation Processes Fail

Research

What Type of Market Research Community is Right for You?

Methods

Designers didn’t mix that much with Engineers. That got me thinking.

Align

Upping the Ante on Hybrid Methodologies Brings a Holistic View to Positioning

Practices

by Paige Hendersen

Using Mural to support your Qualitative Design Research

Sylver’s clients often use the word “magical” when it comes to discussing the qualitative research outcomes that we as a team produce. I will admit - the sentiment underpinning the phrase “Sylver’s magic” makes me smile.

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Align

I’ve been working in innovation for 15 years now. I’ve supported many different organizations (small, medium and large) to define, develop and execute innovation processes in their organizations. I’ve learned a few things in that time.

When innovation fails, most people want to point to the product or service itself as the reason for the failure. Yet, too often, this product or service was never set up to succeed simply because the team championing its creation failed to do the appropriate “in between the lines” work around that innovation to sufficiently enable its success.

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Align

In preparation for this month’s edition of Sylver’s newsletter, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the nature and evolution of what is commonly referred to in the insights industry as “hybrid” research. As someone who has been trained in both qualitative and quantitative methods and has used each approach individually and in combination for many years, this topic is especially intriguing to me.

For as far back in my career as I can remember, I’ve witnessed the territorial divide between qualitative and quantitative methods – always wishing and hoping that the two sides could “play nice” together and appreciate the unique and complementary perspective that the other provides. And so it was with great enthusiasm that I embraced the hybrid research “movement” that began to emerge, in earnest, roughly 8–10 years ago.

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Insight

by Robyn Minor and Sheysel Sanchez

Do you know the difference between "Power Over" vs. "Power With" leadership?

Power Over leadership follows an authoritarian approach, exerting control and power over its team members with very little true collaboration. Power Over is typically based in zero-sum thinking, believing that ...

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Insight

by Paige Hendersen

Practicing "Power With" leadership at Sylver Consulting

Many times when people think of power, they think of an authoritarian approach motivated through fear. This is actually just one form of power, called "power over". What Sylver finds much more compelling, and actually practices in their business, is "power with".

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Practices

by Rob Maihofer

Three often overlooked considerations when designing the sample plan for an online survey

Get a concise overview of key points to consider while planning how to capture the right mix of responses from the demographics you need in your sample.

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Practices

by Jason Taft

5 Accessibility Factors to Consider when Designing Digital User Experiences

Accessibility has increasingly become a burning topic in the design world. With the continuously growing dependency on technology in both professional and personal capacities, it is more important than ever to design digital user experiences in an intentionally accessible way.

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Research

by Micaela Shoemaker

4 Best Practices to Ensure You’ve Got the Right Participants for Your Next Study

At Sylver Consulting, we understand that the quality of any research study invariably hinges on the quality of the research participants recruited. That’s why we go to great lengths to ensure our market research recruitment process is the best it can possibly be.

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Research

by Adriano Galvao

How to start a career in innovation

Learn what the typical pathways are for a career in innovation, at least at Sylver Consulting.

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Research

by Katie Ulrich

Stokes: A Key Ingredient to Energizing and Engaging Teams in Virtual Workshops

Workshops are fantastic opportunities to bring teams together to create cohesive alignment and spark innovation… in a short amount of time. Yet, with the not so recent change in setting from in-person to online, it can be difficult to avoid Zoom fatigue.

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Research

by Jacqueline Walker

4 Ways that Covid has Helped Sylver to Up Its Game on Participant Recruitment

In this blog post, our Market Research Recruiter/Analyst, Jacqueline Walker, highlights 4 ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has helped Sylver Consulting to up its game on participant recruitment.

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Research

by Sabrina Hallongren

Virtual co-creation workshops: Designing remotely with (and for) consumers or end users

Virtual co-creation workshops are a popular innovation research method utilized within product development. They are a powerful tool that can benefit your research, especially during a time when you can't count on being able to conduct research in-person.

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Insight

by Peter Bürgi

Mashups and Metaphors: The Secret to Successful Ideation

One of the most common techniques used in ideation activities is the “mashup” asking people to deliberately bring together two unrelated categories of things or topics to help them generate new ideas.

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Insight

by Robyn Minor

Sylver Consulting 2021 Year in Review Video

2021 was challenging, yet rewarding for Sylver Consulting. We wanted to take a moment before we dive head first into 2022 to look back on 2021 and highlight our successes, additions and new starts.

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Insight

by Robyn Minor

Sylver Consulting Presents: Empathy in Design Thinking and Human Centered Design

Sylver launched its first ever virtual webinar in November 2021 — just before the Thanksgiving holiday. The topic was empathy.

