An innovation consultancy is set to revolutionise its consumer insights capabilities by embarking on a collaboration with researchers from the University of Nottingham.
With vast experience in the food, beverage, and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries, Strategic Innovation Ltd provides its clients with innovative solutions to complex challenges, including strategic road mapping, consumer insights, and technology scouting.
The company’s passion for sustainability and ambition to become sector-leaders in AI-assisted consumer insights, has resulted in Strategic Innovation entering into a 26-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Nottingham.
KTPs are a three-way collaboration between a UK-based business or charity, a research organisation, and a qualified graduate known as a KTP Associate who has the capability to lead a strategic business project.
This collaboration sees Strategic Innovation partnered with two centres of excellence at Nottingham University Business School – behavioural analytics and social data science specialists N/Lab, and the Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Leading the project, computer scientist and KTP Associate Dr Weiyao Meng will work alongside the company, bridging the gap between academia and industry. She said: “I’m delighted to be working with Strategic Innovation on such an exciting project. Together, we’re utilising the power of cutting-edge AI and data analytics to advance consumer research, driving impactful change for social good.”
She continued: “I’m truly excited to contribute my skills in Computer Science and AI to such a meaningful endeavour, especially with the supportive network provided by Strategic Innovation and the University of Nottingham.”
The partnership aims to strengthen Strategic Innovation’s consumer insights, scaling up their existing services, by applying machine learning and advanced AI techniques used by the university, to increase the speed, quality and precision of its data capture and analytical processes.
Dr John Harvey, Associate Professor at N/Lab, said: “At a time when misinformation thrives online, gathering reliable, trusted data that can inform optimal decision making has never been more valuable.
“We at N/lab and Nottingham University Business School are excited to collaborate in this KTP with Strategic Innovation, using NLP (Natural Language Processing) to advance consumer research. Helping organisations to both better understand their audiences and promote social good.”
Through the formation of its ‘Think Better World Alliance’ concept, the company intends to identify and harness rich text and human behavioural insights to support the collaborative transformation of food systems towards sustainability. Key to this is democratising data to ensure everyone has access to the latest, relevant, and reliable information.
Paul Frobisher, Strategic Innovation’s Director, said: “I’m so excited to be at the start of a dream that has been incubating for several years. This KTP with the University of Nottingham will help us to develop innovative and scalable approaches to AI-enabled better consumer insight analysis, through which we hope to engage stakeholders from farm to fork – and beyond – to better understand the barriers and enablers to sustainability.”
