Datacy and Enlightn Win at the IIEX West 2026 Insight Innovation Competition

Editor's Note: I was honored to facilitate Greenbook's 2026 Insight Innovation Competition at IIEX West in San Francisco on October 27–28, 2026; I am really proud of all five finalists who took the stage. Yes, two of them came away with awards, and their stories are the focus here. But what connects all five is worth naming too, and I'll come back to it at the end.

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Beginning in 2013, when Zappi took the crown at the first Insight Innovation Competition, Greenbook has put rising startups directly in front of the practitioners they serve. Since then, the competition has welcomed an impressive roster of innovators, including the likes of Discuss.io, EyeSee, Highlight, Listen Labs, Neurons, Remesh, and Voxpopme. Not all of the finalists have gone on to win, but the companies that hit the IIEX stage have often been early signals of where the industry is headed.

This year, we revised our model, deciding to host the competition at three of our global IIEX events (IIEX NA, IIEX EU, and IIEX WEST), and giving out three awards, each reflecting a different view of what makes an innovation promising. Each award comes with unique benefits, from a cash prize, executive mentorship, and IIEX event speaking spots, to content marketing opportunities, directory listings, and IIEX event passes. And, each was awarded by a different group: a panel of external judges, the on-site event audience, and Greenbook's leadership team.

At IIEX WEST, Datacy won the Experts' Choice Award, chosen by the judging panel, and the Audience Favorite Award, voted on by IIEX WEST attendees. Enlightn won the Industry Impact Award, selected by Greenbook's leadership team.

The two companies are working on very different problems. What they share is a willingness to question parts of research that most of us have stopped questioning: how we reconstruct a consumer's path to purchase, and how we find the people we study.

Datacy Wins Two Awards by Showing How Consumers Actually Decide

A consumer might find a product on social media, compare options in search, see a creator's recommendation, ask an AI assistant, and buy on a retail site. Each step shapes the decision. Most measurement captures those steps separately, and much of what we know about the journey as a whole still comes from what people remember and report afterward.

Datacy's Digital Consumer Journey Tracking uses permissioned digital journey data to follow how consumers move from discovery to purchase across search, social, retail, creator content, and AI platforms. The aim is to identify which channels, messages, and moments actually influenced a decision.

"Traditional research often captures what consumers remember or say matters, but misses how decisions actually take shape across search, social, AI and retail. Connecting observed behavior across that journey helps brands see where demand is created, what builds confidence and where consumers drop off, so they can make better decisions about where to invest, what to say and how to move consumers forward."

~ Katy Yates, Head of GTM, Datacy

Sarah Snudden, a competition judge who has spent her career as a research practitioner, pointed to how the data is collected:

"It's behavioral, real-world data, collected in a way that respects the people who share it. Too often marketing teams are stuck working off assumptions on what's driving results… Datacy has been really thoughtful about how they protect privacy and incentivize participation."

~ Sarah Snudden, Founder & Principal, Beeline Collaborations, and Insight Innovation Competition Judge

The Experts' Choice Award is the competition's top honor. Judges weigh innovation, business model, market potential, and scalability. Datacy receives a $10,000 cash prize, executive mentorship, and a speaking spot at IIEX West next year. Winning the Audience Favorite Award as well means Datacy connected with both the judges and the practitioners in the room. That award also earns Datacy a featured spot in a future Startup Spotlight or Insights Tech Showcase.

Rolfe Swinton, another of the external judges, explained what set Datacy apart:

"Datacy stood out because it shows what consumers actually do, not just what they say, tracking real shopping journeys for millions of consented people."

~ Rolfe Swinton, Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Insight Innovation Ventures, and Insight Innovation Competition Judge

Enlightn Rethinks Recruitment by Matching Participants Before the Screener

Most recruitment still works the same way. Large numbers of prospective respondents go into a screener, and most of them get disqualified. Quality is checked after the fact, in screening and data cleaning.

