Dr. Jim Taylor
JIM TAYLOR is Vice Chairman of the Harrison Group, one of the country’s most respected and fast-growing marketing firms. Jim has envisioned, designed and implemented a number of milestone research studies such as the much lauded Worth-Harrison-Taylor Study of Wealth in America which eventually evolved into The New Elite. Taylor is also co-author of The 500 Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next and The Visionary’s Handbook.
An acknowledged expert in the fields of branding, future forecasting, and customer acquisition and retention, he provides advice of the highest level to many of the world’s leading packaged goods, software, media, banking, customer service, business and financial services corporations. Among them: American Express, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Audi, Acura, Bombardier, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Glaxo, the Walt Disney Company, Kapalua Resort, Louis Vuitton, Citibank, Times, Architecture and Southern Living, among many others. Virtually every major business publication in America, and most in Europe and Japan, have quoted Taylor. He lives in Southbury, Connecticut.
Doug Harrison
DOUG HARRISON is CEO and founder of the Harrison Group, which he established in 1996. Under his leadership, the company has grown exponentially over the last decade. Harrison Group specializes in marrying attitudinal and behavioral information in producing actionable market segmentations, positioning/brand equity evaluations, new product forecasts, product/price/design optimization – all done with an orientation toward understanding the volume impact of marketing actions.
Growth of the company has been based on three core principals: First, a commitment to delivering insights to clients that surpass client expectations; second, market research findings anchored in real-world projections relative to the cost to a client’s business; and third, responsibility to deliver clients outstanding results in which they can feel ownership.
Prior to founding Harrison Group, Doug ran strategic research and volumetric forecasting at Yankelovich Partners. Over the course of his career, he has directed the brand positioning and targeting strategies for some of the world’s greatest companies and brands, including Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Motorola, American Express, McDonald’s, Home Depot, Sara Lee, Honda, Yamaha, Louis Vuitton, Bank of America, Neuberger Berman, Bank of New York, GlaxoSmithKline, Fleet Bank, ScottsLawn, and InBev.
Harrison Group has also come to be the largest research provider of video game insights in the country, covering leading companies like Activision and Xbox. Doug has completed over 500 forecasts of business potential for an enormous range of products and services. Among his many accomplishments, he was also one of the pioneers automating the research process. More recently, Doug helped formulate the groundbreaking studies of ultra-wealth in America that evolved into The New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy.
An honors graduate of Cornell University, Doug earned a BS degree in business and marketing in 1988.
Dr. Steven Kraus
DR. STEPHEN KRAUS is a co-author of The New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy. He also serves as Vice President with the Harrison Group, where he provides senior leadership to the company’s wealth consultancy and leads the firm’s sales training practice. Steve is author of Psychological Foundations of Success: A Harvard-Trained Scientist Separates the Science of Success from Self-Help Snake Oil. His articles have appeared in Brandweek, AdWeek, the San Francisco Chronicle, Contemporary Psychology, and a variety of scientific psychology journals.
Steve is a featured speaker at conferences across the country, where he discusses his insights into human behavior and their marketing implications for fields as diverse as technology, financial services, retail sales, and packaged goods. He has also spoken at numerous scientific conferences, including those held by the American Psychological Association and the Society of Consumer Psychology. His insights are regularly
quoted in the media. He has been interviewed on CNN/fn, Fox News Channel, and dozens of radio stations. He has also been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Daily News, Parents magazine, and other national publications.
Prior to the Harrison Group, Steve spent six years as a Partner with Yankelovich Partners, where he directed the Yankelovich Monitor — the longest continuously-running study of consumer attitudes and lifestyles in America. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Steve has developed expertise in custom market research services such as market segmentation, customer satisfaction, and product/price optimization.
Steve received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University at age 25, and twice won Harvard’s award for excellence in teaching. Steve taught psychology at the University of Florida, where he was a campus favorite thanks to his teaching style of busting popular myths, illustrating psychological principles with vivid demonstrations, and translating scientific research findings into practical learning. His academic research on the relationship between attitudes and behavior is one of the most widely referenced works on the topic in the psychological literature, and is cited in major psychology textbooks. Steve lives in San Francisco.
