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For the past few years, hybrid work has meant splitting time between home and office. And for the most part, people like itflexibility, fewer commutes, more balance. But theres a new hybrid model on the rise, and it has nothing to do with geography. As Artificial Intelligence is woven into the fabric of business alongside humans and begins to help support human workloads, the future of hybrid work wont only be defined by where we work, but by how we work together with our AI counterparts. As Agentic AI enters a more mature phase, organizations are moving beyond experimentation to ask deeper questions: How does AI complement human strengths? What does meaningful collaboration between people and machines realistically look like? How can AI reach its full potential to drive business value? (Hint: its not going to do it all by itself.) The future of work isnt about automating humans out of their jobs (although some jobs will become obsolete); its about augmenting peoples skills with technology that helps them be faster, better, and more efficient than they could be on their own. In the not-too-distant future, hybrid roles will be defined as part human, part AI, where technology enhances the judgment, creativity, and efficiency of its human counterpart. Whats the Worst that can Happen? From apocalyptic headlines to late-night TV jokes about being replaced by robots, it can be easy to find signs of AI anxiety. According to an independent market survey conducted for Concentrix of 1,000 US consumers aged 18 and up, 51% of people would characterize themselves as somewhat familiar with autonomous decision-making or agentic AI. There is work to be done to bring everyone up to speed on what AIs purpose is, and isnt. When asked about whether Agentic AI will have a positive or negative impact on the future of work, 36% saw the glass half full with a somewhat to mostly positive view that AI will be helpful, but acknowledged that there are risks; 31% of respondents stood in the glass half empty crowd with a somewhat to mostly negative sentiment, saying AI could introduce job losses and ethical issues. Public opinion remains divided, reflecting the uncertainty among workers in the market. Beyond simple efficiencies For now, AI is just starting to prove its worth by helping people with tedious or time-consuming tasks, like helping write important emails, summarizing meetings, and producing (simple) reports. But the reality is that these days wont last longcompanies are already moving on from low-hanging efficiencies toward revenue growth and innovation. Forward-thinking companies are shaking things up by challenging their workforce’s skills and tech-savviness and revamping their internal operations to be AI-centric, actively shifting from Prompt-Engineering to Agentic Engineering (Prompts + Data integration), instead of just slapping in chatbots and calling it a day. Companies that struggle with adoption of AI are often going about it the wrong way. They have been looking for places where AI can automate a task or replace a human, rather than enhance the experience of a journey or workflow. They have been piloting AI projects and arbitrarily cutting humans out of the loop, oftentimes with disastrous effects. AI won’t replace you, but someone using it better, will The biggest mistake companies make when implementing AI? Using it to replace people instead of empowering them. The next evolution is for companies to stop thinking about how to replace human employees with AI, and start thinking about how AI can augment human laborand vice versa. AI needs humans to thrive, and humans will thrive with AI. If AI can take care of the low-hanging fruit of a persons workload, the human is then freed to do more contextual, empathetic, and strategic thinking. There is tremendous value in the human experience that improves business outcomes in ways that AI cannot do alone. Understanding of how emotion, context, and humor play into everyday life, is where humans excel. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) may well be the perfect companion to augment AIs speed and efficiency, and we havent begun to discover what were capable of when we truly embrace the potential of the hybrid world. Interpretation and integration While some jobs that arent as heavily reliant on EQ to be successful may be automated, AI is already creating new opportunities for people who can interpret, manage, and integrate AI-driven technologies. The hybrid jobs of tomorrow are starting to be found in a variety of industries. In healthcare, the AI-Assisted Healthcare Professional will help doctors and nurses use AI to enhance diagnostics, personalize treatment plans, and manage patient data effectively, to lead to better patient outcomes. Designers who have woven AI technologies into the user interfaces have created better user experiences. Creative professionals who have used AI to rapidly create music, marketing content, and movie making are in demand. Were only seeing the beginning of hybrid jobshuman imagination will define those that come next. Your AI coworker just dropped you a message, dont leave it unread What will it take for humans to build trust in Agentic AI? Exactly half (50%) of survey respondents said greater human insight and ability to intervene is a good place to start. They want proof of AIs accuracy and reliability over time (42%). And they desire more regulatory oversight (41%). These findings tell us that people are ready to embrace a more integrated, collaborative approach to AI, but they desire a trusted human counterpart to have peace of mind that AIs not in charge, its part of a hybrid work team. Time to go out and make friends with your AI colleague.
