Feb 21, 2022

Despite market disruptions and unprecedented global events, the evolution of technology in every sector will continue because leaders worldwide actively develop solutions, overcome obstacles, and create new products. As this rate of advancement accelerates, technology will continue to be an essential component of success on any terms. Moreover, the leaders spearheading growth in this area also exercise best-in-class corporate practices, create healthy cultures, and achieve record-breaking revenues, concludes Dr Lebene Soga of Henley Business School. As the interplay between humans and technology develops, the prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), intuitive interfaces, and predictive capabilities also grow. This asynchronous development has the net impact of making life easier, businesses more profitable, and infrastructure more enduring. All told, this era provides an exciting iteration on what it means to live, operate, and excel not just as individuals or businesses but as the human race: an endless horizon of technological innovation. So what can we expect? And what are the implications for leaders? Innovation is alive and well, fueling creative projects, amplifying revenue potential and easing the ... [+] lives of leaders and the teams they oversee getty The Power of Partnerships Flywheel Digital is an example of an organization driving growth in digital commerce by partnering with the world’s largest and most sophisticated brands (Walmart, Amazon, Kroger and more). Flywheel supports development by building paths of success and unifying across digital commerce platforms, fueled by a purpose-built retail and media technology stack. As a result, Flywheel’s people, processes, and technology win outsized visibility for clients across search and display, driving incremental sales growth for brands. Flywheel has consequently grown to be the most prominent digital commerce endemic, a first mover in the space, with colleagues across five continents managing brand growth across seven platforms. It’s an important illustration of how leaders in digital strategy are getting ahead of the curve, seeing what’s next in terms of simplified, single-point solutions for end users. Coding Automation The United States healthcare system spends more than $10 billion on medical coding, with over one hundred thousand full-time employees every year. Fathom is an example of an organization leveraging the power of deep learning to deliver industry-leading automation rates across specialties. Through medical coding automation, healthcare providers increase accuracy, mitigate audit risk and reduce denials while cutting costs and time to payment. To date, Fathom’s artificial intelligence is the largest American-based medical coding service, with models trained across hundreds of millions of coded encounters. Coding services can be tailored to specific workflows, fully automated, and combine human infrastructure and AI for a full-service experience. Meeting the tri-fold goals of better cost, better speed, and better accuracy, Fathom Health could really be pioneering the future of medical coding. A key takeaway for leaders in this space is that legacy systems don’t need to be fully replaced, just strategically adapted and updated to meet new consumer demands. Emerging Technology in Insurance Verikai is an example of an organization at the forefront of transformation in the insurance industry. Its CEO, Jeff Chen, created the team behind best-in-class predictive data and risk tools. Verikai leverages alternative data and machine learning to better equip and empower insurers and underwriters to assess group risk down to an individual level. Considering more than 1.3 trillion data points, which include more than 5,000 behavior attributes, new insights can be gained that enable insurance companies to increase new business, reduce loss, and improve efficiency in the underwriting process. This has the net impact of providing better access to more affordable insurance products, which benefits the bottom line for businesses of all sizes, as well as individuals themselves. Insurtech markets have awaited technology like this, capable of reducing the underwriting process to almost real-time, using more than just historical data to shape and price policies. The company was founded in 2018 and has over thirty carrier and MGU partners and more than three hundred brokerages in their Marketplace. MORE FOR YOU Mining Actionable Lead Data Anonymous website visitors represent a huge missed opportunity for businesses that operate online. As many as 98% of people who visit a site don’t fill out forms or provide any information. Led by Brett Habermann, LeadLander has designed a system that translates IP information into company profiles, mining actionable lead data, and tracking site visits. This information is delivered in real-time, empowering sales and marketing teams with high-value leads. Most comparable products only perform a simple IP lookup: LeadLander’s solution represents a new level of sophistication, advancing the reconciliation of anonymous site visitors and delivering the highest level of lead data while also weeding out the noise of ISP-based information. LeadLander’s innovative approach helps monetize any B2B website, converting raw website metrics into actionable data that can provide sales intelligence, enabling internal teams to engage with prospects in just the right way, at just the right time. This innovative approach has transformational potential for all types of businesses. Missed opportunities are a growing issue as datasets balloon, and leaders who want to streamline intake and optimize user experience will consider the potential of products like this. Next-Gen Cybersecurity Brinqa was founded in 2009 by cybersecurity industry veterans Amad Fida and Hilda Perez. It has steadily become a leading player in cybersecurity with innovations in Cyber Risk Management. The company provides knowledge-driven, risk-based cybersecurity solutions. Using a proprietary Cyber Risk Graph, the platform connects all relevant security and business data sources through a common data ontology, equipping business leaders to make smart, real-time cybersecurity decisions. The graph is the first of its kind and delineates the relationship between IT, security, and business entities. The result is a unified knowledge source that drives better cybersecurity decisions. In addition, Brinqa solutions apply deep learning and knowledge to inform cyber risk management strategies — providing actionable insights and automating risk remediation. The enterprise-grade, high-performance platform is supported by an expansive cybersecurity integration ecosystem, representing the next generation of robust, dynamic cybersecurity solutions that secure and enable digital transformation. Cyber risk is an