After building a global insights company with almost 100 employees in only 7 years and no significant investment round, Olivier Tilleuil, the founder of EyeSee, got featured in the competitive GRIT future list that celebrates individuals propelling consumer insights forward in relevant and unexpected ways.

2019 GRIT insights practice report published the honorees of the GRIT future list for the second year in a row. This year’s nomination featured hundreds of impressive submissions including published researchers, entrepreneurs and awarded multi-disciplinary individuals with outstanding academic backgrounds. To sum it up in the words of the jury: “To be in the GRIT future list, you have to have a clear view of the current state of consumer insights, a picture of how things can be better, and the grit to see it through.”

Olivier Tilleuil received a nomination and subsequently got selected based on his professional growth path, personal integrity, and the passion for excellence as part of the group of next-generation insights leaders. Olivier’s election comes after an impressive record of building a game-changing global insights company in 7 years. The company’s breakthrough in the market research industry was making behavioral insights scalable – fast, cost-effective, and global. Instead of relying mainly on surveys, EyeSee tracks behavior (eye-tracking, emotion tracking…) of consenting respondents via their own device and webcam.

We used this unique opportunity to pick Olivier’s brains regarding the honor, state of the insights industry, and much more.

Q: So, how does it feel to be featured on a list that recognizes leadership and forward-thinking actors in the industry?

Oliver: It feels great! We’ve worked very hard to get to the point where we double in size each year, can claim a global reach, and boast about a client list that includes ½ of the top 30 CPG companies, media and tech giants, and about 40 or so other power brands. To put things in perspective – we’ve only been around for 7 years, and the first 3 of those we spent as a knowledge-hungry startup with less than 20 employees. These were also the years during which we’ve set up the basis for the vast expansion and reach we have today. The decisions that the team and I made back then informed the GRIT future list nomination. Our initial driving force and core values revolve around constant (tech) innovation that enables our clients to employ smarter and more efficient ways of leveraging behavioral insights.

Q: What are some of the challenges and turning points that defined EyeSee’s and your personal growth?

Olivier: Building an insights solution that would revolutionize the industry was our key goal In the beginning – and it remained the same to this day. We were disruptive in the ambition to make behavioral and neuro insights accessible – 3 times faster, 3 times lower-priced, and globally scalable. Based on this vision, we first developed packaging, advertising and e-commerce testing solutions.

Then, the challenge became to convince clients of it, educate them about the newly available options, and build strong relationships. For us, a behavioral framework and scalable remote model of testing via respondents’ devices was a no-brainer in terms of massive added value. But the industry’s go-to for decades was a conscious-based survey, which has low predictive power. Only a few companies could afford costly central location behavioral testing with neuro methods. We were faced with a challenge: what if we make behavioral scalable?

I firmly believe that we are still in the early days of switching to behavioral and that clients currently are only tapping into 5-10% of the potential of subconscious insights. However, to grow EyeSee further, our organization is the key. We have fantastic talent, but how do we create an environment that is both stimulating and automated, that produces predictable quality output, and provides enough freedom to keep on innovating?

Q: You mentioned that your current focus is shifting to organizational development and optimization. What’s the next step on the organizational trajectory to keep the company a success story?

Olivier: A Deloitte study found that 87.7% of employees in the USA they are not working to their full potential. Most organizations are still using organizational structures invented decades ago but face very different challenges.

With a traditional pyramidal organization, people at the top will complain about meeting overload, while people below feel disempowered. The critical question is how to push decision-making further in the hierarchy.

Ideally, you’d create a new social system which is complex. All building blocks need to fit. As Grant Botma (‘the problem isn’t their paycheck’ guy) says: “Freedom creates ownership mentality, affirmation creates confidence, purpose creates impact.” The challenge is to provide all three of these blocks to achieve effectiveness.

Google and Intel already did a great job in reinventing processes and structures with their OKR systems, as explained in detail by John Doerr in Measure what works […]. Some authors even question the need for bosses; others examine the current prevailing control system and focus more on trust. In Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux mentioned the need to change the policy from control to trust: “When you ask employees who claim that their self-image changed, they say that they used to work for the paycheck, while now they feel responsible for their work and they take pride in a job well done.” He asked entrepreneurs who reinvented their organization about the risk involved in letting people decide without a top-down control, especially when money is involved. In their experience, it is less risky than not doing so, because better decisions get made. But, to me, the fascinating thing is that the choice between trust and control is seldom debated on a rational level.

This is what we are seeing in consumer decision making, as well. When a complex decision needs to be made, often gut feeling will prevail over rational reasoning using control systems. The reason why we tend to rely on conscious decision making in these circumstances is that we have a sense of more control and people are afraid of the unknown or uncontrollable. However, more and more researchers and business experts are fighting these urges and employing subconscious methods – the future is behavioral!