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E-Commerce
Brand licensing deals can be an easy way to make a quick buck, but it’s not without risks. A man who splurged for one of President Donald Trump’s officially licensed watches learned that lesson the hard way after the timepiece arrived with an unfortunate typo. The $640 limited-edition “Inauguration First Lady” watch the Rhode Island man bought read “Rump” instead of “Trump” across its pink face. “We expected that it would have the integrity of the president of the United States,” Tim Petit, who bought the watch for his wife, told the local news station WJAR. He said it made his wife cry. [Screenshot: NBC 10 WJAR/YouTube] Perhaps expecting integrity from a product that trades on the name and likeness of the first felon president in U.S. history, a man whose second term in office has become a historic tangle of conflicts of interest, is asking for too much. But it’s also a pitfall that all brands face when they outsource their products. Licensing your brand can increase brand recognition and profits without cost risks, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but without specific, enforced licensing requirements, you risk losing out on quality control. Not that the Trump brand is particularly airtight. Trump has long made money from licensing deals, with resulting products such as Trump: The Game, Trump Water, and Trump Steaks. In between terms, Trump cashed in on new product releases like Trump Sneakers and God Bless the USA Bibles, all using LLCs that licensed his name and likeness to manufacture and market Trump-themed kitsch to his political supporters. [Screenshot: gettrumpwatches.com] Trump Watches aren’t sold directly by Trump, his business, or an aligned political entity, but by TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC, a manufacturer with a business address at a nondescript Wyoming building, which is also home to a daycare center. With Trump back in office, Trump Watches and other licensed storefronts represent something unprecedented: a president personally profiting off of merch sales, a category that until now has been relegated to campaign fundraising. And in a shocking but not surprising twist for the president who’s made domestic manufacturing central to his political agenda, the watches make no claim to be made in the United States (GQ actually sourced them to China). Luckily for the Rhode Island couple with the misspelled watch, the story has a happy ending. Though Trump Watches has a strict policy of no refunds or exchanges and states on its website that “images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product,” the company made an exception for the “Rump” watch, though only after the media got involved. Petit said he didn’t hear back from the company until after WJAR reached out for comment, and then he got a call from Trump Watches offering to replace the watch and gift him an $800 coupon. Sometimes all it takes is a free press.
