EVENTS

LUX FORUM CHICAGO
The Future of Insight and Innovation: AI and Consumer-Centric Research​

Location: Fairmont Chicago – Millennium Park, 200 N Columbus Dr, Chicago, IL 60601

Date: Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

Time: 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM CDT

 

Breakfast will be provided.

 

For your convenience, a block of rooms has been reserved at Fairmont Chicago – Millennium Park. To make your reservation and receive a discounted rate, please use this booking link. This link will expire on Monday, April 19th.

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LUX FORUM CHICAGO
The Future of Insight and Innovation: AI and Consumer-Centric Research​

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About the Event

The rapid evolution of AI marks a pivotal cultural transformation, reshaping the future of work and redefining the acquisition of human insights.​ 

While there’s plenty of buzz about AI, in terms of both its limitations and potential, this half-day Lux Forum will cut through the hype to demonstrate how insights, innovation, and R&D professionals can adopt AI-enabled tools that assist us in conducting faster, richer, and more robust human-centric research.​ 

During this event, Lux will highlight how innovation and insights leaders are using AI-enabled tools to conduct transformational ethnographic research that puts consumers at the forefront of their approach across a range of industries and categories, including CPG, services, retail, and restaurants. We’ll hear from insights leaders revolutionizing the field not just by using AI to better access and understand consumers’ motivations, needs, and behaviors but also by employing it to translate insights into actionable concepts for development and ideation.​ 

Attendees of the Lux Chicago Forum will:​ 

  • Learn how AI can serve as a tool designed to enrich, not replace, the human-centered approach to research, acting as a complement that enhances rather than undermines human-centric exploration.​ 
  • Discover how AI can be utilized as an automation tool to deepen and broaden the scope of ethnographic research.​ 
  • Discuss relevant case studies where innovation and insights leaders have successfully integrated AI-enabled tools into their research and innovation processes to better understand consumer motivations, needs, and preferences; explore how these leaders are using AI for concept development, turning insights into actionable strategies for innovation and ideation. 

Event Details

Breakfast will be provided.

 

For your convenience, a block of rooms has been reserved at Fairmont Chicago – Millennium Park. To make your reservation and receive a discounted rate, please use this booking link. This link will expire on Monday, April 19th.

Days until the Lux Forum Chicago!
Time (CDT) Description Presenter(s)
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Networking Breakfast
9:00 AM – 9:40 AM

The Future of Agile Research: Using AI-Enabled Tools for Improved Research 

In a landscape where “agile research” has become a buzzword, there's a gap between rhetoric and reality. This session delves into the true essence of agility in research and demonstrates how AI, in synergy with anthropology, can catalyze a genuinely iterative and responsive research process.

Agility is about the absence of a rigid plan and the presence of iterative exploration. While AI alone may not embody agility, it finds its stride when paired with the fluidity of anthropological methods. Anthropology doesn't merely seek to answer questions; it unveils how questions are framed and understood within the cultural fabric of society. It exposes the underlying patterns, the “breadcrumbs,” which lead researchers on an exploratory journey through the human experience.

In this session, we'll illustrate how AI amplifies this process, transforming insights into actionable strategies.

Ujwal Arkalgud
Executive Vice President at Lux Research

Miranda Helmer
Vice President, Innovation Discovery at The Clorox Company

9:40 AM – 10:10 AM

The Safety Gap: Leaping from Human-Centric Insight to Technological Solution

The CPG industry is beset by the rapidly increasing rate of policy development and shifting consumer expectations and understanding of product safety. Reports outlining the health effects of microplastics, pesticides, and other environmental contaminants abound, and policies that challenge current business units have and will continue to be applied in response, as in the case of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. But these emerging regulatory standards of safety often diverge from the expectations of consumers. While building emerging standards into your innovation roadmap is nonnegotiable, if technological innovation addresses only the safety concerns of policymakers without meeting the consumer meaning of “safety,” then organizations risk failing to make consumers feel safe.


In this session, we’ll explore the value of connecting anthropological insights and technology assessments to uncover unexpected consumer safety challenges for innovation roadmaps spanning the value chain — from upstream supply chain risks to alternative ingredients to downstream end of life. You’ll leave this session with a unique perspective on how to advance your innovation roadmaps by selecting the technologies and strategies that balance unavoidable regulatory standards and shifting consumer expectations.

Derek Gingrich
Research Director, Predictive Anthropology at Lux Research

Josh Haslun, Ph.D.
Research Director, Agrifood and Health at Lux Research

10:10 AM – 10:40 AM
Networking Break
10:40 AM – 11:20 AM

Building Empathy Through AI: An Iterative Process in Agile Innovation 

Implementing an agile process in a big corporation requires change in many different areas of the business: from cultural shifts to technological upskilling and re-imagining the way we understand consumers.

In this presentation, we will discuss the game-changing potential of ethnographic AI and the role it plays to build deep human empathy, keep the consumer at the heart of innovation, and build meaningful partnerships that allow us to iterate and dig deeper into the human truths at corporations like Mars.

Cheryl Auger
Senior Director of Research, Predictive Anthropology at Lux Research

Ana Plasencia
Innovation Explorer Director at Mars Wrigley

11:20 AM – 11:50 AM

Pitch Contest: Harnessing AI to Craft Winning Product Concepts

The challenge? To utilize MotivAI's capabilities to identify key insights from a given brief and then, within your breakout group, employ our AI research assistant to conceptualize five innovative product concepts. These concepts should not only address the business problem at hand but also resonate with the identified human insights, ensuring relevance and impact. The session will end with a concept showcase and a winning team will be picked by our judges.

Research Coaches:

Cheryl Auger
Senior Director of Research, Predictive Anthropology at Lux Research

Derek Gingrich
Research Director, Predictive Anthropology at Lux Research

Josh Haslun, Ph.D.
Research Director, Agrifood and Health at Lux Research

Steve Steck
Associate Director of Research & Client Strategy at Lux Research

Judge(s):

TBA
TBA

11:50 AM – 12:00 PM

Closing Remarks

Marisa Kopec
CEO at Lux Research

Expert Speakers

Associate Director of Research & Client Strategy

Director of Anthropology

Vice President of Innovation Discovery at The Clorox Company

Senior Director of Research

EVP & Group Director, Anthropology

Research Director

About the Lux Forums

The Lux Forums are a premier opportunity for innovation decision-makers to learn more about the commercially viable science and technology needed to enable sustainable innovation roadmaps. This event series brings together Lux Research’s global analysts with executives and industry thought leaders to learn from each other and tackle the most critical issues facing their industry today. 

At the Lux Forum, subject matter experts will provide meaningful insights relevant to oil and gas, utilities, industrials, chemicals, and consumer products innovation leaders. In this exclusive setting, attendees will make connections with executive-level industry counterparts through networking sessions and will take in cutting-edge research from the leading provider of sustainable innovation research and advisory services, Lux Research. These forums will deliver the thinking you need to accelerate the pace of innovation at your company.

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