By Crispin Beale, CEO, Insight 250
With the Fall (aka Autumn) season here, change inevitably comes in the form of lower temperatures and changing colors across many landscapes. This is not unlike the significant change we are experiencing across the insight industry with technology innovation and methodology advancements. Given all this change, I spoke to experts around the world asking:
"With the insight industry's complexity and sophistication evolving at an unprecedented rate, especially through advancing technology, where should teams focus so as not to 'fall' behind?”
Anne-Sophie Damelincourt, Insight & Strategy Consultant, ESOMAR President, France
"In a time when technology is reshaping the data and insight landscape at lightning speed, staying ahead requires more than just adopting the latest tools. Teams must focus on developing analytical fluency, ethical data stewardship, and a deep understanding of human behavior and emotions. AI and automation offer powerful efficiencies, but they should be balanced with critical thinking and contextual insight. To avoid falling behind, we must also invest in continuous learning, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and building diverse, agile teams. Above all, our industry must remain committed to trust, transparency, and impact - ensuring that insights don’t just keep up with complexity and opacity, but cut through it to drive better decisions and societal value”.
Mary Ann Packo, CEO, North America, IPSOS, USA
“So excited by this question! As our industry transforms faster than ever, teams need to focus on three game-changing priorities: First, embrace AI and new technologies while keeping our human expertise front and center — that’s where the magic happens. Second, develop professionals who are passionately curious, able to navigate complex data landscapes, and deliver insights clients can truly trust. Third, put ourselves right at the intersection of insights, strategy, and action to solve real business challenges. At Ipsos, we believe the future belongs to those who combine a deep understanding of society, markets, and people with technological innovation, interpreted by creative minds.”
Wim Hamaekers, Co-founder, One Inch Whale, Belgium
“To stay relevant, insight teams must embed technology and AI into daily practice — to optimize processes, spark inspiration, and sharpen already well-thought-out analyses. Without this, there is no future. But technology alone is not enough. The real differentiator will be critical thinking: knowing how to apply tools smartly, what it can bring and what certainly not, connecting the dots, and adding the human empathy that creates real business impact. This requires openness to ecosystems that bring experts together, really going beyond traditional research to act as true consultants. Now is the time for our industry to step up.”
Herbert Höckel, Managing Director, moweb GmbH, Germany
"To stay ahead in the rapidly evolving insight industry, teams must prioritize creativity and curiosity while embracing innovation. Encouraging innovative thinking fosters novel solutions to complex challenges. Integrating Gen Z talent brings fresh perspectives and digital fluency, ensuring relevance in a tech-driven landscape. Staying curious about industry trends and consumer behaviors is crucial. Regularly upskilling, experimenting with new methodologies and collaborating across disciplines will prevent teams from falling behind, ensuring they remain agile and competitive in a dynamic, tech-fueled environment. Actively listening to client feedback ensures solutions align with their needs, while honing in on market demands keeps offerings relevant."
Nina Pascual, Senior Insights & Analytics Partner, Frieslandcampina, Singapore
“With the insights industry advancing at an unprecedented pace, teams can no longer rely on the traditional role of tracking, reporting, and validating. What matters now is distinctly different:
• From siloed research to ecosystem collaboration, Insight teams should orchestrate across marketing, digital, tech, and external partners to co-create value.
• From one-off studies to always-on intelligence where research used to be episodic, today’s Insights should be continuous, fueled by real-time data streams
• Moving beyond surface-level reporting to generating contextual, actionable meaning that drives executive decision-making.”
Laura Ruvalcaba, Brain, CEO, México
“To keep up with the accelerating evolution of the insights industry, teams must prioritize knowledge sharing and collective learning about emerging tech tools. Individual curiosity is essential — those unwilling to explore and understand new technologies risk slowing the entire team. But curiosity alone isn’t enough; organizations need champions who guide, curate, and deliver structured knowledge so everyone moves in the same direction. When teams align around a shared understanding and work together to maximize these tools, they unlock the power of technology instead of fragmenting into isolated efforts.”
Danny Russell, Owner, DRC
“Let us assume that our sector is adopting and successfully using this advancing technology; the challenge has always been (and now, even more so) that most strategic decisions in companies are made by human brains, which have developed at a far slower rate than this technology! Human brains still need to be influenced and convinced, so teams should focus on stakeholder management and the decision-making processes within their organisations. My definition of insight is “contextualised information that changes behaviour” – the ability to triangulate, translate and clarify various, growing sources of information, thus reducing the complexity so that decisions can be made, is what will separate a team that drives impact from one that just reports data.”
