From the outset, Decision Architects combined research, strategy, analytics and consultancy to turn customer understanding into better decisions about where to play and how to win.
Today, the firm helps clients understand changing behaviour and identify customer-led growth opportunities. As digital platforms, algorithms and AI reshape both customer decision-making and organisational insight, it also helps redesign how customer intelligence is created, connected and used.
Through PolymathMind, Decision Architects also supports leaders and teams in developing the skills and capabilities to succeed in an AI-mediated workplace.
Across all of its work, Decision Architects remains guided by the values on which it was founded: strong client service, constructive challenge, open and lasting relationships, and a collaborative approach that builds capability rather than dependency.
Today, led by Adam Riley and David Smith, Decision Architects brings together senior judgement, customer understanding and technology to help clients build growth around the customer – and develop the intelligence systems and organisational capabilities needed to sustain it.
David has 40+ years in marketing intelligence and deep expertise in both qualitative and quantitative insight consulting. He began his career in the 1980s and has spent over 30 years at the forefront of training and capability building in the insight field.
He has written five books on applying insight to effective decision-making, including The High-Performance Customer Insight Professional, Inside Information – Making Sense of Marketing Data, and The Art and Science of Interpreting Market Research Evidence.
He has won multiple awards, including Esomar John Downham Award for Excellence in Marketing Intelligence and AURA’s Alan Hawks Award for Driving the Insight Industry Forward. In 2025, he was again named to the Insight250 list, recognising him as a global pioneer and leading voice in insight.
David is a former Vice President of Esomar and a Fellow and past Chairman of the UK Market Research Society. He teaches on MBA and master’s programmes on evidence-based decision-making and best-practice customer insight, and is a regular keynote speaker across Europe, Asia, the US and Africa.
A 30+ year career that spans management consultancy, marketing strategy and customer insight. Formerly a senior member in the marketing strategy practice of Monitor Company, a Global Marketing Strategist in the Chairman’s Office of Samsung Corporation in South Korea, and Group Head for International Research at IPSOS UK (then RSL). Adam’s research career started in the early 1990s.
Adam’s doctoral research at the University of Bath examines how AI-mediated outputs affect professional judgement in knowledge work.
Adam founded Decision Architects in 2006. He has focused on customer-led growth for the last 25 years, and latterly also the impact of AI on insight systems and processes. He has experience around the world (at last count having worked in over 34 countries), mainly for major multinationals but also with a mix of interesting smaller businesses. He also runs capability building sessions for industry on customer behaviour and the application of insight to driving business growth.
He is a regular conference speaker on the impact of AI on the knowledge workplace and the skills we will need to stay relevant. He co-authored The Art of Collaborating With AI: Harnessing The Power of Diverse Thinking with David Smith.
This book explores the intersection of human capability and artificial intelligence, and how modern-day polymathic thinking – the ability to connect ideas across disciplines – is essential in an AI-driven world.
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