Supratim Bose

Let’s start simple. Who are you, and what do you do with social data that others might not expect?

I am a social intelligence leader focused on building decision-relevant social insights that support organizational decision-making, especially when stakes are high. My work spans both hands-on analysis and the systems that allow social intelligence to function as a durable organizational capability.

What differentiates my approach is a sustained focus on contextualization. I treat social data as evidence that must be interpreted within business, cultural, and market context. Rather than stopping at what is being said, I focus on why conversations emerge, how they differ across markets, and what they reveal about underlying patient and consumer needs, behaviours, and challenges. This shapes how I frame insights for senior stakeholders.

At Novo Nordisk, I built the organization’s first in-house Social Intelligence function by rethinking what “good” looks like. This included establishing governance, strengthening analyst judgment alongside metrics, and designing workflows that support consistent interpretation at scale. Through rigorous analysis, I integrated social insights with campaign performance, web analytics, SEO, and primary research to test assumptions and explain patterns, including shifts in patient language, evolving patient personas, unmet challenges, and emerging narrative themes across markets.

More recently, I embedded generative AI and prompt engineering into analytical workflows to strengthen synthesis and narrative clarity, while keeping interpretive accountability with analysts.

In practice, I treat social intelligence as decision infrastructure, relied upon when ambiguity is high and decisions matter.

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What’s something in our industry we pretend to understand, but don’t?

As an industry, we often expect social intelligence to deliver immediate clarity. In reality, its value lies in helping organizations navigate ambiguity by clarifying what is emerging, what is contextual, and what requires action.

Social conversations surface competing viewpoints, layered emotions, and issues that evolve over time rather than a single, stable answer. When teams expect these signals to neatly converge, they risk oversimplifying situations that are inherently nuanced.

I have seen this clearly in multi-market work. Similar conversation patterns may appear across regions, but their implications differ depending on audience maturity, local context, and where people are in their journey. Without deliberate interpretation, it is easy to assume shared meaning where it does not exist.

High-level dashboards are often how social intelligence is presented to stakeholders, but their value depends on the depth of analysis beneath them. Examining language, narratives, and how conversations change over time allows social intelligence to inform judgment rather than simply summarize activity.

What we often pretend to understand is meaning itself. Social intelligence is most valuable when it supports informed judgment, enabling leaders to act with confidence without losing sight of nuance.

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What’s a moment this year where social data helped your team do something bolder, faster, or better?

This year, I worked on a multi-market deep dive into a critical therapy area where the organization needed a faster and more nuanced understanding of the patient landscape.

The project combined a therapy area assessment with an in-depth exploration of patient experience, including access, unmet needs, usage behavior, patient segments, the patient journey, and interactions with healthcare professionals. My role focused on interpreting patterns and translating findings into insights relevant for stakeholders.

The analysis showed that interactions with healthcare professionals influenced access and usage behaviors in more varied ways than previously understood. We also surfaced patient motivations driving product usage that were not fully reflected in existing narratives, pointing to opportunities for more resonant communication grounded in how patients described their needs and aspirations.

We further refined patient segments by adding nuance around motivations, aspirations, and online behavior, creating a more dynamic view of the patient journey and clarifying where different segments encountered friction or support.

Overall, the work accelerated understanding and moved teams beyond surface assumptions, helping branding and marketing teams refine how patient segments were framed and align engagement strategies more closely with patient reality.

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What’s one belief about your audience that social data completely upended for your teams?

One belief social intelligence helped clarify was the role aspirations play in how patients think about medicine usage.

Functional considerations like efficacy and tolerability were always present. What became more visible through social analysis was how often patients framed decisions around what treatment allowed them to do or become. Conversations focused on regaining normalcy, maintaining independence, and fitting treatment into the life they wanted to live, rather than clinical outcomes alone.

Seeing this consistently across markets and segments added depth to how we understood patient behavior. Aspirations were not background context; they actively shaped how patients talked about value, persistence, and trade-offs in their own words.

This insight informed the development of a more realistic patient persona that went beyond clinical attributes. Grounding personas in both functional needs and aspirational drivers helped teams frame communication in ways that better reflected how patients described their motivations and challenges.

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If you could build your dream social intelligence team from scratch, with no legacy and no limits, what roles would you include?

I would build a digital intelligence hub designed to translate social insights into meaningful support for organizational decision-making.

At the centre would be a Digital Insights Head who owns the intelligence agenda and acts as a thought partner to senior leadership, translating complex data into decision-ready narratives aligned to business priorities.

This role would be supported by Social Intelligence Leads with deep social listening expertise and strong business understanding, leading complex analyses and helping ensure insights are applied in practical ways.

A strong team of Social Intelligence Analysts would manage day-to-day analysis and end-to-end project execution, maintaining rigor and consistency across markets.

The team would also include Digital Analytics Specialists to interpret social insights alongside wider digital signals such as web and search behavior.

AI Specialists would enhance analytical workflows and scale insight generation, with human intelligence remaining the core capability and AI used to support judgment. 

Behavioural Science Specialists would strengthen interpretation by applying psychological and social context to language and motivation.

Cross-training should be a way of life.

Together, this team would form an intelligence capability built for clarity, context, and real decision support.

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When do you feel like you’re doing your best work?

I do my best work when social intelligence helps teams make sense of uncertainty and decide where to focus.

This is typically when leaders are facing open questions and need clarity on what is emerging and why it matters. I am strongest during the sense-making phase, when I can dive deeply into the data, connect patterns across narratives, and translate them into a clear point of view. There is also a genuine thrill when analysis surfaces something new or when a trend becomes visible before it gains momentum.

I find this work most meaningful when it provides direction for marketing, branding, or communications teams, or helps senior leaders reframe how they think about an issue. The value lies in clarifying priorities and supporting more confident decisions.

I also do my best work in partnership. Collaborating with fellow analysts, working across functions, and engaging closely with senior stakeholders consistently strengthens interpretation and relevance.

When insights lead to clearer choices at critical moments, I know the work has made an impact.

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What’s your browser history giving away about you this week?

My browser history would reflect a steady focus on learning and sharpening my social intelligence practice. LinkedIn features prominently, as I follow experienced practitioners, track how the discipline is evolving, and stay close to shifts in platform usage and emerging conversation patterns.

It would also show time spent refining how I work with generative AI. I am actively experimenting with prompting approaches to interrogate data more deeply, examine patterns from different angles, and identify signals that may not be immediately visible through conventional analysis.

More recently, my browsing reflects a deliberate effort to strengthen visualization and analytics skills through Power BI. I am exploring how flexible, interactive analysis can complement social listening by enabling clearer comparisons, better understanding of trends over time, and more effective communication of insights to decision-makers.

Overall, it reflects a practical curiosity focused on improving how insights are generated, interpreted, and translated into clearer direction for the business.

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