Some members of the Maktoob Research team, including myself, attended the Annual MRS Research 2010 conference in London that took place on March 23-24. The majority of the presentations were covering Social Media, i.e. online communities, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. Most presenters kept on shouting words, such as “creativity”, “innovation”, “challenge general practices” and “entrepreneurial spirit”.

I have seen these kind of presentations passing by since the first conference I attended as part of Maktoob Research, which was the WARC conference in the beginning of 2007. At that time, the exact same topics, case studies and sales pitches were being done.

Isn’t it clear that we are far away from being innovative and creative?

What about new models and studies that go further than just the mainstream topics? As someone said during one of the speeches; the practice of innovation is broken! And to conclude with Ray Pointer’s words; let us please take the next exit!

Yahoo! Maktoob Research, a leading online research company that offers access to the largest active consumer panel in the Middle East and North Africa, today announced that Ragheed A. Masri has joined the company as Head of Operations in the Amman office (Jordan).

In his position, Ragheed will be working on solidifying the structure of the research operations process, and will also be managing the operational efforts and team. Ragheed will be responsible for project transition, project management and project delivery functions, and will be working closely together with different clients to ensure an optimum working relationship.

“As regional and international demand for online research services and sample from the Middle East and North Africa keeps on growing, Ragheed is a welcome addition to the Yahoo! Maktoob Research team,” said Head of Yahoo! Maktoob Research, Tamara Deprez.

Prior to joining Yahoo! Maktoob Research, Ragheed worked as Operations Manager in an international offline research company, where his responsibilities ranged from managing the local operations team to coordinating between the different regional operations teams. Before that, Ragheed worked as Senior Research Executive at the same company, focusing on the client servicing and data analytics part of the entire research process.

“His experience in the different research processes and procedures will be a great asset for Yahoo! Maktoob Research, and will help in taking the research operations division to the next level,” added Tamara Deprez.

Ragheed holds a BA in Business Administration with a double emphasis on Finance and Marketing.

See PR: http://business.maktoob.com/20090000455666/ArticleAnnouncement.htm