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E-Commerce
Its easy to forget how big a splash the first Roku box made when it debuted on May 20, 2008. At launch, the device worked only with Netflix, best known at the time as a mail-order Blockbuster rival that was just ramping up its streaming service. The 10,000 movies and shows you could watch skewed toward the random and musty: Back then, Netflixs mail-order DVD service offered 10 times as many titles. But the $100 Netflix Player by Roku took a process that had been geeky at bestgetting internet video onto a TVand made it approachable and affordable. In the unassuming gadget, wrote The New York Timess Saul Hansell, I think you can see the future of video. Hansell was right. And though that original box has grown quaint with time, Roku is still riding the streaming wave. The company ended 2024 with 89.8 million streaming households, an increase of 9.8 million year over year. In the first quarter of 2025, it streamed 35.8 billion hours of video, up 5.1 billion year over yearand more than 10 times what it was doing per quarter when it went public in 2017. Behind the scenes, Roku has constructed a diversified business to keep those figures growing and monetize them in new ways. Yes, it still makes streaming boxes, along with streaming sticks and soundbars. However, it also provides North Americas most popular operating system for smart TVs, which it licenses to other manufacturers and uses on its own Roku-branded televisions. It operates the Roku Channel, the most-watched free ad-supported streaming channel, having recently passed Tubi. Its a powerhouse of streaming ads, giving marketers tools such as Roku Ads Manager and Roku Data Cloud. That Roku found itself in a place to build all this involved an early twist of fate. Founder and CEO Anthony Wood oversaw the first streaming boxs development as a skunkworks project for Netflix. When Netflix decided it didnt want to sell a device of its own, Rokuwhich had made internet radios and digital signage controllers, among other productsinherited it. With the introduction of the Roku Channel Store in November 2009, the box began to evolve from a Netflix player into a comprehensive streaming portal. The Channel Store launched with 10 providers, including Pandora and Flickr; the company doesnt disclose the current number, but its in the thousands, including more than 500 free ones. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood presents at the companys New York product launch on April 23, 2025. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] It’s amazing how companies underestimate that, Wood says. They still do. They don’t really understand what it means. For example, sometimes people will be like, Your UI, your home screen, hasn’t changed that much. Like that’s terrible. And I’m like, No, our market share keeps going up! So it’s not terrible. People like that. Anyone who scoffs at Rokus lack of change for changes sake might want to consider how successful its been in a business that many others, including Google and Amazon, have long coveted. When you think about the power of an operating system, in the mobile world you think of Apple and Google being the two dominant platforms, says media and technology analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. In connected TV, the platform that is far and away the largest is Roku. Hardware is hard Woods early realization that devices were most valuable as a springboard to build a platform did not involve any unique insight. Everyone in consumer electronics knows that hardware is hard and services can drive profits. But Roku has been one of the few consumer electronics companies to make it all workcertainly more consistently so than Sonos and GoPro, both of which have been through more than their share of tribulations in recent years. (Fun fact: All three companies were founded in 2002.) Just as Wood anticipated, Roku became a services company. In the first quarter of 2025, it made $881 million in revenue from its platform business, which spans advertising, subscriptions, and software licensing, with a gross profit of 53%. In devices, it had $140 million in revenue but a $19 million loss, for a margin of minus 14%. Overall, the company reported a loss from operations of $58 million and an adjusted EBITDA of $56 million, compared to a $72 million loss and adjusted EBITDA of $41 million for the first quarter of 2024. If youre watching the Roku Channelor another streaming service thats part of the Roku Audience Networkyou see ads the company has inserted in streams. (Overall, according to data from Pixalate, 38% of connected-TV programmatic ads in the first quarter of 2025 were delivered to Roku viewers, the highest percentage of any platform; Amazons Fire TV was second with 18%.) If youre watching something else, such as Disney+ or Max, Roku can monetize that, too: Its built-in payments service, Roku Pay, lets it handle billing in return for a fee. Rokus use of its platform as a giant marketing opportunity for its streaming partners extends to everything from its home screen and screen saver to the dedicated app-specific buttons on its familiar remote control; in March, it raised eyebrows by testing ads that play even before the home screen loads. As I was finishing this article, the platform was thick with messages promoting discounts associated