Resources

Blending insights into your role and for maximum impact

Creating actionable insights starts with creating an internal culture of empowerment, freedom and creativity.

Research teams and efforts no longer exist in silo, and it’s a good thing they don’t! Workplaces which stress the value of frequent, cross-team conversation, healthy brainstorming, discourse, ‘play’, trial and error have a clearer sense for the kinds of changes and innovations which will create impact, and have more fun reaching those decisions and creating change (presumably!).

Approaching your role as a ‘trusted advisor’ to the business and making it your mission to create an ‘insights ecosystem’ will help maximise research spend and reach… and will result in more fulfillment!

There is so much value in the relationships you build at work. Focus on understanding those who will rely on you for information, advice, and inspiration, and work backwards from there – understand what kind of information is most useful and when it needs to be received. Find processes which allow you to create efficiencies around your research steps, processes and budget, and make life easier for yourself and your organisation.

Integrations with AI, and what this means for staff and traditional methods

In a world increasingly dominated by AI, retaining your people and their skills matters more.

All the discussion on AI served as a helpful reminder that while we continue to see its usefulness within stages of the research process, the people who support each stage and process are still highly impactful and can’t be replaced – their empathetic and nuanced understanding are invaluable.

Advances in AI and social listening are enabling us to uncover emotion and sentiment which would otherwise be difficult to tap into through traditional methods, but they will never replace them entirely.

Various companies and tools now place a focus on gathering insight and sentiment via social listening as a starting place for brand sentiment and how to best cater to target audiences. These tools are valuable starting points for understanding consumer sentiment but should be complemented with in-person research to capture deeper insights and nuance AI can’t uncover.

Don’t be afraid to recognise research methods which no longer serve you … chances are, you’re not alone.

As a result of a heated ‘Room 101’ exercise, it was revealed that many feel various traditional methods – like generational cohorts, referring to research members as ‘respondents’, and relying strictly on survey data – feel prohibitive and reductive as they overlook the nuance individuals bring to the topic/table. Make sure your research processes and approach don’t overlook individual nuance and treat research participants as people through fair practices.