Flavia Stoian

Head of Research & Insights

Candescent

Flavia Stoian, PhD, is a Research and Insights leader based in San Francisco who specializes in building modern research functions from the ground up - the operating model, AI strategy, and team behind them. Known for bringing quantitative rigor into qualitative, human-centered work, a blend rooted in a doctorate in finance and a master's in Human Factors, Flavia will use her IIEX West talk to make the case that an AI-native insights function isn't built from better tools but from the infrastructure underneath them: the operating model, the orchestration layer, and the team rituals that let a small team move fast without sacrificing methodological rigor, and compound the team's impact with every engagement.

Sessions

Oct 28

9:10 AM - 9:30 AM PDT

Blue Stage

AI-Native Research Workflows

Research Ops & Democratization

Future of Work

The Build: Inside an AI-Native Insights Function

A field report on building an AI-native research function from scratch: hiring curious, pragmatic minds, an operating model for scale and democratization, an AI-ready repository, audits and guardrails optimizing researcher attention. It reinvents the function and its leadership and it unlocks long priced-out methods, richer human insight, positioning researchers irrevocably as thought partners.

Key Takeaways:

1. AI-native is structural: who you hire, your operations, and a rethought role for research

2. An AI-ready repository turns your archive into a product that answers questions in minutes.

3. The payoff: long priced-out methods come back, and researchers become thought partners in product.

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