issue faced by every leadership team in every business vertical. Upleveling through proactive, even predictive, technology unlocks new potential for not just remediating existing threats, but regularly avoiding all new ones. Meet Your Voice Assistant Voice search is the future of search, and as more people rely on voice intelligence to navigate daily life, MeetKai is leading the way with groundbreaking features. Founded by Weili Dai and James Kaplan, MeetKai released the most advanced conversational AI on the market, capable of understanding negation queries and natural speech and remembering context for an authentic, multi-turn conversation. Kai, their first AI concierge, made interacting with voice assistance as easy as talking with a friend, becoming a worldwide phenomenon, currently supported in sixteen languages, and pioneering the future of AI experiences. The company’s newest ventures into virtual reality are already making waves as they promise an alternative to static, fixed-content VR experiences that can now be replaced with a rich, dynamic world of AI-generated content. MeetKai is pioneering the future by making voice search just what it should be: easy, natural, and efficient. Voice technology is poised to revolutionize industries as different as healthcare and fastfood. Leaders who adopt early will provide both internal and external stakeholders with tools that could drive not only the future of transactions, but the future of work. The Future of Fertility Treatment Founded by Burak Ozkosem, Pera Labs is an example of an organization using technology to transform the fertility sector. Ozkosem’s team developed an AI-powered technology that predicts and selects sperm and egg cells for fertility treatments without any DNA damage. The Pera Labs process uses lab-on-a-chip and video-based deep learning models to fully automate sperm and egg cell selection processes in fertility clinics. This equips fertility clinics to serve more patients and streamline operations. Most importantly, it increases the chance that patients will have a healthy baby in fewer cycles of fertility treatments, which represents enormous cost-savings, in addition to alleviating the psychological burden of multiple tries. The technology can also be applied to livestock sex selection, representing many application possibilities as an agtech solution. Pera Labs is a University City Science Center portfolio company based in Philadelphia and has recently opened a research and development facility in Malta, supported by $1 million from Malta Enterprise. Interestingly, the company is also a two-time Y-Combinator finalist and holds four Seals of Excellence from the European Innovation Council. The company is working on an iteration of its product in livestock as well, proving that both the concept and tactic have powerful applications in additional contexts. Web 3: A New Constellation Web 3 is put forth by many tech leaders as the future of the internet. It is often associated with virtual reality and immersive experiences. Constellation Network is an example of an organization at the forefront of Web 3 founded by Ben Jorgensen, Mathias Goldmann, Benjamin Diggles, Wyatt Meldman-Floch, and Altif Brown. In 2019, they became the second-ever blockchain company to contract with the Department of Defense, managing data at the federal level and setting a standard for how agencies securely use and send data. In August 2021, they signed a contract to provide data security to the Department of Defense’s commercial partners. Constellation Network distinguishes itself with a unique technology that empowers creators, entrepreneurs, and individuals to explore new opportunities and develop ideas in the crypto economy. They offer a faster, easier way to work on the blockchain, freeing people from limiting infrastructure and providing an ecosystem of connectivity. Constellation provides a zero-trust network, functioning as the “Intel Inside” of Web 3. The company continues to evolve, acquire and adapt, bridging the gap between traditional businesses and crypto economies. Beyond Digitization: New Methods for Docs ABUKAI is an example of an organization advancing ways to use documentation, a seemingly trivial but unavoidable issue for all kinds of businesses. But everyone from the CFO to the head of procurement or contracting understands the importance of records, and very few businesses have successfully removed paper from the equation. The best-in-class invoice and expense management SaaS provider uses machine learning (ML), computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI), and optical character recognition (OCR) to achieve near-perfect recognition of documents, eliminating manual data entry. According to Dr Yemisi Bolade-Ogunfodun of Henley Business School, clients choose ABUKAI to increase productivity and improve their bottom line with ABUKAI’s complete solutions for expense reporting, invoice processing, and other critical business functions. ABUKAI Expenses’ streamlined user interface lets workers focus on higher-impact tasks rather than paperwork and makes life easy for even the least technical or remote staff. In addition, ABUKAI’s flexible and auto-scaling cloud platform results in effortless rollouts with minimal change management, simplifying the transition from legacy expense reporting systems while resulting in a custom-tailored and optimized experience for each business. Interestingly, President and CEO Philipp Schloter was named one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs by The Software Report, and ABUKAI has users at more than 50% of Global 500 companies. Innovations in HR Technology In the world of human resources, there has been a cohort of late adopters to digital processes and systems. But as the demand for top talent grows — especially with the Great Resignation and employee retention top of mind for employers — technology provides the right solutions for growth. Symba is a company at the forefront of these efforts, providing an all-in-one SaaS platform that helps organizations streamline their early career talent development programs, specifically internships and apprenticeships. Symba’s technology helps these programs scale by up to 6x, with combined program management and data analytics tools that replace disparate and fragmented workflows. Talent leaders are in a new era of development, and innovative technology is their secret weapon to recruiting and retaining the next generation of the workforce. Innovation is alive and well, fueling creative projects, amplifying revenue potential and easing the lives of leaders and the teams they oversee. New technology will expand horizons, making new applications and work possible, creating essential support for achieving new goals. Follow me on  Twitter  or  LinkedIn . Check out my  website  or some of my other work  here .