Questions of Taste: How Insights Shape What the World Eats and Drinks with Basak Oker, Marketing & CSI Director at Givaudan

When intelligence is available to everyone, what actually sets you apart? Increasingly, it's not who can find the answer — it's who can stand behind it.In this mid-year pulse check, Thor Olof Philogène, Founder & CEO of Stravito, rejoins Ross to look back at a fast-moving H1 and discuss what it signals for the months ahead. Fresh off Cannes and VivaTech, they trace a shift the whole industry is feeling: the hard part is no longer finding information, it's trusting it enough to act. And when the decision is high-stakes, that trust comes from one thing — being able to see how the AI reached its answer, not just what it concluded. As AI takes over the repeatable work, the differentiator becomes human judgment you can actually trace.We also cover:Why success is shifting from getting a seat at the table to getting the knowledge your team holds into the hands of everyone making decisionsHow to make uncertainty explicit rather than papering over it, so you can make reasonable calls without waiting for perfect clarityWhy a confident-sounding answer built on thin evidence is worse than no answer at all — and what separates black box AI from Glass Box AI when the stakes are highJoin The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Your insights team has been delivering exactly what the business asked for — faster, cheaper, more efficiently. And that’s precisely what’s putting it at risk. In this episode, we're joined by Nick Rich, co-founder of Growth Constructors and Fellow of the MRS, who held senior insight roles at Carlsberg, IHG, and Nokia before building a firm with one explicit mission: make insights irreplaceable. Nick makes the case that the pathway to extinction and the pathway to strategic influence start from the same place. The only difference is whether insights leaders stop at observation or push through to growth construction.We also cover:Why your company is almost certainly operating on an implicit, untested growth theory — and how exposing it is one of the highest-value things an insights team can doThe three specific upstream behaviors Nick argues any insights professional can start Monday morning, no budget or board approval requiredWhat five acts of courage and three humilities actually look like in practice, and why walking away from the wrong work might be the boldest move an insights leader can make.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Why doesn’t more data guarantee better decisions? How can you speed up decision-making without sacrificing rigor? And what practices are setting high-performing retail organizations apart? In this episode, Ross is joined by Michelle Evans, Global Lead of Retail Insights at Euromonitor International, Forbes contributor, and one of Rethink Retail's top global experts for six consecutive years. They discuss how retailers can navigate economic volatility, technological disruption, and shifting consumer behaviour—and how insight leaders can create clarity when certainty isn't available.We also cover:How leading retailers identify the signals that matter and make decisions with confidence in uncertain conditions.What Walmart's approach to AI experimentation reveals about testing, learning, and knowing when to pivot.How retailers like Zara, H&M, Mango, and Abercrombie are shortening feedback loops, acting on directional signals, and redefining what rigor looks like in uncertain markets.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Why doesn’t more data guarantee better decisions? How can you speed up decision-making without sacrificing rigor? And what practices are setting high-performing retail organizations apart? In this episode, Ross is joined by Michelle Evans, Global Lead of Retail Insights at Euromonitor International, Forbes contributor, and one of Rethink Retail's top global experts for six consecutive years. They discuss how retailers can navigate economic volatility, technological disruption, and shifting consumer behaviour—and how insight leaders can create clarity when certainty isn't available.We also cover:How leading retailers identify the signals that matter and make decisions with confidence in uncertain conditions.What Walmart's approach to AI experimentation reveals about testing, learning, and knowing when to pivot.How retailers like Zara, H&M, Mango, and Abercrombie are shortening feedback loops, acting on directional signals, and redefining what rigor looks like in uncertain markets.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Someone decided that your coffee tastes the way it does…and it wasn't an accident. Behind every flavor that hits a shelf is a web of consumer research, cultural context and calculated risk that has to drive decisions faster than ever.In this episode, we're joined by Basak Oker, Marketing & CSI Director, Europe at Givaudan Taste & Wellbeing, who has spent 18 years at the intersection of flavor science, consumer behavior and brand innovation. Basak makes a compelling case that the insights function isn't there to validate decisions — it's there to remove randomness from innovation entirely. She breaks down how flavor trends move through the system, from Michelin-starred bar treks to mainstream shelves, and why that cycle has compressed from five years to six months.We also cover:Why a strawberry flavor that signals joy in one market signals medicine in another + what brands must do before assuming anything travels globallyHow faster access to existing research shifts insights teams from reporting functions to genuine growth enablers What GLP-1 medications, Gen Alpha purchasing power, and "fantasy flavors" mean for the next wave of food and beverage innovationJoin The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Most companies say they’re market-led — so why do decisions still feel slow, reactive, or overly cautious?In this episode of the Insighter's Club Podcast, Ross is joined by Tracy Berry, Founder of Berry Insights, Vice President of the Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows and former Senior Intelligence Analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, to explore what truly turns insight into action.Drawing on experience spanning national security, SaaS, and enterprise organizations, Tracy shares why competitive intelligence only creates advantage when it’s designed for decision-making — not just monitoring.You’ll hear:Why “being market-led” is often misunderstoodThe difference between data, signals, and real intelligenceHow the what / so what / now what framework drives actionWhat corporate insight teams can learn from defense-grade intelligence tradecraftHow to build trust, narrative, and decision confidence with leadersA practical and thought-provoking listen for insight leaders, competitive intelligence teams, and anyone focused on turning insight into impact.