Zappi’s Steve Phillips on the ASC award for Best Technology Innovation
The MRS/ASC Best Technology Innovation award is now in its 23rd year, continuing its mission to bring recognition to outstanding innovation in the field of research technology.
Last year Zappi took home the trophy for their Innovation System. According to presiding judge AJ Johnson “The high standard of entries was fantastic to see, and the other finalists – Unilever with Vurvey Labs, Inspirient and Discuss Innovation – are all equally deserving of praise and recognition.”
With the call for entries now open, ASC Director Niall Smith spoke to Steve Phillips – Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at last year’s winner Zappi – to understand why they chose to enter, and what it meant to them to win.
Congratulations on your win last year! What was it that prompted Zappi to enter?
We’re a technology company. We don’t really want to win research awards. We believe in the automation of the research process, so we don’t want to have the best insight award or something like that. Instead, the two types of awards we go for are either best place to work, or technology and innovation awards.
The thing I like about the ASC award for Best Technology Innovation is that it’s the most rigorous display of technical expertise in our industry. So to me, it says something about your technology. There are other innovation awards, but they are more general, whereas ASC is the most focused on research technology. So it fits our angle on this industry really well.
How did you find the award process, as an entrant?
Appropriately rigorous. I think it’s the association with the deep tech thing. With other awards, you don’t get interviewed, and there aren’t any practical steps. You just put in your submission and there isn’t any back and forth. So it’s slightly more painful than the others, but that’s OK because of the value it expresses in itself.
What did it mean for Zappi to win the award?
Well, as I said we don’t go for many awards, so when we go for one, it’s because we value it. And, you know, half our team are developers. So it is way more impressive for our developers to win the ASC Best Technology Innovation Award than it would be to win the best research company sort of thing.
[We enter awards] probably more for internal validation than external validation, though external validation is nice as well. But it makes people feel happy that they’re working somewhere award-winning. And that counts for a lot, I think, in and of itself.What would you say to someone considering entering?
I would say if you’re coming up with genuinely interesting technology solutions for the industry, then you should of course be submitting. You want to make sure that your new great technology gets the appropriate recognition.
[The publicity], I think, is also a nice-to-have. But my view about awards is that they are of more value internally than they are externally.And where next for Zappi’s Innovation System?
We’ve got a whole long pipeline. I mean, the great thing about AI is it makes innovation an awful lot quicker. You suddenly realise that it’s easier to innovate than it is to take to market and it used to be the other way around, right? You used to have to wait 9 months to 12 months for any sort of little feature request, whereas now you can build stuff really quickly. But we’re looking at lots of things with an almost entirely AI focus; anything from synthetic to agentic shopping.
Entering for the award
The award is open to any organisation or individual developing technology that offers a demonstrable improvement in the effectiveness of market, opinion, or social research. The award presentation is hosted by the MRS at its annual black-tie awards dinner, but is judged by ASC.
The judging process for the award has earned a reputation for being thorough but fair – in addition to a written submission, those shortlisted for the top spot are asked to prepare a demonstration of their technology for the judging panel. In practice, this is not the ordeal it sounds like, as the presentation is informal and made to fellow restech professionals who are curious and love to chat about new technology!
If you have developed innovative, transformational technology for the research industry, then why not enter the 2026 award? Submissions are already open, with more details available here.
More information on Zappi and their concept creation agents can be found here.