Insight

2025: The year of transforming data into intelligence

When I wrote this post in 2024, our focus for the year just gone was about turning data in action. Whilst that’s still important, the velocity of change in the world, through AI, automation and new technology meant that we had to move with the times. At the start of this year, adapting to the change, we pivoted our proposition to data intelligence, beautifully designed. A reflection of what we ultimately deliver (intelligence) and how we deliver it (beautifully designed).

This is part wrap-up and part reflection of a year where the speed of change turned to hyperdrive, where we were able to continue and build partnerships and forge new partnerships with forward thinking organisations.

From insight to intelligence

If 2024 was about transforming data into action, 2025 became the year we started turning data into ongoing intelligence, living systems that don’t just inform decisions, but continuously adapt to answer emerging questions. Granted, we’re not fully there yet but the ambition is clear.

This shift showed up in three key ways:

1. Global complexity, local clarity

Our work with Bupa took us from mapping global healthcare trends to explaining premium impacts at the individual level. With the International Labour Organisation, we tracked social justice progress across nations, making macro-level policy gaps visible and actionable. It’s one thing to visualise the world; it’s another to make that visualisation personally relevant.

2. Tracking what matters most

Climate Policy Initiative’s net-zero finance tracker became a compass for accountability. The question wasn’t just “where is money flowing?” but “is it flowing fast enough, and to the right places?” This is intelligence that holds systems accountable.

3. Evolving with our partners

The most exciting partnerships are the ones that grow. CyberSeek continues mapping the cybersecurity talent crisis. Harvard’s Gen AI Adoption Tracker is now capturing how artificial intelligence is reshaping work in real time. And with Youth Futures Foundation, we’re building something new, a living picture of youth employment that adapts as policy needs shift.

What we learned

One pattern unified everything this year. Trust. It really matters more than ever.

Can you trust what you’re seeing? Who decides what’s trustworthy? What our work with partners is able to achieve, whether it’s visualising AI adoption, making climate intelligence actionable, or explaining economic impact is delivering trust. Which is only ever earned, not given.

Looking ahead

In Exponential Organizations, Salim Ismail describes the Law of Accelerating Returns. If you double a number 30 times, starting from 0.01, you end up with over a billion. At first, the growth feels insignificant. Then suddenly, you’re on the exponential curve.
That’s where we are now. The rate of technological change started slowly decades ago, but we’ve hit the steep part of the curve. Change is happening faster than ever, and it’s only accelerating.

In this world, clarity and trust become more valuable every day. Trust is earned, not given. That’s our commitment for 2026: delivering intelligence you can trust, in service of real progress.