Today, the Tony Cowling Foundation Chair of the Board of Directors, Dr Christopher Goard, shares his thought-provoking perspectives and insight on the future of research and innovation.
In the market insights world, we are used to working with what we consider to be large datasets. I have an interest in astronomy and a recent article in Astronomy Now, by Keith Cooper, August 2025, explaining the new Vera Rubin telescope, took me aback.
The telescope itself is huge; the mirror is 8.4 metres across so not surprising, perhaps, that it took $800m and ten years to build? What may be more surprising, is that a further $1.1 billion was spent on data storage, pipeline and processing capacity.
Why is so much data management required? It’s because the telescope collects 2 terabytes of data every night. To give some context, my laptop has 8 gigabytes of memory so I would need approximately 2,500 laptops to store the data every night, or 912,500 laptops a year – without resorting to the cloud. The scale is clearly colossal.
Astronomers are arguing that we will no longer manage astronomy simply by traditional telescope observations, but, by managing and interrogating big data. What does this have to do with the market insights industry? Possibly that the knowledge and skills of managing really large datasets may seem challenging, but, given the scale astronomers are working with, there is clearly potential to utilise even our largest datasets and improve our insights and understanding – provided we have the right skill sets and storage capacity to do so.
Does anyone know the largest current market research database?
Join Us In October
Please join us at the upcoming Tony Cowling Foundation Annual Event on 16 October 2025 at RSA House, London; an unmissable opportunity to be part of the dialogue shaping our industry’s future, with this year’s theme focused on Truth and Trust.
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Do you have a big data story to share? We’d love to hear it, so please share it with us so we can feature it in a future Insights from the Chair article.
