Harris Interactive headquartered in New York, New York, is a custom market research firm, known for the Harris Poll. Harris works in a wide range of industries. Harris claims to have clients in more than 215 countries and territories through North American, European, and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms.

The company is a member of numerous research organizations, including the US National Council of Public Polls, the British Polling Council , the Council of American Survey Research Organizations

Council of American Survey Research Organizations

The Council of American Survey Research Organizations 325+member companies and their 32,000 employees, all of whom are afforded membership benefits, represent nearly $8 billion in global annual revenue—about 85% of the U.S. research industry and 30% of the global research industry...

, the US Council for Marketing and Opinion Research, and the UK Market Research Society.

History

Harris Interactive was founded by Dr. Gordon S. Black in 1975, then a professor of political science at the University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

 in New York. The company was originally named the Gordon S. Black Corporation. In 1996, it acquired Louis Harris & Associates (founded in 1956) from the Gannett Corporation. In 1997, the merged company renamed itself Harris Black International Ltd.

Growth of online polling

In 1997, the Internet was relatively new to the non-technical public. Harris Black International Ltd began exploring its use in the fall of that year. In December 1999, it went public and re-branded itself as Harris Interactive, a name that hinted at the increasing role of interactive surveys on the Internet.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Sale of Business

The Gordon S. Black Corporation was founded in 1975 as a New York corporation. It formed and became part of the Delaware corporation now known as Harris Interactive in 1997. During these years, the company’s acquisitions have included:

• February 1996 — all of the stock of Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., headquartered in New York.
• February 2001 — the custom research division of Yankelovich Partners, Inc., headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.
• August 2001 — all of the capital stock of Market Research Solutions Limited, a privately-owned U.K. company headquartered in Oxford, England.
• September 2001 — all of the capital stock of M&A Create Limited, a privately-owned company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
• November 2001 — all of the capital stock of Total Research Corporation, a Delaware corporation headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey.
• March 2004 — all of the capital stock of Novatris, S.A. (“Novatris”), a share corporation organized and existing under the laws of France.
• September 2004 — all of the capital stock of Wirthlin Worldwide, Inc. a privately-held California corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia.
• April 2007 — all of the capital stock of MediaTransfer AG Netresearch & Consulting, a privately-held German stock corporation headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.
• August 2007 — all of the capital stock of Decima Research Inc. (“Decima”), a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada.
• August 2007 — all of the capital stock of Marketshare Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of Hong Kong, and Marketshare Pte Ltd, a company incorporated under the laws of Singapore.

Chief executives

Name	Tenure
Gordon S. Black	1975 – January 2004
Robert E. Knapp	January 2004 – May 2005
Gregory T. Novak	May 2005 – October 2008
Kimberly Till	October 2008 – June 2011
Albert A. Angrisani Al Angrisani Albert Angrisani, also known as Al Angrisani is the former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor and Chief of Staff under President Ronald Reagan, as well as an author and business media personality... (interim)	June 2011 – present

Harris Poll

The Harris Poll has been running since 1963 and covers a broad variety of topics. In 1997, Harris Interactive began developing an on-line version of The Harris Poll. It has also developed several Internet-based polls in conjunction with other companies.