Every activity has its own unique infighting over which methods are superior. I like to refer to this as the “My Kung Fu is better than yours” problem.

In the classic 80’s Kung Fu movies I watched as a kid on Sunday Mornings, the silliness of this nuanced argument was never more apparent as in Invincible Armor (1977, Dir: See Yuen Ng), where two very similar looking masters battle very similarly with very “different” styles. To me, they were each fantastic, and each was trying to achieve the same end goal, with each style having different success in different context.

With high school wrestlers, this same argument revolves around the preferences for Folk Style, Free Style, and Greco. Wrestlers participate in endless debates about the merits of each and which would win in a match. If consensus is ever reached, then the debate expands to include Boxing, Jiu Jitsu, Tae Kwon Do, Karate, or any other martial art or combat sport that comes to mind.

Many a fight has broken out from these heated discussions over self defense technique superiority, and in fact, one might attribute the rise and success of MMA to the desire to physically answer this heated thought experiment.

While early manifestation of MMA aimed to pit combatants of different styles against one another, much like in the 1988 Jean-Claude Van Damme breakout movie Blood Sport, today the “Mixed” part of MMA refers less so to different styles in the cage, but rather to a combination of styles in each combatant. In fact, Frank Dux says to Tanaka in Blood Sport “you told me to use any tactic that works, never to commit yourself to one style, to keep an open mind”, essentially prophesizing the future requirement for success in the sport of MMA.

All of which leads me back to the world of consumer research, where over the years, I have routinely faced infighting from Analytics, Consumers Insights, and UX Research regarding which practice creates a more accurate, more actionable, and more valuable picture of the consumer. Invariably, this nerd battle tends to result in a lack of cooperation between these teams and even overt obstinance and argument in important meetings where corporate strategic progress is needed, not inter-discipline tactical victory.

Aligning with my assessment of Invincible Armor with the Frank Dux quote from blood sport, we see that these three consumer research disciplines each strive for the same outcome – to understand the customer in order to advance corporate strategy – and that keeping an open mind as to when and how to best use each drives the greatest probability of success towards that shared goal.

In short, there is not Stronger Kung Fu. There is only the wisdom to know when to apply the strengths of each style.

Within the realm of Analytics, Insights, and UXR, this wisdom comes from a deeper understanding of consumer research’s own Three Body Problem.