The research industry is at a pivotal inflection point. Here’s how insights leaders can evolve from proving value to leading it.
At Glow, we’ve been tracking the seismic shifts reshaping the market research industry. The 2025 GRIT Insights Practice Report (curated once again by Leonard F. Murphy and the team at Greenbook) offers a timely pulse-check on an industry in transition. While AI continues to dominate the narrative, it’s the structural, cultural, and commercial retooling beneath the surface that holds the real story.
Compared to last year’s GRIT report – where we encouraged agencies to obsess about sample methods, demand better data & service quality, and not believe the hype (too much) – this year’s edition showcases an evolution and clear turning point.
2025’s themes are sharper, more strategic, and ultimately more urgent.
Sample quality has been noted to be de-prioritised in the report.
Methodological nuance, while still important, must now drive business outcomes.
And ‘hype’ has been replaced with harder questions: how do we prove our ROI? How do we lead through change? And how do we evolve before being outpaced?
Here’s what we believe every agency and insights leader should take away from this year’s report:
1. Prove Your ROI
It’s no longer enough to be useful. Insights partners must be indispensable – and measurable.
Buyers are increasingly prioritising data and analytics capabilities, while many suppliers still over-index on traditional services. The gap between what clients want and what agencies promote has widened – and GRIT is clear on the risk: if you’re not showing commercial impact, you’re becoming irrelevant.
We’re seeing procurement functions ask sharper questions.
We’re seeing brand teams expect insights that guide real decisions, not just dashboards or PowerPoint decks.
And we’re seeing faster churn for agencies who can’t back up the value they promise.
2. Make AI Work For You
AI is here – but how you use it makes all the difference.
It’s no surprise that AI remains the dominant buzzword in the report, flagged as the most influential force reshaping the practice of research (nay, the world).
But GRIT wisely cautions that not all AI integration is created equal. Many agencies are layering AI onto legacy workflows – hoping for transformation, but delivering unnecessary complexity in the process. An unfortunate contradiction for what we expect AI to help us to do!
The real opportunity lies in designing smarter systems that reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and unlock new forms of insight – from summarisation to simulation. What’s clear is that AI should amplify the human, not replace it, and provide easier faster pathways to the research that matters, so we can spend more time understanding the data at our fingertips.
At Glow, we see AI not as a differentiator on its own, but as an enabler of quality, speed, and depth. It IS game-changing, and moves us towards doing better work, sharper and faster.
In our context, this means more efficient pathways to creating profoundly useful research technology, and more informed researchers as a result.
3. Lead With Strategic Impact
Insights teams are no longer support functions.
They’re expected to steer the ship.
This year’s GRIT report makes a bold call to action: the research function must embed itself deeper into the strategic operations of the business. That means not only delivering great insights, but ensuring those insights guide meaningful decisions.
We’re seeing more organisations create Chief Insights Officer roles, elevate data fluency across non-research departments, and expect researchers to speak the language of outcomes.
It’s no longer enough to be methodologically sound.
You need to be commercially fluent as well.
This is invariably where the research industry is continuing to move towards and evolve into.
4. Workforce at a Crossroads
The future of the insights industry won’t be built on tools alone – but on the people using them.
GRIT’s data is clear: the industry is grappling with high attrition, rising burnout, and a major reskilling imperative. AI is changing job expectations across every function, and the capabilities most in demand: analytics, storytelling, platform literacy – aren’t always what current teams were trained for.
Companies that fail to invest in people risk falling behind. Retention and capability development are now strategic levers, not HR concerns.
5. From Full-Service to Full-Stack
Agencies that cling to old service models are being outpaced by those who act like platforms, and build them.
The most successful suppliers in this year’s GRIT report aren’t just selling services, they’re developing systems. From end-to-end workflows to tech-enabled reporting and automation, clients increasingly expect speed, scale, and seamlessness.
Buyers want flexibility. They want data flowing into decision systems. And they want partners who can help them build their own capabilities – not just deliverables.
This doesn’t mean every agency needs to become a SaaS business. But it does mean that service alone isn’t a moat anymore. Innovation is, and often first to market will prevail.
6. Sustainability Deserves a Seat at the Insights Table
While listed as a “minor chord” in this year’s GRIT analysis, we instead believe sustainability is a major theme in waiting.
Brands around the world are investing more in ESG reporting, ethical consumer research, and purpose-driven marketing. But the insights infrastructure hasn’t always kept pace. There’s a growing demand for more rigorous sustainability measurement, segmentation by values, and long-term brand equity work tied to impact.
We see this not as a trend, but as a transformation. And it’s one where research can (and should) lead.
Such as at Glow.
Sustainability is a major priority for us, in terms of delivering value and changing the status quo of how it’s always been done in the past.
7. Final Word: Imperatives for Insights Leaders
If there’s one unifying thread across the 2025 GRIT report, it’s this: leadership is no longer optional.
Whether it’s AI strategy, team design, or client delivery, insights professionals need to act boldly. This is a moment to redefine what research means inside organisations.
To claim a seat at the strategy table, not just the survey room.
Greenbook’s call for “steering the business” isn’t rhetorical. It’s a mandate.
Start Shaping It.
This article was written by:
Tim Clover
Tim is the founder and CEO of the research technology platform Glow.
Glow’s research tech, audience access and support services enable marketers, salespeople and researchers to capture insights easily so they can make better decisions faster.
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