Insights 2030: The imperative of imagination is the future of insights

Amy Cashman - Executive Managing Director, Insights Division UK & Ireland at Kantar shares her research and views on the future of insights.

Insights 2030: The imperative of imagination is the future of insights

We all know that the marketplace ahead will demand more expansive thinking and decision-making. Volatility and uncertainty are ongoing. Disruption will challenge operating and business models. To meet these challenges, business leaders expect Insights to step up to a leadership role premised on a new way of working, one that is grounded in the structures, processes and practices of a more expansive, more original, more imaginative way of doing business. Growth and success will come from more imagination.

Over the past 18 months, Kantar interviewed thousands of business and Insights leaders around the world about what differentiates leading companies and their Insights functions from those that trail behind. We partnered with some big hitters in the space of Insights, such as Colgate, Diageo, PepsiCo, as well as ESOMAR and the Sa?d Business School at Oxford University. Our purpose was to identify the guiding imperative that senior business leaders want from Insights and the associated playbook for action.

Our work pointed to several critical takeaways relevant to all Insights organisations across all types of companies and industries:

• Insights must put the human experience at the centre, more so than customers per se. Too often, a greater focus on the customer has meant more details about what shoppers do than what people want from their lifestyles.
• Insights must look ahead with a refreshed mission and a forward-looking market narrative. It might entail an updated functional mission. This will necessitate a greater diversity of data, skills and expertise. Business leaders recognize this. Business leaders place more value than Insights leaders on non-research skills that can make a difference in the business, not just in research.
• Insights functions must deliver lightbulb moments by telling a business story rather than just a consumer story. Insights must keep customers at the heart of everything they do, but they must deliver this perspective in a way that is more focused on the business.
• Insights must adopt a new hiring profile with more emphasis on management and consulting skills and less emphasis on research skills per se. Business leaders expect Insights leaders to work more like senior management than like senior researchers.
• All of this leads to getting things done, which market-leading companies are institutionalising with formal activation teams and with greater use of tools and resources to free up Insights people to think and act more imaginatively. In the past, Insights were required to be more involved in creating strategy; that’s still the case, but the need now is for Insights to be more involved in implementing strategy.

All this can be linked back to employee experience within the Insights industry as well. The need to treat people as humans, not just employees, look forward and try to anticipate their changing needs and views on things like work-life balance. Empowering people to not only deliver great work, but have the opportunity to challenge, offer provocations, and use their imagination to come up with ideas that will drive progress within their teams and customers. We believe diversity of skills, background, and thinking all help us be more expansive, more original, and more imaginative in the way we work for our clients.