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When we first invented and introduced QuickTHINK in 2025, the idea behind it was straightforward: don’t make clients wait days or weeks to understand what they’re hearing in qualitative interviews. Instead, give them a clear, high-level readout of each interview -- delivered minutes after it ends -- so the learning can begin immediately.
What we didn’t fully anticipate was how central QuickTHINK would become to the way teams actually use qualitative research. Clients told us it helped with alignment. They shared it internally. They used it to keep senior stakeholders updated and engaged during fieldwork. And from the ThinkGen side, it made our toplines even sharper and final reports easier to construct because everyone was tracking the same signal as it emerged.
QuickTHINK 2.0 builds on what worked -- and fixes what didn’t.
The defining strength of QuickTHINK has always been timing. There’s something uniquely valuable about capturing insight while the interview is still fresh -- before memory fades, before interpretation solidifies, before teams start to drift in different directions.
QuickTHINK 2.0 preserves that moment, but removes the burden that made the original version harder to sustain over long fieldwork days. Instead of relying on manual post-interview summaries, QuickTHINK 2.0 generates an in-the-moment output using two inputs: the interview transcript and the project’s pre-defined key business questions.
The result is the same quick-glance clarity clients valued, but delivered more consistently and with less friction for researchers.
Each QuickTHINK 2.0 delivers a concise, roughly 200-word snapshot of the interview. This isn’t a transcript or a running commentary. It’s a distillation of what mattered most in that conversation.
What’s new is that clients can now define three to five key business questions (KBQs) at the start of the study. For each interview, QuickTHINK 2.0 provides:
This allows teams to scan interviews through a decision-oriented lens; seeing, in real time, how emerging signal is shaping up across respondents. It also helps identify where our moderators can probe deeper, what may need reframing, and which interviews are most worth revisiting in detail.
Importantly, this happens within two to three minutes of the interview ending.
There’s another audience QuickTHINK 2.0 was designed to serve: the researchers themselves.
Anyone who has moderated multiple interviews in a day knows how precious the space between conversations is. That’s where moderators reset, reflect, and prepare; not where they want to be bogged down scrawling notes. QuickTHINK 2.0 removes that administrative drag at exactly the wrong moment.
At the same time, it fits squarely within ThinkGen’s AI + human fusion model. We encourage moderators to quickly review and refine the output, applying judgment, nuance, and context. The final QuickTHINK reflects machine-enabled speed, but researcher-led thinking.
AI accelerates. People decide.
None of this works without high-quality source material. In a technical-term intensive field like pharmaceutical marketing research, transcription accuracy isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s foundational. Therapeutic language, drug names, and clinical nuance leave little room for error.
That’s why we continue to invest heavily in our transcription process, including the development of proprietary custom dictionaries tailored to therapeutic areas and market-specific language. More accurate transcripts tally up to better summaries, more reliable analysis, and ultimately a higher standard of research excellence.
One of the most powerful outcomes of QuickTHINK 2.0 has been broader alignment.
Each interview produces a crisp, shareable snapshot that can be circulated across brand teams, medical teams, insights groups, senior leadership, and agency partners. While each QuickTHINK is intentionally “in the moment” and not a substitute for full synthesis, it creates a shared reference point throughout the fieldwork.
That shared understanding minimizes the need for repeated explanations, keeps interpretation consistent across stakeholders, and allows momentum to build throughout the study -- rather than only at the final readout.
The feedback we’ve received has been energizing. Clients have told us that QuickTHINK changes how they experience qualitative research -- that it brings them closer to the data without overwhelming them.
And that, ultimately, is the goal.
QuickTHINK 2.0 is not about novelty or automation for its own sake. It’s about helping teams see clearly, align early, and make better decisions -- one interview at a time. And it’s something we’re proud to offer to our clients as part of how we do our work.
