Preview of 2025: Skills and talents

As we reach 2025, contributors to Research Live’s Preview series discuss the skills needed to thrive in the coming year, with AI featuring heavily.

Melissa Sauter, chief executive, Escalent

The biggest challenge for the industry – moving from productivity to impact – goes hand-in-hand with the most vital skill we’ll need: the ability to suss out the truth. While there’s a greater need for quick answers, there is a healthy scepticism with data. Are the sources trustworthy? How do different data sources (sometimes pointing to different answers) relate to one another?

AI is transformative, but being able to determine the truth in a sea of data is imperative. You need to speak to real humans. You need context. And you need industry expertise to make it all make sense. It’s the search for truth in the human and the number. 

Fiona Blades, chief experience officer, MESH Experience

Creativity. AI can do a lot of heavy lifting, but it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know.

Graham Idehen, senior director, customer experience – international, Dscout

Adaptability and creativity will be key in 2025. With even more emerging technologies and new disruptors challenging the status quo, we need people who can think differently and aren’t afraid to embrace the grey areas between black and white.

A can-do attitude, a willingness to push beyond comfort zones and the ability to drown out the noise to stay focused will set the best apart. It’s about being agile, innovative, and ready to go above and beyond when it matters most.

Paul Hudson, founder and chief executive, FlexMR

Curiosity. Always has been, always will be. Curiosity is the root of all great insight professionals because it drives a desire to seek answers, which in turn drives the crafting of great questions. If insight experts are not curious, then you won’t seek out new understanding.

Emma Cooper, chief people officer, System1 Group

Creativity, passion for learning and influence.

Danielle Todd, director, The Forge

Persuasion skills. We often work with imperfect data, in shifting contexts, with competing and urgent needs. Identifying priorities and bringing others along on the journey to forge clarity and future consumer value will be critical for our industry.

Debbie Shuttlewood, board director and equity partner, Opinium

As clients become more and more discerning with reducing research budgets, the need for agencies to produce more for less becomes even greater.  This and the competing elements of AI solutions mean that personal relationships and consultancy will be areas for agencies to focus on in the coming year. 

Having a deep understanding of, and alignment with, client needs and being able to demonstrate value and impact in everything we deliver is going to be key in 2025.  

Ben Shimshon, chief executive and founding partner, Thinks Insight & Strategy

Optimism. Determination. A focus on relationships.

Kelly Beaver, chief executive officer UK and Ireland, Ipsos

I think agility and resilience will be key to carrying market researchers through the unpredictability that’s lying ahead for us. We’ll need to stay open to trying new methodologies and ways of working to ensure that we’re providing the best possible service to our clients, regardless of the volatility and shocks we’re seeing in the world around us.

Amy Cashman, executive managing director of the UK insights division, Kantar

For me, the number one thing is genuine open-mindedness to experimenting with new technology – even if you’re not working in a technical part of a research organisation or agency.

I like to think that us researchers are curious by nature. We’re at the coalface of asking how the world around us is changing and why. We shouldn’t forget to turn the lens on ourselves and think: how could we be doing our jobs better? What new tools are out there to help us? It’s about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and not getting complacent.

Jane Frost, chief executive, MRS

In reality most of the key skills that make researchers stand out never change. Flexibility and business awareness go a long way, as well as creativity and the knack for telling stories with data. But now, with the technology we rely on quickly evolving, we’re also looking for that person who can marry human creativity and insight with proficiency in tech and an even greater handling of data.

Crawford Hollingworth, global founder, The Behavioural Architects

When our expertise is needed more than ever to help clients navigate this new era, we need to be very clear where and how we add value; perhaps the support we offer can be more streamlined and cheaper, and in a post truth world where dis- and mis-information expand at an exponential rate, we will undoubtedly need to define our data gatekeeper role more clearly. The keynote session at the 2025 MRS Annual Conference will put this agenda centre stage.

Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director, GfK

Explaining succinctly and clearly the benefits of quality data – and why it costs more. When we talk to clients, we need to be able to cut across all levels of their businesses – from the research team to marketing, to product teams, sales and finance. Otherwise, there is a risk that research will be devalued and marginalised by technology and cost-cutting.

Nick Baker, global chief research officer, Savanta

Commercial nous and curiosity are constant priorities, but as AI emerges, synthetic personas or synthetic data discussions begin to exponentially increase, the irony is that old-school (for some, although, for me, just totally foundational) sampling knowledge, understanding and capabilities become even more crucial. You can’t build robust, reliable houses on sand… but there’s a lot of sand-based models already out there.

William Ullstein, UK chief executive, YouGov

AI presents immense opportunities for the market research industry, but its use will need to be carefully considered and tested to ensure it is accurate. Because understanding the methodology and approach used by AI tools and validating the inputs is vital to ensuring the data is not misinterpreted and is free from bias, the need for skilled data scientists that can supervise the use of the new technology will increase.

We hope you enjoyed this article.
Research Live is published by MRS.

The Market Research Society (MRS) exists to promote and protect the research sector, showcasing how research delivers impact for businesses and government.

Members of MRS enjoy many benefits including tailoured policy guidance, discounts on training and conferences, and access to member-only content.

For example, there's an archive of winning case studies from over a decade of MRS Awards.

Find out more about the benefits of joining MRS here.

0 Comments

Display name

Email

Join the discussion

Newsletter
Stay connected with the latest insights and trends...
Sign Up
Latest From MRS

Our latest training courses

Our new 2025 training programme is now launched as part of the development offered within the MRS Global Insight Academy

See all training

Specialist conferences

Our one-day conferences cover topics including CX and UX, Semiotics, B2B, Finance, AI and Leaders' Forums.

See all conferences

MRS reports on AI

MRS has published a three-part series on how generative AI is impacting the research sector, including synthetic respondents and challenges to adoption.

See the reports

Progress faster...
with MRS 
membership

Mentoring

CPD/recognition

Webinars

Codeline

Discounts