Every so often, a new term captures the imagination of the tech world. “Agent” is one such word. From boardrooms to blogs, organisations are talking about how agents will transform work. Industry surveys suggest this is more than hype. KPMG’s Q2 2025 AI Quarterly Pulse Survey reports that agents are moving beyond experiments: a third of organisations already use AI agents in production[1] and nearly nine in ten leaders expect agents to necessitate fundamental organisational change[1]. Gartner goes further, predicting that by 2028, one-third of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI (up from less than 1% in 2024) and at least 15% of business decisions will be made autonomously via agents[2]. Deloitte anticipates that 25% of companies using generative AI will launch agentic pilots in 2025, rising to 50% by 2027[3]. When market leaders and consultancies align on the direction of travel, it is worth paying attention.

This post is not a discussion of tech; it is a comment on strategy. Your organisation’s decision about the sort of AI companies it will depend on could have enormous consequences. This is the story of a company that, like Icarus, flew high but fell to earth, and the many customers whose AI plans were disrupted.

Microsoft have just published a study that predicts the 40 jobs most likely to be disrupted by AI – and Market Research Analysts and Data Scientists are both on their list (see more at Fortune). The Microsoft study is based on analysing 200,000 conversations with Bing. Microsoft examined the questions AI was asked and the instances where it was successful. 

Agents are one of the key AI developments that is re-shaping the way we conduct business and processes.  An agent is a software tool capable of tackling a task without user supervision. In this post, I will illustrate agents with an example that takes data (for example, from a quantitative survey).

In today’s Tip, I am going to show you how you can upload a data file to Claude and instantly create an interactive dashboard.

NewMR recently had the pleasure of hosting Liubov Ruchinskaya, Head of Strategy Analytics and Consumer Planning at Diageo Northern Europe, for a deep dive into the evolving world of insights. With over 22 years in the industry, including extensive experience on both the agency and client sides, Liubov shared invaluable perspectives on the challenges and opportunities shaping our industry. This interview is a must-listen for anyone in the insights, analytics, or marketing industries.

After more than 40 years in the research and insights world, I thought I had fine-tuned my approach to finding the story in the data. Indeed, I have been teaching courses on story finding for over 20 years. However, the rise of Generative AI has caused me to redesign my methods and to adopt an AI-enhanced Socratic Method.