with Streaming Day on May 20a holiday it invented to celebrate the anniversary of its first box. Anti-Roku sentiment expressed online usually reflects frustration with the quantity of advertising and other promotional elements, though the company recently got blamed for some ads it didnt place. Wood says that customer satisfaction studies help determine changes to the platform, but in some cases tweaks get the go-ahead even if theres a very neutral [reaction] or a slight decrease in satisfaction. Because youve got to remember, the revenue ultimately [results] in more content, more free content, more features, and lower cost. Overall, he adds, Those revenue streams have really worked for usdistributing streaming services, merchandising them, selling them, billing for them, and free content with ads. If Roku hadnt done an intrepid job of navigating a TV hardware ecosystem thats radically changed since it shipped its early devices, it wouldnt have a booming ad business. Back then, few people owned smart TVs; the companys competition consisted of other boxes, most of which were clunkier and costlier than its own. But as streaming took off, most TVs added it as a standard feature. Theoretically, that could have rendered Roku and its add-on boxes redundant. The reality, however, was that the home-brewed software cobbled together by many TV manufacturers was terrible. That opened up an opportunity for Roku, whose interface was already widely praised for its polish and straightforwardness. In 2014, the company introduced Roku TV, a platform designed to be embedded into televisions rather than delivered via a box. It launched on models from Chinas TCL and Hisense, respectively the third- and fifth-largest TV brands at the time. Looking back, Wood says that TV makers were skittish about ceding control of the on-screen experience. When we first started going to TV companies, one of the biggest challenges we had was they all wanted a custom UI, and they didn’t want their UI to look like their competitors, he remembers. In the end, many were convinced to standardize on Roku, which now ships on TVs from 35 brands, including JVC, Walmarts Onn house brand, Philips, and Westinghouse. In some cases, they play up the platforms brand and benefits on their packaging even more than their own. Among the TV manufacturers who still dont offer Roku models are three of the best-known brands: Samsung, LG, and Sony. Wood contends thats worse news for them than for Roku. Samsung still makes their own platform, he says. They just don’t have enough scale and monetization, even as large as they are, to do what we do in terms of features. . . . And so we’re just a better product, and consumers care about that. Then there are the most Roku-centric TVs of all. In 2023, the company introduced its own line of televisions; it went on to sell a million of them in 2024. Are the TV makers who license Rokus software okay with it competing with their products? They’d probably prefer we didn’t, allows Wood, who calls it just another move to build market share. Along with catering to customers who want the purest possible Roku experience, doing so lets the company test new features before rolling them out more widely, he explains. It also helps retailers plug holes in their TV lineups when they cant get all the models theyd like from other brands. Even in an age of smart TVs, Rokus streaming sticks arent done evolving. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] At the launch event where I spoke with Wood, Roku unveiled its 2025 line of TVs. But it also introduced two new add-on streaming devicesnot boxes but sticks that plug directly into a TVs HDMI port, a diminutive form factor the company has offered since 2012. Its still finding ways to improve them: The new models are slimmer than their predecessors, so they dont block adjacent HDMI ports. They also draw power from the TV, eliminating the need for a cable and charging plug. Given that its now tough to buy a TV that doesnt have streaming features built in, how is it possible that these sticks are still a thing? Even inside Roku, Wood says, many people expected the market for them to trend sharply toward zero. So far, it hasnt: Every year we keep selling themwe sell a lot of streaming sticks. Some customers, he says, use them to upgrade aging smart TVs whose built-in software is no longer getting updates. Others may simply prefer Roku to other streaming interfaces. Rokus continued focus on streaming shows a fair amount of discipline given that its brand is among the most recognizable in smart home technology. (Googles Nest, by contrast, has migrated from thermostats to security systems, speakers, screens, Wi-Fi routers, and other products but lost its early buzz along the way.) Not that Roku hasnt played around the edges: In 2022, I wrote about its foray into cameras and doorbells. Rather than lavishing attention on the project, it started with devices built by Wyze and then provided security and software upgrades, along with integrations with its TV platform. Today, Roku sells millions of products a year based on its Wyze partnership and is still rolling out new models. But the initiative shows no signs of broadening into an all-out effort to conquer every area of household tech. Our primary business is streaming, but its kind of a nice accessory, Wood says. Its a channel, too For much of its