Enlightn, founded by Adrien Vermeirsch, reverses that order. It uses richer participant profiles and AI-assisted matching to turn a study's targeting requirements into matched participants, then activates them through permissioned suppliers only when the match is strong. Its process also includes an activation log that documents how participants were sourced and what happened, so buyers can see how their respondents were recruited.

"Today, most of our industry checks quality after the click: we route anonymous traffic into screeners and clean the data at the end. That keeps fraud profitable and burns the honest participants we actually want. Rethinking recruitment means knowing who someone is before inviting them, and being able to show it. My hope is that Enlightn makes quality something buyers can verify and suppliers get paid for, instead of a cost everyone tries to avoid."

~ Adrien Vermeirsch, Founder, Enlightn

Greenbook Chose Enlightn for Tackling Data Quality at the Source

The industry has talked about data quality for years. What we hadn't seen was real innovation in recruitment, where so many quality problems start. Enlightn goes to the heart of it. Instead of sending traffic into screeners and filtering afterward, it matches first, activates only high-confidence participants, and documents every step in a log a buyer can actually show.

That closes a trust gap on both sides of the market. Suppliers struggle to get paid fairly for genuine participants, and high screen-out rates drive those participants away. Buyers often can't see where respondents come from or tie what they pay per interview to the quality they get, which makes feasibility unpredictable and quality hard to justify internally. Enlightn gives suppliers buyer-ready proof of quality and gives buyers provenance and an audit trail they can defend. Participants get fewer "you don't qualify" dead ends. And for qual at scale, which only works if you reach engaged people, that difference matters even more.

The early evidence is encouraging. In a pilot described in its competition submission, Enlightn reported a 14% disqualification rate, compared with 34% for other supplier traffic used as a benchmark. These are early results from a company still scaling, and they are worth watching.

A fix at the foundation that helps buyers, suppliers, and participants at once is exactly the kind of impact the award is meant to recognize.

As part of the award, Enlightn will appear as a guest on a Greenbook podcast and publish a sponsored article on Greenbook.org.

Snudden also singled out Enlightn:

"There have been so many excellent conference presentations about 'the need for change,' but Adrien, as someone relatively fresh in the insights world, looked the elephant in the eye, rolled up his sleeves, and created something truly promising."

~ Sarah Snudden, Insight Innovation Competition Judge

Three More Finalists Take On Pricing, Shelf Testing, and Storytelling

Three more companies made the final five:

• TestCart AI, presented by Theodoros Sofianos: uses AI to build realistic shelf sets so teams can iterate quickly on packaging and planograms, then take the strongest options into testing with real respondents.
• EXPLNERS, presented by Judith Rose: uses short-form explainer videos, animation, data visualization, and storytelling to help insights teams communicate findings to business stakeholders.
• Priceagent, presented by Robert Tinterov: its Predictive Demand Engine models consumer willingness to pay, aiming to deliver pricing guidance in hours rather than weeks.

What Connects All Five? Each Fixes a Problem Practitioners Know Well

Looking back across all five pitches with my researcher hat on, what strikes me is how familiar the problems were. Tedious shelf sets. Pricing studies that take weeks to field. Findings that get boiled down until they lose their impact. Respondents we can't fully trust. Marketing decisions built on assumptions. Every practitioner in that room has lived with at least one of them.

In conversation with Sarah Snudden after the competition, I realized we'd both seen the same thing: the finalists weren't chasing a trend. They picked a part of the job that's been broken for a long time and tried to fix it.

Rolfe Swinton saw a broader shift across the field:

"Across all five finalists, from Enlightn's recruitment fix validating actual people, to Priceagent predicting what people will pay, the common thread was an industry moving from asking questions to observing behavior, and from delivering reports to driving decisions."

~ Rolfe Swinton, Insight Innovation Competition Judge

Congratulations to Datacy and Enlightn, and to TestCart AI, EXPLNERS, and Priceagent. We're proud of all five of our 2026 IIEX West finalists.