2024 innovation of the year: Streetbees

London-based consumer insights technology company Streetbees provides data on consumer lives, behaviours, attitudes and opinions, and has around 35 million conversations captured via a WhatsApp-style application that incentivises chat-style surveys and insights.

The company won the award for Innovation of the Year for its SBX tool. SBX works by allowing clients to first specify their research needs, with the SBX large language model (LLM) then interacting with the user to better understand their requirements and automatically generate a research brief and conversation guide.

SBX then deploys a conversational survey, using both closed-text and open-text questions. The AI optimises follow-up questions in real-time based on participant responses, mimicking the depth of a one-on-one interview at the scale of a survey. 

Within 48 hours, SBX processes the survey data using taxonomies and machine learning models to classify, quantify and analyse the responses.

Clients receive a tailored, interactive dashboard featuring an executive summary, charts, themes and rich consumer verbatims, including photos and videos. 

SBX’s proprietary LLM technology spans capture, collection and insights, customising briefs, surveys and reports with use-case data.

The tool combines traditional machine learning with LLMs for classifying text, images and videos into specific taxonomies, with plans to enhance accuracy using advanced machine learning models.

Businesses can use LLMs that reference specific use cases within a proprietary database, enabling them to get industry-specific insights.

SBX insights have an 8% response drop-off rate versus an industry average of 40% and an average response word count of 47 against an industry average of five. The technology automates research and evolves through continuous manual and automated feedback loops.

Vidisha Gaglani, chief executive officer at Streetbees, said: “This award is true testament to the hard work, passion and innovation our team has poured into advancing our product over the past year.

“It’s an honour to have our commitment to pushing the boundaries of market research recognised by the judges. I’m immensely proud of what we’ve achieved so far and look forward to continuing to shake up the industry. Congratulations to every member of the Streetbees team, as well as all the finalists and winners.”

Shaf Shajahan, vice-president of product at Streetbees, added: “SBX is the result of a two-week hackathon that we kicked off in 2023. At the beginning of its journey, SBX was a baby we had to train and nurture.

“Disrupting industries like market research with new technology, especially AI, can be very daunting. It continuously involves staying hyper-agile, taking big risks, discarding bad ideas quickly, and most importantly, keeping the user’s needs at the core of your decision-making, even if it means giving them what they need and not always what they want. Now, SBX is an impressive, intelligent (and award-winning) young adult.

“The judges reasoning as to why we won affirmed a valuable lesson for me: companies that fully automate with AI without the human-in-the-loop fail quickly. The game is all about creating cutting-edge systems that remain human-centric amid the noise of automation.”

This article is based on information submitted as part of the entry process for the MRS Awards 2024.

The full list of winners can be found on the MRS website.

Some of the Research Live awards judges shared their reflections on the judging process and offer tips for those looking to enter in future. The article can be read here.