A consumer think-tank, the Social Intelligence Lab is part of the Social Intelligence Technology Group Ltd headquartered in North America.
Using data from 800,000 respondents across 3 continents the Lab has for more than 15 years measured and mapped the impact of a changing social fabric on public policy, marketplace and workplace behavior and the political landscape.
NEO Typology
The NEO typology or population classification maps and measures consumer attitudes, values and behaviors with the unashamedly commercial objective of identifying (a) the most valuable consumers in first-world economies; and (b) the mindset or psychology that drives or determines that value.
In this context, value is defined by high discretionary spending – both in terms of actual behavior and spending propensity. Accordingly the Lab uses discretionary spending factors to identify value – and then uses 40 behavioral and 40 attitudinal factors to define the mindset driving that value. All factors or human characteristics used must (1) rank highly; and (2) discriminate the most. In other words the Social Intelligence Lab looks for those things that make us different – not those things that make us the same.
The NEO typology is an epi-segment system (literally, above customer segments) that identifies the potential value of individuals in any population – be it every consumer in a country’s economy or every customer on a corporation’s database.
Over the past decade it has been used by corporate brands including Moet-Hennessy, Qantas, Sony, Lexus, Fairfax Media, David Jones, National Australia Bank, Westpac Broking, Telstra, Macquarie Bank, Fosters, Texas Utilities, ENERGEX, among others.
Social Intelligence
Social intelligence describes the exclusively human capacity to use very large brains to effectively navigate and negotiate complex social relationships and environments. Psychologist and professor at the London School of Economics Nicholas Humphrey believes it is social intelligence or the richness of our qualitative life, rather than our quantitative intelligence, that truly makes humans what they are – for example what it’s like to be a human being living at the center of the conscious present, surrounded by smells and tastes and feels and the sense of being an extraordinary metaphysical entity with properties which hardly seem to belong to the physical world.
Social scientist and research director at the Social Intelligence Technology Group Ltd, Ross Honeywill views social intelligence as an aggregated measure of self and social awareness, evolved social beliefs and attitudes, and a capacity and appetite to manage complex social change. A person with a high social intelligence quotient (SQ) is no better or worse than someone with a low SQ, they just have different attitudes, hopes, interests and desires.
