Wednesday 18 November 2026
Innovation Day
Three global sessions. New ideas, new methods and new possibilities for insights.
Innovation Day sits at the heart of the Festival of NewMR — a day dedicated to exploring what is changing in research and insights, what is becoming possible, and what leading practitioners are doing differently.
Across three sessions spanning APAC, Europe/India and the Atlantic, we will bring together researchers, innovators and industry leaders to share practical examples, emerging approaches and ideas that could shape what comes next.
The programme is still growing, with more speakers and presentations to be announced.
Date
Wednesday 18 November 2026
Sessions
Three global broadcasts
Format & price
Live online and free
Innovation Day
Three sessions for our global community
Join the session that works best for your region — or join us more than once as the programme moves around the world.
Programme
Ideas and innovation across three sessions
Each session will bring together speakers sharing practical examples, emerging approaches and new possibilities for research and insights.
Session 1
APAC
10:00 am Sydney
Featured presentation
Rethinking Insights for an AI-First World
Ray Poynter
Co-founder, NewMR
AI is changing much more than the tools researchers use. It has the potential to reshape how organisations generate insight, the skills they need and even where the insights function sits. This session explores what happens as synthetic data, conversational analysis and increasingly end-to-end AI-enabled research become part of everyday practice. What will researchers still do themselves? Which new capabilities will matter? How will hiring and team structures change? And as the boundaries between research, data, technology and decision-making shift, what might the insights function of the future look like?
Session 2
Europe / India
10:00 am London
Featured presentation
Simulating Tomorrow for Coca-Cola’s Advanced Hydration Portfolio
Annelies Verhaeghe
Chief Innovation Officer, Human8
Coca-Cola’s global innovation programme for its Advanced Hydration portfolio (2027–2030) combined human insight, cultural foresight, creative methods and AI across six markets to build an innovation playbook with three strategic platforms, six big-bet concepts and a clear portfolio architecture.
To keep development consumer-centric, the team created Twin Communities — secure digital representations for ongoing engagement — and later Future Twin Communities to test how ideas evolve in future market conditions. Synthetic data did not replace research, but enabled capabilities that were previously impossible, strengthening both foresight and decision-making.
Session 3
Atlantic
3:00 pm London
Featured presentation
Digital Twins: From Theory to Practice
Jon Puleston & David Priestley
Ipsos
The story of Ipsos’s journey to test the potential of digital twins in real-world research. We will explore how our collaboration with researchers at Stanford University, combined with extensive experimentation across a range of research tasks, has helped us understand where digital twins perform well, where their limitations lie, and what is required to use them reliably and responsibly.
More speakers to be announced
Innovation Day will feature additional presentations across all three sessions. We’ll be adding more speakers, topics and session details as the programme develops.
Be part of Innovation Day
Presentation opportunities are available
We are reserving a limited number of presentation opportunities for organisations with something genuinely innovative to share with the global research and insights community.
Innovation Day is designed for practical case studies, emerging approaches, new tools, new methodologies and new ways of thinking about insight.
If your organisation has work that deserves a place in the programme, we would love to hear from you.
Innovation Day is part of the Festival of NewMR
Join researchers, insight professionals, clients, innovators and future-focused thinkers from around the world for five days of ideas, learning and conversations about the future of insights and research.
