“Can we call her Sandy instead?” The first time we heard that question from someone considering Ivy for their hotel, we froze. And a second later, cheerfully refused to change Ivy’s name. Naturally, we are attached to Ivy as the name for our smartconcierge. More importantly though, we are proud of the results driven by the consistent persona and the thinking that led to the … Continue reading Why the world’s busiest smartconcierge, Ivy, is a woman

This isn’t pretty. In April 2016, McKinsey Global Institute looked at how digitization has taken hold across various industries in the US economy. They looked at 27 different indicators and grouped them into three categories: organizations’ spend on buying the latest tech assets (computers, servers, software, etc), how these assets are used across the organization, and how employees integrate these tools in their day-to-day tasks. … Continue reading How digitally advanced are we?

In a recent New York Times article (Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two), Eduardo Porter examines the impact of automation on the US labor market. His conclusion? “Robots aren’t taking ALL the jobs. They are leaving the crummy ones for humans. The Luddites, it seem, weren’t entirely wrong.” We’ve read reports (see this and this) before that argued that frontier tech like … Continue reading Will AI destroy the economy?

Gong Xi Fa Cai. Happiness and Prosperity. We’re in the year of the pig.   About 1.45 billion (population of China and the Overseas Chinese population) people ring in the lunar new year – sparking, possibly, the largest human migration in the world. Why? People travel home for the reunion dinner. To help with those dicey dinner table conversations, the Singapore Government pulled together translations … Continue reading How to talk tech

Three weeks ago, NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway signed off for the last time on Winners and Losers. Galloway’s weekly series, Winners and Losers, had a brilliant four year run. The series chalked up 50 million views over the years; a fact that Galloway doesn’t exactly shy away from in the final installment. Personally, I’ve been a fan of the sharp, incisive, and sometimes even … Continue reading Scott Galloway’s Winners and Losers: 2014-2018