From Knowledge Management to Innovation Partner: How Insights Teams Must Evolve

By Market Logic Software

• article

• Knowledge Management
• Artificial Intelligence
• Generative AI
• Research Management
• Competitor Analysis
• Insight Transformation
• Insight Activation
• Machine Learning
• Trend Reports
• Trend Analytics
• Reporting
• Syndicated Reports
• Research Repository

When we started working on insights platforms back in 2006 and 2007, the problem was relatively straightforward: how do you make sure all the research and knowledge that organisations invest in gets reused, rather than sitting in silos? The answer then was largely about knowledge management. You would collect all the material and make it searchable, trying to surface relevant information for people when they needed it.

That was still the bread and butter use case three years ago. And honestly, it remains the core of how most organisations use these systems today, because it takes time for them to adopt new approaches and really build the muscle to work with these things.

What we are seeing now – and what I believe insights teams need to prepare for – is a fundamental shift in their role. It is not just about managing knowledge anymore. It is about becoming partners in the actual application of that knowledge.

Learn more by watching or listening to Olaf on the Founders and Leaders Series podcast here:

The Gatekeeper Role Is Evolving

There is always this tension between making sure things do not go wrong and avoiding mistakes, whilst at the same time helping to mint new successes and thinking positively about things. The insights team has traditionally been responsible for both: preventing costly mistakes, like launching products that will not work, and providing the understanding that guides successful decisions.

That responsibility is not going away. It is totally important and fundamentally correct that insights teams are vetting these things and are the ones who are establishing maybe the guardrails there. But what is changing is how this responsibility gets implemented.

Of course, you do not want everybody in the organisation spinning up whatever weird persona based on whatever data of doubtful provenance. The insights teams really care about making sure that the information they expose to the organisation is vetted, usable, and that they make clear the guardrails for using it.

From Manual Control to Systems Thinking

Here is the challenge: the times when humans could control it are over. There will be so many flows now that are somehow – I am not going to say invisible – under the radar. And you need to make sure that the system is architected in a way that takes that into account.

What I mean by this is that insights functions will need to have more of a systems thinking approach in the future. How can their thinking – the value they can bring to the table, but also the guardrails they need to establish – be really imprinted on this evolving ecosystem of AI-human technology organisations so it scales better?

There are some procedural elements involved: making sure the tools and data sources you pick are the right ones. But then there is also a lot of internal enablement, maybe education. Some of that can also be kind of built into the tools themselves now with AI. You can set guardrails there to make sure it is not abused or used in the fundamentally wrong way.

The Challenge of Educating the Organisation

This is a problem and it needs to be addressed. When stakeholders interact with AI personas or conversational data tools, their ability to frame and ask questions effectively becomes critical. I have seen people in product and marketing teams asking questions of a persona that a researcher would never ask in that way.

Here is what is interesting: you can go with the system on this. You will need to educate people about how all of this works, their critical thinking, and how to approach things. But you can also infuse a lot of that knowledge into the system itself.

In the earlier days – and earlier days also feel like a year ago – when you were interacting with AI, it was a lot about making sure the prompts were right, and you needed to really come with your problem very well described to get a proper response. Now capabilities have evolved. Those models are becoming smarter. Now, there are smarter ways to stage the whole interaction so you can just come with your vastly underspecified problem. And the AI in the first step will guide you through formulating it in the right way, owning the question, and also challenging whether that is the right way to look at it or to ask the question – and only then proceed to maybe the actual subject matter and figure out what the answer might be.

So I think again, yes, educating people, and, at the same time, systems thinking: where in this whole system flow can we put in our expertise as the insights team to make sure that things are pre-qualified, things are done in the right way, and then give the system the mission to make sure that helps? Again, it is not going to be perfect, but there is a lot of potential there that we can also just begin to really take advantage of.

It Requires a Different Way of Thinking

I believe it evolves and elevates how this is going to be implemented. It is a challenge because it requires a different way of thinking about the problem, but, in a way, the problem remains the same.

The insights team remains responsible for ensuring that information and capabilities are used correctly. What changes is that instead of being in every single interaction, insights teams need to architect the system so their expertise is embedded in how people access and work with consumer understanding.

This is still evolving, and everybody is still grappling with what it really means in terms of organisational setup, as well as the way of working and procedures. However, the direction is clear: insights teams need to think less about being the gatekeepers of every request, and more about being the architects of an intelligent system that scales their expertise across the organisation.

Learn more by watching or listening to Olaf on the Founders and Leaders Series podcast here:

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