30Under30 Nominee: Nicolò Rossi

Great to hear from 30 Under 30 Nominee, Nicolò Rossi, an Operations Manager at RONIN International, based in Hong Kong. Originally from Italy, Nicolò moved to London to study at the London School of Economics and started working at RONIN in 2022 in the Digital Research team where he became a senior associate and then supervisor. In 2024, Nicolò moved to the newly established Hong Kong office to develop the expansion of the Digital team into APAC. Nicolò now heads the global Digital Research department, leading around 70 team members across multiple global locations (including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Portugal, Germany, South Korea, UK and Vietnam).

How did you find your way into research, data and insights?

Like many in the industry, I didn’t plan on entering market research. I discovered it almost by accident after my master’s degree in London, joining RONIN International and focusing on the digital recruitment of hard-to-reach B2B audiences internationally. Looking back, the more interesting way of interpreting this question isn’t really to talk about how I started, but why I stayed. Whenever candidates or new starters ask me about this, I always tell them how exciting and diverse research can be. There’s always something new happening; a fresh problem that requires a unique solution. No two projects or challenges are ever the same, and working in research is a continuous exercise in adaptability and problem-solving that keeps me constantly engaged. To be completely honest, I handle stress and workload much better than I handle boredom, and in the research industry, there’s always something that needs to be uncovered or sorted.

What part of your work are you most proud of and why?

Starting a whole team from scratch and seeing it grow and succeed has undoubtedly been my proudest achievement to date and one of the biggest learning opportunities I could have asked for. When I moved from London to Hong Kong in 2024 to start RONIN’s expansion into APAC, I was the first local digital research member in the new office. From day one, I managed every aspect of the team setup and management: recruitment, training, development and operationalising the workflow. 

Seeing that embryonic idea transform into one of RONIN’s largest departments has been profoundly fulfilling. As the team expanded across different countries, I grew right alongside them, learning how to scale my leadership across diverse cultures and time zones. I am now also responsible for our global digital research team, including European operations. Together, our global digital research team of 70+ researchers handles over 300 projects annually, conducting over 250,000 interviews with hard-to-reach B2B professionals. Finally, beyond the metrics, what makes me most proud is the culture we’ve built. Travelling across our global offices to work alongside people from so many different cultures and backgrounds has been an incredibly enriching experience, proving that great insights and true synergy are rooted in diverse, empowered teams.

What have you learned so far that you wish you’d known when you started your career?

When I started managing larger scopes and helping scale our operations internationally, I thought my value lay in being hands-on with every single detail, overseeing every project, troubleshooting every bottleneck myself and trying to control every process. When I started as a single contributor to different projects, I very much owned my performance and could pretty much have control over my growth and success. However, something I’ve learned over the last couple of years is that true operational scale requires trust: building resilient systems and empowering people to do their best work. In fast-growing environments, it’s easy to think that working harder means doing more yourself. But when you are building a team across regions, cultures and time zones, you quickly realise that trying to hold everything together manually becomes a bottleneck. What fundamentally changed my approach was learning to shift my focus from executing the work to designing and fostering the environment where others can grow and succeed. I learned that building robust, scalable processes and trusting your team to run with them within an environment rooted in trust and openness is the only way to achieve sustainable growth and handle global complexity.

What excites you most about the future of insights and what would you like to help change?

Working in the B2B and hard-to-reach audiences recruitment sector, what excites me most is the evolving synergy between advanced technology and human expertise. While broad digital panels and automated tools are effective at scaling consumer insights, niche B2B audiences and markets require a different touch, rooted in creative outreach, deep empathy and rigorous curation. The future of insights lies in this dual strength: leveraging technology to streamline our processes, while focusing on attracting and developing the best talent to capture the nuanced perspectives of elite decisionmakers and specialised professionals that standard methods cannot always reach.

One of my biggest and most ambitious goals is to rethink and elevate how the industry views the foundational layer of research, i.e. respondent engagement and data validity. In a fast-paced and heavily digitalised era, it is easy to treat sourcing as a routine, transactional checkbox or to fall into the trap of thinking AI can solve all our problems.

In my opinion, my generation’s role is to champion a culture of intentionality. Personally, I want to help shift the focus toward treating specialised respondents as true collaborative partners rather than data points. By combining respect for their time and expertise with creative, high-touch methodologies, we can ensure that every insight is built on authentic, high-quality dialogue that drives confident business decisions.

What advice would you give someone just starting out in the industry today?

Embrace intentional, result-oriented research

As a recent graduate, it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing “research for the sake of research”, pursuing academic perfection or endless data points without a clear destination. Young professionals should embrace a pragmatic approach where every step has a clear why and how. Always connect your work back to the end goal: ask yourself where the next step takes you and how it drives a practical, actionable business result.

Challenge the status quo with critical judgment

It’s easy to rely on “taken-for-granted” industry traditions because “that’s how it’s always been done.” In my opinion, a balance between generational change and synergy with senior business leaders is key to succeeding in a fast environment like market research and expert insights. Overall, cultivate open-mindedness to question legacy frameworks and assess whether traditional methodologies actually serve today’s fast-paced commercial environment.

Worry less about having all the technical answers and trust your intuition

We often suffer from analysis paralysis. Whenever you hit a roadblock, step back and look at the problem through a practical lens. More often than not, the solution is simpler and more intuitive than our overthinking lets us see. Insights are about translating data into clear, human stories that stakeholders can actually act on.

Who has helped you along the way?

I wouldn’t be here without the trust and support of my RONIN colleagues and business leaders. I’m very grateful to have been given the chance to help grow a new office and team from scratch, just two years after joining, and I’m especially thankful to Simon Glanville for his leadership, advice, trust and ongoing collaboration.

And honestly, the people made it all worth it. I was lucky to work with amazing colleagues who made coming in every day a joy, not just for the work itself, but for the friendships and warmth I felt in every meeting, lunch and team outing.