Insight, research and data analytics should be centre stage for profitability and growth. This we know. But who will make this happen? And how do we steer and fund the changes needed to release the  untapped value? This joint MRS / Kantar initiative shows investment in intelligence as a fundamental driver for performance improvement and business resilience. And as important as investment in people or IT.

Chair: Fran Cassidy, founder, Cassidy Media Partnership

Julie Kollman, chief research officer, Kantar “The Responsive Business: Creating growth and value through intelligence capital” 

Panel:
Harry Davies, head of marketing measurement and attribution, UK, Google
Philip Nellenbach, brand and customer experience insight director, Europe, Samsung Electronics
Liz Lamb, senior director, data & insight, CRM, CX, Asda

It takes flexible, sensitive and creative insight to spur significant social change. We hear from three organisations who have used different research approaches to challenge assumptions, reframe key issues and drive real change in perception and behaviour.

Chair: Peter Dann, director, The Nursery
Marie-Claude Gervais, research director, Versiti & Sarah Lambert, Head of Social Change, RNIB
Lorna Heslington, director, Tipi & Tom Bassford, strategic lead for place, One Manchester
Matt Allen, managing director, Folk Research & Antony Antoni, global brand lead, World Animal Protection

As researchers, our trends and innovation projects might look two or three years ahead. What if we learnt from those who look further forward? Hear three leading strategic foresight practitioners talk about the tricks of their trade, from sensemaking and scenarios to sci-fi stories, simulations and strange artefacts. Bring these visions of the future to bear in your own business.

Chair: Jay Owens, research director, Pulsar
Panel:
Scott Smith, managing partner, Changeist
Anab Jain, co-founder and director, Superflux
Paul Graham Raven, science fiction writer, postdoctoral researcher, Lund University, Sweden

Customers increasingly live in a world where intimacy, immersion and sharing is common place – so why then, do we insist on protecting MRX’s archaic notion of ‘objectivity’ which only serves to promote distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’? We explore how closing the researcher/participant gap can help us get more out of the people we are researching and how real, 360-degree immersion can lead to staggeringly rich insight.

Chair: Rhiannon Price, head of UK qualitative research, Northstar Research
Matilda Andersson, managing director (London) Crowd DNA
Sarah Grant, research manager, InSites Consulting & Kelly Laher, consumer insights
manager – innovation, Nestle Cereals, Cereal Partners Worldwide
Matt Baker, founder and creative director, BAMM & Payam Ghamsari, new beverages CMI, The Coca Cola Company

The world of visual research is set to be a £6 billion industry in the next few years and is transforming sectors such as manufacturing and education. But what can it do for research and insight? This session will bring together visual technology professionals with academic, client, agency and technology suppliers to explain how they create augmented realities in their work, and give their perspective on the likely impact of visual augmenting technology in the near future. How can we all take advantage of this augmented future to gain deeper insight into how people behave?

Chair: Dr Alastair Goode, cognitive scientist, Gorilla in the Room
Panel:
Greg Ivanov, head of AR/VR/Lens partnerships (EMEA), Google
Jennie Roper, head of insight, Kinetic Worldwide
Dr Carl Smith, director of the Learning Technology Research Centre, Ravensbourne University London

How can the innovation process be as fresh and effective as possible? This fully-interactive workshop will explore a range of solutions to help marketers and agencies work together to build and recover innovation creativity. Using client experience as a base, the workshop will promote tactics, tips and provide inspiration, to help those passionate about innovation drive winning innovation pipelines.

Chair: Lyndsay Peck & Deborah Sleep, Directors, Engage Research
Participants:
Alistair Hoyes, global director, product & strategy, Resideo, Honeywell Home
Helen Passard, head of insight, Lucozade Ribena Suntory

Power shapes, guides and limits each of our lives. New, digital forms of power are chipping away at the old institutions where power used to sit, swallowing up newspapers, eclipsing experts, and pulling down companies. This panel exposes the strange, sometimes scary forms that power now takes – and what the insight world can do to better understand and react to it.

Chair: Jane Bainbridge, head of editorial, Impact Magazine and Research Live
Keynote: Carl Miller, research director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, DEMOS and author of The Death of the Gods, The New Global Power Grab
Panel:
Chris Monteiro, cybercrime researcher
Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive, Index on Censorship
Bardha Ahmeti, telecoms engineer, researcher and civil society activist, LENS
Sally Adee, journalist and former news and features editor, New Scientist

Emerging technology is helping researchers capture new, deeper and more valuable insights. These technologies augment our own insight skills to help expand our understanding of how emotion, senses and time, influence the way we make decisions. We’ll share the challenges, introduce the methods, discuss the impact, and debate the opportunity, limits and potential.

Chair: Jeremy Hollow, founder and managing director, Listen + Learn Research
Judith Suttrup, research manager, SKIM & Sofia Jorman, global consumer science manager, Johnson & Johnson
Dr Andy Myers, director, Walnut Unlimited &  Chris Bisset, Head of Category, Rentokil Initial
Olly Robinson, research director, Basis & Ali Rennie, research lead – search, Google

Brands are working ever harder to deliver memorable experiences for their customers. Insight professionals must also work harder to have their insights heard and, more importantly, to make them memorable. This highly immersive session draws on practical techniques used in music, museums and gaming to highlight the memory enhancing value of engaging multiple senses. Your debriefs will never be the same again.

Chairs:
Kelly McKnight, head of culture + trends & Kate Skivington, culture + trends strategist, Join the Dots
Participants:
Adam Szabo, director, Manchester Collective
Sacha Coward, mermaid hunter and escape room builder