Pavi Gupta, VP Insights & Analytics, Chobani, USA
"With the insight industry's complexity and sophistication evolving at an unprecedented rate, especially through advancing technology, where should teams focus so as not to 'fall' behind?
“Advancing technology offers multiple benefits. AI approaches help augment work by driving efficiency and effectiveness. Think of the benefits of coding open-ended responses at scale, or customized surveys that trigger questions based on responses, or AI models that can generate quick summaries from knowledge repositories, etc.
“In many ways, these advancements are a tailwind for the industry. However, even an actual tailwind could change its direction, leading to dangerous flying conditions for a plane. To ensure that they are harnessing the power of the tailwind, pilots use a range of instruments to keep track of the winds and atmospheric conditions while in-flight.
“Similarly, industry practitioners need to identify indicators to track, to ensure that these technology tailwinds are being harnessed appropriately. Tracking speed and cost benefits is easy, but it’s difficult to track changes in the quality of output. Is the tech-driven solution giving us better quality vs traditional approaches?
“Considering this, I would recommend that we need to be very intentional about where to deploy tech solutions. Initially, the biggest benefit will be in driving efficiency (less time, lower cost). Once get better at driving time and cost benefits, we can then shift the focus to solutions that drive better quality outputs.”
Nick Baker, CRO, Savanta, UK
“Reinvention is a complete prerequisite to surviving and thriving in the new agentic-AI world. There is a need for wholesale change in what we do and how we do it, all of which needs to be done with a laser-like focus on solving clients' business challenges, the commercial effectiveness of what we do, and our expertise in getting the best out of data (of all kinds - qual, quant & transactional. The focus right now must be on systematic reinvention across the board.”
Mark Langsfeld, CEO mTab & Chair Insight250, USA
“The best way to avoid falling behind is to embrace innovation with an open mind toward continuous change. In our work, we consistently see two types of organizations: those who actively explore new technologies to gain immediate advantages, and those who hesitate, only to find themselves playing catch-up as competitors move ahead. Nowhere is this divide more evident than with AI. Pioneering brands are already capturing the efficiency and effectiveness of agentic AI across their organizations, while those holding back are not only losing ground to competitors but, more importantly, to customers. That gap will only widen as the technology continues to accelerate.”
Fiona Blades, President & Chief Experience Officer, MESH Experience, UK
“Focus on client needs. Then see how to deliver these more quickly, less expensively, and with higher quality. AI and automation can help in all kinds of areas. The key is to harness them to client needs.”
Vesna Hajnsek, Senior Insights Manager, L'Occitane en Provence, Switzerland
"For me, it comes in multiple steps: 1) enable the business to ask better questions. 2) Keep up with the tools that are being developed. 3. Understand the basics of the technology that is being implemented to evaluate if and how it truly serves the needs of the business. 4) become excellent at creating a story from the outputs that will galvanize the business."
Ray Poynter, Co-founder, ResearchWiseAI, UK
“In the past, I’ve advised skating to where the puck is going. But with AI changing so fast, the best advice is to keep up with play and avoid overcommitting too soon. Give your teams space to experiment, insist they share successes and failures, and don’t be too safe; if you wait until you’re 100% sure, you’ll already be too late.”
Seyi Adeoye, CEO, Pierrine Consulting, Nigeria
“The fundamentals of research will remain essential. But as our industry evolves, new skills will move from “nice to have” to non-negotiable. AI will not replace researchers. It will replace those who fail to adapt. The researchers who thrive will be the ones who master new capabilities: prompt engineering, designing AI-powered workflows, and critically auditing AI outputs for accuracy and bias. In other words, managing the machines will become as important as interpreting the insights. At the same time, the automation of data collection will change the center of gravity in our work. The real differentiator will no longer be access to data but the ability to provide context and meaning. This will demand a fusion of disciplines, ranging from behavioral economics, psychology to neuroscience. This will elevate research beyond reporting into foresight. The future researcher will be a strategist as much as an analyst. Our value will come from shifting the conversation from what happened to what’s next, and from delivering numbers to crafting compelling narratives that move executives to action.”
Urpi Torrado, CEO, Datum Internacional, Peru
“In an industry that is becoming more complex and technologically sophisticated every day, the real differentiator will not be the latest tool itself, but the team’s ability to learn and adapt. Continuous capability building is essential; cultivating digital literacy, understanding the possibilities and limits of AI, and training people to think critically about data. Equally important is the integration of methodologies. Insights today rarely come from a single source; they emerge when qualitative and quantitative, traditional and tech-driven, local and global perspectives are combined. The future belongs to teams that foster a culture of learning, collaboration, and methodological agility.”
