Aimpoint Research taps CEO’s military intelligence background
Brett Sciotto believes that actionable market research is essential to any organization seeking to be profitable. The president and CEO of Aimpoint Research learned the value of good information after graduating from West Point and serving as a military intelligence officer in the Army.
Today, he uses those skills to help companies determine how they are perceived in the marketplace, what their competitors are doing and what customer needs they can meet.
Q: What led you to create Aimpoint?
A: As an intel officer, I had to collaborate with crossfunctional teams to provide timely, accurate and often predictive insights that would give our units a competitive advantage. When I left active duty, I wanted to continue to empower leaders with the insights they require to achieve their goals. The market-research industry was a logical place for me to land, but no one was doing it quite the way I thought it should be done. I built Aimpoint Research to serve as a civilian version of an intelligence agency, using a blend of best practices from the intelligence disciplines and innovative methodologies from civilian market research.
Q: How does your military background shape your services and the end product?
A: The best practices we took for granted in the intelligence community seem to be elusive in the civilian market-research industry. Aimpoint is built from the ground up around those best practices, so my time in the military completely shaped the construct and DNA of the firm.
In the Army, the first question was always the easiest to answer: What is the situation? The second — what will happen next in response to our actions? — was always much harder to answer and required a lot more collaboration, collection and analysis. To answer the second question, you had to be predictive and fully immerse yourself in understanding the situation, context, doctrine, historical patterns and psychology of all the actors in our area of influence.
Today, Aimpoint is built around this same fusion approach to research collection and analysis. We utilize multiple research methodologies and technologies to explore topics from multiple vantage points and ensure our insights are accurate, properly contextualized and actionable. This requires us to be highly collaborative and consider rational, emotional and functional drivers that allow us to fully understand and predict behavior. We provide our clients with a competitive advantage through unprecedented insight into the minds of those who most impact their success.
Q: What has been the biggest challenge the business has faced?
A: Multi-national growth and scale. Aimpoint is growing very quickly here in the United States and in Europe. Finding the best talent, ensuring we stay true to our process and conducting increasingly innovative and complex research for multiple industries around the world has been both exciting and challenging.
Q: How has your ability to serve a global market impacted your success?
A: Most companies and organizations we serve have global interests … or are at least impacted by global competition and marketplace dynamics. We have conducted research in most developed countries in the world and even some developing countries. In every case, we get smarter. We learn new techniques, cultures and innovations that allow us to bring more value to our clients. The world is a small place and we are all interconnected. It is critical for Aimpoint to have global
reach and to be able to access even the most remote markets in the world to gain insights that help our clients achieve their goals.
Q: How does your company’s ability to marry traditional market research techniques with innovative information-gathering practices impact your clients?
A: At the end of the day, our clients want to gain a competitive advantage. They want to ensure they are meeting or exceeding customer expectations, communicating effectively and bringing innovative products and services to market that meet needs. Misinformation is even more dangerous than no information. Confidently drawing incorrect or incomplete conclusions from flawed research or intelligence can be catastrophic.
Aimpoint’s processes to include collection planning, execution and analysis are built around the same processes we used in the intelligence world. They are built to provide the most accurate and actionable insights available. Thankfully, technology is advancing so quickly that it allows us to constantly innovate and find new ways to observe and learn. I may not have access to the same sources and methods I once did, but technology has bridged the gap and changed the game.