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In the midst of economic volatility driven by inflation, tariffs, and global geopolitical tensions, how do businesses keep up without a crystal ball? As the CEO of Sollis Health, my deep background in scaling mission-driven brands has taught me that thriving businesses dont predict the futurethey embrace uncertainty. Future-proofing is investing in your business, your offerings, and your relationships rather than trying to anticipate specific challenges. At Sollis Health, a 24/7 concierge medical membership, our guiding star is future-proofing by pioneering new ways to elevate and transform healthcare for our members, providers, and community. Build for adaptability, not predictability With its rigid structure, extensive financial projections, and reliance on outdated market analyses, the traditional business plan was designed for a world that no longer exists. Rather than boxing themselves in with an inflexible growth strategy, the businesses that prioritize data-driven decision making, lean operational structures, and empowered teams create more opportunities for innovation, even in todays unpredictable business climate. Ive seen this with Sollis Health, where weve found that working to meet the needs of a growing, mobile membership base has given us the freedom to be more responsive to our members needs. For example, after we saw that many of our New York-based members were regularly visiting our new Palm Beach location, we quickly opened a Boca Raton location because we maintain a robust list of target markets and available real estate. This foresight not only provided more convenience for our local members but strengthened our regional offerings with more comprehensive staffing and services. Invest in long-term relationships, not just short-term wins When market volatility rises, trust among your customers, your employees, and your business partners becomes even more valuable. Whether youre expanding member services, prioritizing employee culture, or exploring exciting new campaigns with your partners, investing in your peoplewhomever they might beis a future-proofing tactic that builds loyalty across the board. When I led global strategy and operations at Starwood Preferred Guest, the award-winning hotel loyalty program (now part of Marriott Bonvoy), we invested in ambassador service for our most frequent gueststhose staying 100+ nights per year. Each member enjoyed access to a dedicated ambassador to help navigate reservations and service requests, anticipate their needs, and even surprise and delight on special stays, like stocking a members room with plush dolls for her kids when she redeemed points to treat her family to a Disney World vacation. And if a longtime loyal member didnt spend the requisite number of nights with us in a given year due to extenuating circumstances, the ambassador was empowered to make a proactive exception to maintain ambassador service for another year. With this investment, Starwood made its most important members feel recognized and valued, thereby creating more opportunities for loyalty in the long term. Make customer experience your competitive edge In premium sectors especially, customer expectations are rising even as conditions become more uncertain. The pressure to differentiate has never been higher, but its more than possible to rise to these challenges with a focus on personalization, service continuity, and care that goes beyond the transactional. At Peloton, we leveraged the power of community to enhance the customer experience. We cultivated online spaces for members to connect outside of class, from scheduling workouts to drive shared accountability, to celebrating fitness milestones together. We even hosted in-person events to bring members together IRL, from hosting group rides and runs at our production studios to instructor meet-and-greets at each new showroom. I still remember a massive line of members decked out in Peloton gear snaking through Washingtons Bellevue Square in 2017 to meet instructor Cody Rigsby. We even hosted an annual Peloton Homecoming, a sold-out event in New York City that brought together 3,000 of our most passionate members, cementing their loyalty to the brand. When it comes to member experiences, it’s little thingsand they all add up. Whatever your industry, customer experience will continue to be the core of your differentiation. The businesses that serve customers deeply and in obsessive detail will not only outlast economic uncertainty, but ultimately thrive. Leadership with purpose and clarity The antidote to uncertainty is not certaintyits clarity of mission and agility of execution. As business leaders, we must foster cultures that welcome change while remaining steadfast in our commitment to value. You cant future-proof your industry, but if you prioritize adaptability, long-term relationships, and customer experience, you can future-proof your business. Brad Olson is CEO of Sollis Health.
