Zappi takes gold at the 2026 American Business Awards® for its AI-Powered Innovation System

We’ve got some news we’re genuinely excited to share: Zappi just won a Gold Stevie® Award, the highest distinction, at the 2026 American Business Awards®, in the Best New Product: Data Tools & Platforms category for our AI-powered Innovation System.

We’re proud of what this represents. 

The Stevie Awards are one of the leading business awards programs in the U.S., with thousands of entries each year. It’s great recognition of the work,but what’s more exciting is the shift it points to.

Innovation has always been messy. Disconnected. And heavily reliant on guesswork – especially in the early and middle stages when ideas are still forming.

Teams create ideas in one place, test them in another and analyze results somewhere else. The consumer often comes in too late, once key decisions have already been made.

At the same time, AI is accelerating everything, but speed on its own is no longer the differentiator. Connection is.

We created the Innovation System to close this gap. It’s an end-to-end system that helps teams create, test, analyze, and optimize ideas with the consumer embedded at every step of the process. 

So instead of guessing early and validating late, teams can build and refine ideas with real feedback from the start.

Brands are already using the system to make better calls—whether that’s generating ideas grounded in real consumer data, iterating based on feedback, or identifying what’s likely to win before launch.

We’re also seeing that translate into real-world results:

• Ideas developed within the system go on to see more than 2x the in-market trial rates, giving teams a much stronger signal of what to back before launch.An independent study from Forrester found that Zappi’s innovation system can drive 243% ROI over three years, driven by up to 7% increases in new product revenue, 40% lower research costs, and a six-month payback period.

For insights teams, it’s less time managing projects and more time shaping decisions and backing them with consumer proof. 

Like everything we build, this didn’t happen in a vacuum.

It’s the result of years of iteration with customers pushing us to connect the process, reduce guesswork, and make insights more useful in the real world.

This award really belongs to the teams using the platform every day to build better products.