Alex Hunt, CEO, Behaviorally, USA
“Imagining the future, not protecting the dogma and best practices of the past. If we’re clear about the possibilities and where we want to go, we can develop a workflow that delivers against this. If we start from a place of how things have always been done, progress will be slower, and other sectors will simply begin to perform the tasks that the industry today has ownership over.”
Justine Clements, Consumer Insights Manager, Samsung, Australia
“In a time of immense change when it feels like we are struggling to stay ahead, the temptation is to focus on saving money and driving efficiencies, and tech naturally does that already, but insight leaders should be shaping smarter decision-making, finding ways to deepen connections with consumers, and unlocking new growth opportunities. To stay ahead, we should focus less on what keeps us afloat and more on what truly propels us forward.”
Arundati Dandapani, Founder and CEO, Generation1.ca
“To stay ahead, teams must pair AI advancement with critical thinking mastery, leveraging technology and technical skills while applying collaborative strengths such as empathy, active listening, and problem-solving for competitive advantage. In an increasingly autonomous AI landscape where roles and responsibilities keep evolving, it is the balance of technical sophistication with strategic cognitive insight and values that enables teams to adapt, redefine their value, and build more resilient futures.”
Isabelle Fabry-Frémaux, Founder & CEO, ActFuture, Co-Representative France ESOMAR, WIRe & FrancoFuns, France
“In a fast-evolving industry, teams should remember that tools are means, never ends. The current fascination with AI illustrates the risk: excitement about technology can distract from what really matters. To avoid falling behind, the focus must remain on validity, relevance, and strategic vision. Our role is not to chase every new solution but to ensure insights serve their ultimate purpose: enabling better decisions, shaping the future, and maximizing the return on investments.”
Francky David, Senior Consumer & Health Care Professional Insights, Nestlé Nutrition
Insights industry should definitely focus in my views on 2 folds:
1. On tools and technology driven by AI surge that will free the insights teams of repetitive tasks or less value-adding ones, to enable them to focus more on their strategic contribution to the business as co-pilots of the commercial role. The real insights strengths are lying on what an AI algorithm doesn’t know or do (yet). So Ideal focus of insights team should be first on Strategy, then Tactical topics that require still brain power, and then only on the Operational part. Today, it is still rather the other way round.
2. Investigate and pilot the inclusion of some synthetic data as part of the routine tests to enable faster/cheaper outcomes, or start testing things you were never able to test before because of a lack of time or budget.
Ed Keller, Executive Director, MRII, USA
"To thrive in this rapidly changing business environment, insights professionals need to keep a clear eye on how technology can help them do their job more efficiently and effectively (e.g., through the smart adoption of Gen AI), for sure, or they will be left behind. But of even greater importance is to meet the moment in terms of what the C-Suite expects from insights, namely, "tell me what this means and how to drive better business decisions." As one of the guests on the MRII Insights & Innovators podcast put it, 'Insights without action are pointless. Your job is to inspire leaders and connect data to decisions that drive growth.' Too many in our industry are not yet heeding this call. This is where our focus must be.”
Diego Casaravilla, CEO, Fine Research Latin America, Argentina
“In the race to build ever-faster, ever-cheaper, ever-smarter AI platforms, what risks being lost is one of the oldest yet rarest researcher skills is being lost: active listening. Only then comes the magic—the sophisticated tools that best connect to this genuine listening will be the true game changers.”
Roland Abold, Managing Director, infratest dimap, Germany
Insights teams must focus on three priorities to keep pace: mastering new technologies, ensuring methodological rigor, and maintaining human-centric interpretation. Data grows richer and tools smarter, but impact comes from combining analytics with societal context and clear storytelling. By investing in digital expertise while safeguarding transparency and trust, insight teams can stay ahead without losing sight of what truly matters: meaningful understanding.”
Jean-Marc Léger, President / CEO, Léger, Canada
“To survive in today’s rapidly changing world, we must follow three rules:
1. Listen relentlessly to the market, to our clients, and to our competitors. It’s never the “best” technology that wins—it’s the one clients are willing to pay for, and often, it’s not the same.
2. Accept our true role. We are not technology companies. Let IT firms build the tools; our job is to integrate those solutions into our business processes.
3. Embrace mistakes. Not every bet will pay off-half of our investments may fail. But the other half can be the ones who secure your future.
“Yesterday they said: “Only the paranoid will survive.” Today we should say: Only the daring will succeed.”