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Insight

by Eric Moran

25 Quotes to Inspire UX Designers

25 quotes by people from different backgrounds and industries to help you tackle your next UX design project.

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver and Robyn Minor

Storytelling for Innovation Video Series: Weave the Web

Our #StorytellingForInnovation series comes to an end! Today our founder, Brianna Sylver, brings you the last installment of our 4 part Storytelling video series.

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver and Robyn Minor

Storytelling for Innovation Video Series: Become the Glue

Our #StorytellingForInnovation series continues! Today our founder, Brianna Sylver, brings you the third installment of our 4 part Storytelling video series.

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver and Robyn Minor

Storytelling for Innovation Video Series: Shine the Light

Our #StorytellingForInnovation series continues! Today our founder, Brianna Sylver, brings you part 2 of our newest video series.

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver and Robyn Minor

Storytelling for Innovation Video Series: Introduction

Our founder, Brianna Sylver, brings us the first part of our newest video series outlining how one can use storytelling to expand on innovation and to bring clarity and focus to projects.

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver

4 Ways to Mitigate Risk in Product Development Research

In the market research industry, discussions around new product development research all too often focus on methodologies and techniques. Bottom line, there are many stages to a product’s development ...

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver and Eric Moran

The Backstory on Sylver Consulting

“Accidental entrepreneur” is the phrase that most aptly describes Brianna Sylver and the start of Sylver Consulting. Brianna never set out to own a company. But a less than stellar job market, mounting student loan debt and her gift of connection, created just the right circumstances for Brianna ...

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Insight

by Brianna Sylver

Unlock the Innovation Power of Customer Insight

What does it take to truly unlock the innovation power of an actionable insight? Read on for three tangible tips that you can start implementing in your work today.

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Align

by Emma McLane

Lead with Purpose: How to Implement Design into Your Organization

Recent market reports make the business case for design. Yet, each falls short in defining the steps required to scale design for maximum impact within organizations.

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Align

by Emma McLane

Are you seeking to implement design into your organization?

Kick 2021 off with a throwback presentation from Brianna Sylver at the Advancing Research 2020 Conference

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Align

by Carrie Graham

Challenging the Insight Status Quo with Doritos at IIEX 2019

When the Doritos team wanted to get outside of their insight comfort zone, they came to Sylver Consulting for our pure System-1, Symbolics methodology. The resulting work led to ...

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Align

by Brianna Sylver

Storytelling is an essential tool for enabling transformative growth and change.

Today I celebrate the power of STORYTELLING! At Sylver Consulting, a big chunk of our work efforts go towards aligning diverse stakeholders of an organization around a shared vision of growth ...

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Strengthen

by Carrie Graham

Today at Sylver Consulting, we celebrate the power of CIVIC INNOVATION!

Last year, Brianna Sylver worked as an Innovation Coach for three of the 35 Champion Cities selected by Bloomberg for the 2018 Mayor’s Challenge. These cities made such impressive strides ...

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Align

by Carrie Graham

UNESCO Report: How to think about the future

What are the opportunities and potential obstacles for companies in a growing economy? UNESCO published Adriano Galvao’s research into this question in their report on sustainable development.

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Strengthen

by Carrie Graham

Brianna Sylver Interviewed by Female Insight Zone

The Female Insight Zone Podcast interviews inspiring female business leaders to reveal insights into their successes, failures, and how they have been overcome. It is a great resource for established and aspiring business professionals alike who are seeking inspiration to face the challenges of their roles head on.

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Strengthen

by Brianna Sylver

Are you a qualitative researcher wondering what Design Thinking is and how it’s different from what you’ve always done?

If this describes you and your work in the market research field, then an upcoming virtual training series that I am facilitating is perfect for you!

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Align

by Brianna Sylver

Celebrating the POWER of INTENTION on Nick Wagner’s Full Potential podcast

Just a few weeks ago I said, “Gosh, I’d like to have the opportunity to be part of more podcasts. I love engaging in that medium!”

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Fill

by Brianna Sylver

Brianna was accepted to speak at the 2018 Corporate Researchers Conference

The Female Insight Zone Podcast interviews inspiring female business leaders to reveal insights into their successes, failures, and how they have been overcome.

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Fill

by Brianna Sylver

Discussing the Differences Between Market Research and User Research on the Aurelius Podcast

I’m beyond excited to share the most recent Aurelius podcast, for which yours truly was the guest!

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Fill

by Brianna Sylver

Why Brand, Product and Company Transformation Often Fails: Reason #1

Transformation is not an artifact. It’s a change in mindset, a shift in perspective. And, yet, when the challenge of transformative change is called for in a brand, a product or a company everyone wants the answer to be hinged on an artifact ...

