Revolutionizing Insights: Steve Phillips on AI, Automation, and the Future of Market Research
About
In this engaging episode of **Talking AI**, host **Ray Poynter** sits down with **Steve Phillips**, Founder, Chair, and Chief Innovation Officer at Zappi, to explore how artificial intelligence and automation are transforming the world of consumer insights.
### Key Highlights
- **Steve Phillips' Journey:** From the early days of qualitative and quantitative research across multiple continents to founding Zappi, a company built on automating and innovating market research methodologies. - **The Zappi Story:** Learn how Zappi shifted the paradigm from slow, expensive research to rapid, scalable, and high-quality insights, leveraging automation and AI from the outset. - **Client Partnerships & Innovation:** Discover the importance of 'pirate' clients like Unilever, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo, who partnered early with Zappi to co-create new approaches and how these collaborations led to the birth of ADA, PepsiCo's cutting-edge insights platform. - **Generative AI in Research:** Steve explains how the arrival of LLMs (like GPT-3) transformed automated report writing, enabling reports with near-expert quality and real-time data synthesis. - **The Power of Data Assets:** Insights on how automation not only accelerates research but also builds vast, actionable data assets for meta-analytics and predictive modeling. - **Democratizing Insights:** Addressing the debate about democratization, Steve argues that structured automation empowers insight teams to focus on data architecture and strategy, amplifying their organizational impact. - **Looking Ahead:** Predictions for the next 18-24 months, covering synthetic research, AI agents, and how insight teams are poised to lead organizations into an AI-first future. - **Advice for Young Researchers:** Steve's advice to newcomers: embrace AI, experiment, and reimagine your role for a data-driven, AI-powered era.
**Whether you're a research professional, data enthusiast, or innovation leader, this episode offers a wealth of forward-thinking perspectives on the evolving landscape of insights and AI.**
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**Learn more about Zappi:** [https://www.zappi.io/](https://www.zappi.io/)
**Connect with Ray Poynter:** [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raypoynter/)
**Discover more Talking AI episodes:** [Podcast Homepage](https://researchwiseai.com/academy/talking-ai)
Guests: Steve Phillips