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While we love mobile market research it’s not the only thing we’re good at. Turns out three of us have ping pong* tables at home while three more consider themselves "quite good" at it.

The only way to find out who’s bluffing and who’s really good we headed to Blueberry Bar in East London and got our game on.

Ian, Sarah and Stratos, just warming up

1. Different can be better

Our marketing brains Sarah, and Tim, who’s the co-founder and development lead had a peculiar way of holding the racket and smacking the ball, which in the end rewarded them with positions #4 and #1 respectively.

Great lesson for the whole team and company in general - come up with new ways of helping customers do their market research be that in understanding how to launch better mobile surveys, continuously grow and improve our global audiences or build better data analyzing tools.

2. Practice does make perfect

No surprise there, just once again proven in real-life situation - those with access to table tennis equipment or/and time to practice it did better in racking up points and collecting wins.

Tim and Alistair, On Device Research co-founders

Not sure if you need to practice 10,000 hours to get good enough (as per theory made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his popular "Outliers") to win the team tennis tournament but a few hours invested in landing balls on the table is certainly advised.

3. It’s not over till it’s over

All through the tournament Zack, the coding talent behind a lot of our survey tool, lead the scoreboard without losing a single game (he clearly makes good use of his ping pong table at home).

'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again.

Tim, who had lost to Zack earlier, was hell bent on not letting him take the overall win though. Taking William E. Hickson’s well-known proverb quite literally he tried again and managed to have his revenge in the final.

What sports should we take up for the next team outing?