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Your biggest AI risk in 2026 isn’t model collapse. It’s insight teams still acting like report factories in a market that now runs on intelligence infrastructure.In this episode, Ross sits down with Stravito Founder & CEO Thor Olof Philogène to map where the insight function really stands after a year of AI acceleration, failed pilots, and rising expectations. They unpack why AI is no longer “the strategy” but the infrastructure enabling it and why the true competitive edge now lives in the 3 U’s of data: uniqueness, usability, and utilization.Together, they explore how leading organizations are shifting from static knowledge repositories to living intelligence systems, turning years of “research waste” into reusable capital that compounds over time. They dig into the uncomfortable truth about data quality in a democratized world, the widening gap between access and literacy, and why commercial acumen and storytelling have become non-negotiable power skills for insight leaders who want a real say in growth.If you’re ready to operate in the market as it is (not as you remember it), this conversation is your early field guide to 2026.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Insight teams are facing a dangerous illusion: believing technology alone will elevate their influence while culture quietly erodes it. This is the unfiltered, hard-hitting conversation every insights leader needs to hear right now.In Part 2 of this special live episode of The Insighter's Club Podcast, recorded at the Stravito Insights Summit 2025 in Paris, three powerhouse leaders dig into one of the most misunderstood and most business-critical  drivers of insight transformation: building a knowledge culture that outperforms any software, platform, or AI tool on the market.Featuring Seema Hope (VP of Insight, The Economist), Leo Moore (Senior Director, Category Strategic Insights & Analytics, Kellanova), and Christopher Rastin (Head of Global Customer Research, E.ON), this conversation exposes what teams get wrong when rolling out knowledge hubs,  the art of “democratization” and where it can backfire, and the emerging industry  fault line around synthetic data.Together, they unpack the real operating levers that make or break insight excellence in the age of AI: cultural discipline, curation, human judgment, and the courage to challenge hype cycles.In this conversation, we tackle:The hidden cultural blockers that undermine self-service platforms and knowledge hubs.Why dynamic curation (not static libraries) is the new bar for insight democratization.Where GenAI genuinely accelerates workflows and where it’s dangerously unreliable.Why synthetic data could become the industry’s biggest ethical discussion.If you’re committed to future-proofing your insight function, this episode isn’t optional, it’s the tried and tested roadmap.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Insight teams are at a crossroads: stay safe and stay small or claim a seat at the growth table. This is the operating playbook to move from “report factory” to strategic co-pilot.In this special live episode of The Insighter's Club Podcast, recorded at Stravito Insights Summit 2025 in Paris, three trailblazing leaders unpack what it really takes to dismantle silos and hard-wire insights into decision-making: Seema Hope (VP of Insight, The Economist), Leo Moore (Senior Director, Category Strategic Insights & Analytics, Europe at Kellanova) and Christopher Rastin (Head of Global Customer Research, E.ON). Together, they reveal tried and tested decisive levers: KPI alignment, process design, internal PR, and finance fluency, that turn insights from a cost center into a value engine.In this conversation, we tackle:Why silos persist (competing KPIs, turf, trust) and a practical path to break them permanently.Why “delivering data” isn’t enough and how to lead with a conclusion, then prove it fast.The secret to embedding insights early (not post-hoc) without losing ownership or control.How to democratize insights so they scale, without diluting standards or rigor.The underrated power move: becoming best friends with finance to show real ROI.If you’re passionate about multiplying your impact as an insights leader, this episode is a call to action to upgrade your operating system, not just your methods.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.

Your best insight isn’t getting ignored because it’s wrong; most likely, it’s invisible. If your work keeps dying in inboxes, the problem isn’t the data; it’s the delivery.In this episode, we sit down with Candice Walton from Lloyd’s Banking Group to unpack a non-’buzz’, career-defining topic for senior insights leaders: how to engineer impact. Candice breaks down how her team moved from “answer factory” to insight as a reusable asset, built an Insight Newsroom to craft headlines and actions, and used storytelling, format experimentation (newsletters, webinars, video, infographics) and engagement analytics to make insights spread fast.We also cover:Building a measurable engagement funnel for insight (readership, dwell, comments, actions).Why “describe it to a 10 year old” beats jargon for executive attention.Operating a drop-in Insight Newsroom to cut noise and sharpen story.Protecting proactive time so you can respond faster when news or regulation hits.Join The Insighter’s Club and get exclusive industry insights, expert analysis, and cutting-edge trends delivered straight to your inbox.