March 4th, 2015, Antonia Stockwell
YouGov has partnered with cross-disciplinary foresight programme Future Agenda 2.0 to help build a stronger, richer and deeper perspective on the future of data over the next 10 years.
The Future Agenda is the world’s largest open foresight programme that brings experts together from around the world to debate and explore emerging issues that will shape our future. Throughout 2015, 100 workshops will be held to access the views on the next decade to stimulate innovation for a better informed world.
On Thursday 26 February in Dubai, YouGov sponsored the first of five worldwide innovation workshops to explore ‘The Future of Data’, where experts from leading businesses including Thomson Reuters, DP World, Master Card, Gems Education, Majid Al Futtaim, BT, the DMCC and EMIR debated the challenges and opportunities associated with the future of data.
The discussions built upon an initial perspective written by YouGov’s Co-founder and CEO Stephan Shakespeare, which divulged his views on how the future of data will unfold by 2025. The perspective featured topics including cyber warriors, understanding the risks of a data-fuelled world, public trust, exploiting data knowledge to positive effect, understanding data ownership and developing ethical and legal apparatus, the talent gap and data access.
Whilst sharing and challenging the initial perspective, the headline themes taking center stage, which continued over the course of five hours, were data and a new reality, balanced regulation, data as a valuable asset, the rise of the left behind and the need to protect and preserve human interaction.
Kailash Nagdev, Managing Director of YouGov said, "Big data is integral to YouGov's strategy to provide deeper and more actionable insights to brands and organisations. Our partnership with the Future Agenda programme gives us a platform to bring together the views of clients, agencies and experts to forecast 5-10 years into the future. Our innovation workshops in Dubai and around the globe will help us co create products that deliver tangible big data benefits and differentiate noise from signal."
Additional heavily debated subjects included the learning gap, the rise of the machines, simplification and the human interface, the merger of large corporates, and online versus offline personas lead by 21 key decision makers from agency, consultancy and in-house experts in financial services, communications, content, government, consumer, telecommunications and education.
Present at the first workshop was Martin Hughes, COO of EMIR, who commented, "The event brought together a wide range of senior personnel from a breadth of industries and sectors, they brought diverse opinions and approaches and freely exchanged ideas and concepts. We learned a great deal about the motivators for data capture, analysis and insight-generation and are glad we contributed to a fresh view of big data in the region and globally. Embracing new found appreciation for the velocity and veracity of data, we look forward to bringing enhanced business intelligence to our network members and partners."
Additional workshops will be hosted by YouGov in Cologne, London, New York and Singapore later in 2015 where yet more leading experts from global heavyweights will come together to shed their perspective on the future of data as they see it over the next 10 years.
The full insights from all 100 Future Agenda workshops will be shared and available publically via a number of channels at the end of the year.