history, Roku expanded the utility of its devices by supporting new streaming services as they came along. By 2017, its Channel Store had more than 5,000 of them, from the expected name-brand giants to upstarts represeting an array of niches. That was the year it launched a service of its own, calledperhaps inevitablythe Roku Channel. That move went on to transform how the company made money by letting it sell ads on its own streams. Today, Its a multibillion-dollar business for us, Wood says. Having its own channel also gave Roku the opportunity to simplify streaming even more by taking responsibility for what Steve Jobs would have called the whole widgetthe entire experience from the design of the remote control to the lineup of shows. In some ways, the Roku Channel is at the center of what they’re doing, says LightSheds Greenfield. Focused on free ad-supported programming, the Roku Channel is a sprawling streaming service inside the Roku platform. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] Calling it a mere channel is a bit of a misnomer, though. Its become a sprawling streaming service unto itself, with on-demand movies and episodes, live channels, and premium for-pay options such as Starz, AMC+, and the service soon to be known once again as HBO Max. The Roku Channel also has a life well beyond Rokus own platform: You can watch it on the web, using iPhone and Android apps, or even on two of Rokus archrivals, Google TV and Amazons Fire TV. Almost eight years into its existence, the Roku Channel has quietly gobbled up a meaningful percentage of the hours humans spend consuming video content. In April, according to Nielsens the Gauge, it accounted for 2.4% of all TV watched by people ages 2 and up (sorry, babies). That might not sound huge, but its 2.4% of all TVbroadcast and cable as well as streamingand is up 71% year over year. And though its below YouTube (12%), Netflix (7.9%), Disneys streaming services (5%), Amazon Prime Video (3.5%), and Paramounts services (2.3%), it beats Tubi (1.9%), HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discoverys other services (1.5%), and Peacock (1.4%). Roku itself says that the Roku Channels streaming hours are up 84% year over year, and that its the platforms No. 2 service among U.S. watchers in terms of engagement. (The company doesnt officially disclose which one is No. 1, but according to one source, its YouTube.) Contentwise, what Roku is streaming on its service bears a certain resemblance to Netflix in its early, pre-House of Cards days, before it shifted decisively to original content. There are vast quantities of recognizable TV shows and movies. Its just that they arent the latest ones, and sometimes theyre decades-old comfort food. However, there are also more Roku Originals than I realized, including movies and series. These made-for-Roku items havent commandeered huge amounts of public attention, but 2022s excellent fantasy biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and a show Roku picked up after Disney abandoned it, The Spiderwick Chronicles, both won Emmys. And having some exclusives buttresses the platforms story for marketers. As Wood puts it: You go and talk to advertisers, you don’t say, Hey, the Roku Channel has a whole bunch of reruns of Bewitched. (Note: It does116 episodes worth.) Marketers may like seeing Roku invest in original content, but a recent acquisition proves it isnt overly fixated on prestige. On May 1, the company announced it was spending $185 million to acquire Frndly TV, a streaming service whose 50 channels include rerun purveyors such as Lifetime, the Game Show Network, Hallmark Mysteries, andmy favoriteMeTV Toons. Starting at $7 per month, its a logical step up from the free stuff thats propelled the Roku Channels popularity. As a Roku property, it should benefit from the companys ability to put it front and center on the platform. The power of Rokus mass-market consumer footprint is so undeniable that even Apple has seen fit to embrace it. Like Roku, it has a streaming box: Apple TV, whose original version shipped even before Rokus Netflix Player. But in January, the two companies collaborated on an exclusive fan experience for the hit Apple TV+ show Severance. Shortly before the second season premiered, the first one streamed for free on the Roku Channel. Anyone whose appetite was whetted for the new episodes didnt need to buy an Apple TV box to catch them: Apple TV+ has its own Roku app. With Roku already in about half of American homes and its platform running about 40% of TVs and half of streaming devices, it runs the risk of maxing out its ability to scale up further. Wood acknowledges that U.S. growth is slowing, and emphasizes the importance of even more aggressive monetization. For example, the Roku home screen recently added a row with app recommendations the company can market to streaming partners. International expansion, he says, is also criticalalready, the company has a commanding market share in Mexico. Still, 18 years after Wood began introducing Americans to streaming, he sees the potential to reach even more of them. The strategymake it simple, make it cheap, and just keep goingabides. People are still upgrading TVs, and our market share for TVs sold also keeps growing, he says. So I think there’s room.
Category:
E-Commerce
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