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Strengthen

by Paula Ventrell

Sylver Consulting: Intern Insights

“Office culture” is a term often bounced around and intriguing to company leaders. And when reflecting on what this looks like at Sylver, the environment at Google was what my mind immediately bounced to. While I have not experienced it first hand, I have seen and read a multitude of reports on how ‘cool’ Google’s office culture is perceived..

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Strengthen

by Robert Maihoffer

What Type of Market Research Community is Right for You?

As Sylver’s Senior Quantitative Market Research Analyst, I find myself often in conversations with clients about communities. The trend I see is that clients today are looking at customer communities as a means to increase the speed of insight delivery and to reduce project-fielding costs. What I also see is a lot of confusion around what a “community” is exactly.

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Collaboration

by Matthew Yapchaian

Online Moderation: Engaging with People, Not Sea-Monkeys

Sylver Consulting has been moderating online communities for seven years now. In that time, we’ve learned a thing or two about what an online community is vs. what it is not. We’ve also gained some practical tips on what it takes to effectively moderate an online community in order to yield rich insights into the members and/or topic of that community.

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Align

by Matthew Yapchaian

Challenging the Status Quo with Method Development: An Iterative and Intentional Process

Sylver Consulting organizes a unique suite of qualitative and/or quantitative methodologies for each project, always allowing the problem or project at hand to determine our choice of methods used. When a problem cannot be solved with available methods, we design new tools — a very exciting opportunity for all of us on the team!

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Strengthen

by Adriano Galvao

Designers didn’t mix that much with Engineers. That got me thinking.

A lot of people talk about the need for establishing more connections between design and other disciplines, such as engineering and business administration. As a result, many schools have put together graduate programs to think about the way in which design can combine the best of creativity, imagination, and alternative approaches to come up with novel ways to make things.

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Inspire

by Brianna Sylver

Diffusing the War Between Market Researchers and User Experience Researchers

Sylver is uniquely positioned in the innovation industry at the intersection of User Experience, Market Research and Strategy. This confluence of disciplines and best practices ensures that we tackle each project with a problem-solving and customer-centric mindset, while consistently keeping market and organizational context front and center. But, this nexus positioning is not Sylver’s “secret sauce,” really. Rather, the secret ingredient to our consistent success resides in our commitment to relationships.

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Align

by Matthew Yapchaian

At the Convergence of Market Research, UX and Strategy…and yet not there at the same time

Sylver Consulting “the business” has existed at the nexus of Market Research (MR), User Experience (UX) and Strategy (STR) for over ten years. Yet, individual team members do not exist at that convergence. How is this possible?.

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Inspire

by Brianna Sylver

Partnership is the “Secret Sauce” of Sylver’s Process

Sylver is uniquely positioned in the innovation industry at the intersection of User Experience, Market Research and Strategy. This confluence of disciplines and best practices ensures that we tackle each project with a problem-solving and customer-centric mindset ...

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Transformation

by Jean McDonnell

The “Better, Faster, Cheaper” Dilemma — How Sylver’s Approach is a Solve

I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that the constant rally cry for “better, faster, cheaper” research is finally getting to you. If you’re like most people in the insights industry (whether you’re on the client or supplier side), you’re probably working harder and faster than you ever have in your attempt to accommodate this demand from above.

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Inspire

by Brianna Sylver

End of Year Spend: What Mindset are You Engaging?

The end of year (EOY) spend season is upon us. The calls and emails flood in daily. Each has a similar tone and message. “I’ve got money. I want to do a project about . It has to be done by the end of the year.” At this point, we have ~4~ working weeks left of the year.

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Need to transform your brand, product, service, company or team? We can bring clarity and focus to that process.

Reach out to set up a free discovery call. On this call, we’ll get clear on your scope of work to be tackled, how your initiative ladders to a broader business goal of your organization, and assess — without attachment — if Sylver Consulting is a “best fit partner” to support you in your scope of work.



Today at Sylver Consulting, we celebrate the power of CIVIC INNOVATION!

Last year, Brianna Sylver worked as an Innovation Coach for three of the 35 Champion Cities selected by Bloomberg for the 2018 Mayor’s Challenge. These cities made such impressive strides ...

Continue Reading
Eyetech

UNESCO Report: How to think about the future

What are the opportunities and potential obstacles for companies in a growing economy? UNESCO published Adriano Galvao’s research into this question in their report on sustainable development.

Continue Reading

Why the Transformation of Brands, Products and Organizations Often Fail: YOU Fail to Show Up!

In this LinkedIn article, Brianna shares the number one obstacle to business growth that she sees with her clients.

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Aurelius logo

Brianna is the featured guest on the latest episode of the Aurelius Podcast!

Listen now to hear her talk with Zack Naylor about the differences between Market Research and User Research.

Continue Reading