Mariela Mociulsky, CEO & Founder, Trendsity, Argentina
“The key to not falling behind lies not only in adopting new technology but in designing new forms of collaboration. Insight teams should focus on building ecosystems where artificial intelligence, diverse human perspectives, and constant experimentation can work together. The advantage will come from learning to ask sharper questions and connecting disciplines to generate creative and actionable solutions. In a complex world, true value emerges when fragmented data is transformed into powerful narratives that drive strategic decisions and, above all, inspire trust in a future of continuous reinvention. In times of uncertainty, both insight and foresight become essential - and to achieve them, we must bring together knowledge and disciplines.”
Sharmila Das, Chairwoman, Purple Audacity, India
“The insight industry is evolving faster than ever, powered by tech, pushed by urgency. So where should we focus if we don’t want to fall behind? Let’s be clear: Agile is not speed. It’s learning with flexibility. Tech is not thinking. It’s a tool, not a substitute.
The teams that will stay ahead are the ones that stay curious, stay deep, and protect the things AI still can’t do - like sensing why a woman became silent in rural Odisha when a particular question was asked. Use tech to extend your mind, not replace it. Because the future won’t belong to the fastest team - it will belong to the one asking the question no one else thought to ask.”
Victoria Usher, CEO, GingerMay, UK
“With the insight industry moving so fast, the real focus shouldn’t just be on collecting more data, but on how that data is interpreted and communicated. Advancing technologies such as AI and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) are rewriting how knowledge is found, shared, and trusted. Teams that invest in building strong marketing and PR narratives from their insights - translating complexity into accessible, data-driven stories - will stay ahead. If we don’t align research outputs with GEO-ready, authoritative marketing and PR content, we risk producing valuable findings that simply never surface in the right conversations. So the focus must be on turning insight into influence through data-driven marketing and PR.”
Liubov Ruchinskaya, Diageo, & Founder, Insights Lighthouse, Switzerland
“In today’s rapidly evolving insights industry, many of us are falling behind due to the crises that have prompted organizations to reconsider their investments and either cut or automate insights. The right approach is to rebrand ourselves as strategic leaders or business transformation experts. We need to shift our focus from methods to creating value and impact. While others zig, we must zag - discovering white spaces for the business, identifying pockets of growth, and driving commercial excellence. In short, we should stop selling knowledge and start converting it into market share and cash gains.”
Lucy Davison, ESOMAR Council, Founder & CEO, Keen as Mustard Marketing, UK
“When is the last time AI persuaded you of anything? I ask, as I think the core focus that insight teams need to lean into is the skill of persuasion. We can ask an AI agent anything, we can use a huge range of technology and any number of data sources, but the core to influencing strategic decision-making and securing the future of insights lies in our ability to persuade. Indeed, in this post-truth world where plausible arguments seem to hold more power than facts, it is more important than ever that researchers – masters of data, now focus on mastering persuasion.”
Christian Dössel, Head of Bonsai Innovation, Germany
This fall, the question for insight teams isn’t just how to keep up—but how not to fall for the hype. In an innovation landscape that’s moving faster than most organizations can validate, insight teams must rethink how they experiment and evolve. Technologies like Virtual Reality are redefining how we capture and interpret human behavior—but progress won’t come from chasing every new headset or platform. Too many teams still confuse novelty with advancement. The real competitive edge lies in mastering the why: applying the right level of immersion, interactivity, and data richness to the right research question. Those who pair technological curiosity with strategic intent won’t just keep pace with change—they’ll shape the future of how insight itself is created.
So, as you can clearly see, there are a lot of insightful ways to avoid ‘falling’ behind with the insight innovation flourishing all around us. Keeping pace is certainly a challenge, but it is pushing the industry to elevate its impact. It will be exciting to see where these advancements take us as we look to close out 2025. Have a wonderful Fall season.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Crispin Beale - Chief Executive, Insight250, Senior Strategic Advisor, mTab; Worldwide CEO, IDX
Crispin is a marketing, data, and customer experience expert. Crispin spent over a decade on the Executive Management Board of Chime Communications as CEO of leading brands such as Opinion Leader, Brand Democracy, Facts International, and Watermelon. Before this, Crispin held senior marketing and insight roles at BT, Royal Mail Group, and Dixons. Crispin originally qualified as a chartered accountant and moved into management consultancy with Coopers & Lybrand (PwC). Crispin has been a Fellow, Board Director (and Chairman) of the MRS for nearly 20 years and UK ESOMAR Representative for over 10 years. Crispin is currently a Senior Strategic Advisor at mTab as well as worldwide CEO at IDX.