Category:
E-Commerce
Across the U.S. and parts of Europe, science funding is in crisis. In the U.S., a planned $18 billion worth of cuts to federal research have already halted trials, triggered mass layoffs, and shut down entire programs. Europe isnt immune either, with Horizon, Europe’s flagship funding program for research and innovation, also facing rollbacks. These cuts are stretching researchers thin and slowing down innovation when we need it most. Breakthroughs in cancer, rare diseases, and drug development require time, space, and the freedom to explore. Instead, scientists are burning out and many are even walking away, with a recent Nature survey showing that 75% of U.S.-based researchers are considering relocation. With China ramping up investment in AI, the U.S. and Europe risk falling behind just as science enters its most exciting era. Agentic AI could ease the burden Scientific research is slow and expensive, not because of a lack of ideas, but because the tools havent kept up. Knowledge is buried in siloed papers, scattered datasets, and disconnected systems, and pulling it all together takes time, money, and a lot of manual effort, slowing down even the most promising discoveries. This is where AI comes in as a true lab partner. Unlike the AI systems most of us are familiar with, agentic AI can plan and carry out tasks, all from a single prompt. Scientists can access a suite of agents that will handle the repetitive work that eats up their time, like writing reports, reviewing literature, or designing and running early-stage experiments in the lab. Tech companies and academic researchers are already starting to develop agentic AI to help achieve this. Owkins K Navigator, Googles AI co-scientist, and Stanfords Biomni reflect a growing shift towards the adoption of agentic co-pilots that let scientists engage with their data as naturally as they would with a colleague. K Navigator is already showing that it can boost productivity by up to 20 times, giving researchers the freedom to focus on making breakthroughs. K Navigator exclusively accesses and analyses spatial multiomic data from MOSAIC Window, a subset of the largest spatial omics dataset in oncology. This allows researchers to better understand how different cells work together in the tumor micro-environment and advance vital cancer research. Agentic AI can help researchers shape hypotheses, work with complex data, and uncover insights, without needing a data science team to guide every step. This kind of acceleration will not only help researchers meet deadlines, but also open up scientific questions that might otherwise go unexplored. We hear this need from researchers every day. Many feel compelled to maintain the same high standards and deliver more data, more trials, and more publications, with fewer resources. In cancer centers and university labs alike, time is the scarcest resource. Agentic AI, embedded into real workflows, can effectively remove some of the friction that slows science down. More time on what matters AI agents wont replace critical thinking or peer review. But with the right safeguards and design (e.g. accurate source referencing and intuitive data visualization), they can help scientists spend less time on admin and more time on what really matters to advance treatments and diagnostics for patients. Because if we cant increase budgets, we need to increase impact. That means giving scientists the tools to do more with less, without burning them out or holding them back. Now is the moment to get this right, otherwise, the cost of underfunding science wont just be slower progress. Itll be lost cures, missed breakthroughs, and a generation of researchers who walk away. Thomas Clozel is cofounder and CEO of Owkin.
Category:
E-Commerce
E-commerce has become a powerful driver of global economic growth. In the wake of the pandemic, global online sales surged to an estimated $5.8 trillion USD in 2023more than one-fifth of the total value of global financial services in 2023. This growth has been fueled by intense competition, pushing companies to race to meet rising customer expectations for variety and speed. Customers expect broad product selection and immediate convenience. As Queen frontman Freddie Mercury put it, I want it all, and I want it nowa sentiment that perfectly captures todays consumer mindset. However, demand for immediacy and abundance carries an environmental cost: Expanded product offering and accelerated delivery windows drive up carbon emissions and packaging waste. One way to solve this problem is to enlist the help of artificial intelligence. AI enables businesses to collect data, optimize operations, streamline packaging, and consolidate delivery routes allowing e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Walmart to offer more responsible retail activity that is aligned with saving our planet. The wider the product assortment, the more complex operations and fulfilment become. Categories such as perishable food or hazardous products require tailored shipping strategies. Weight and fragility differences add countless shipping variables. Conveniences like one-day shipping come at a cost to our planet. Consumer pressure has tightened delivery windows from 48 to 24 hours, down to same day and even within the hour. While this offers consumers instant gratification and speed, it also leads to inefficient routing and oversized packaging bloated with excess materials and rising carbon emissions. AI offers a better path to produce fulfillment The use of AI in combination with data repositories, analytics, and reasoning tools provides an unparalleled technology for managing the multi-disciplinary complexity of daily operations in the warehouse. AI is able to analyze and react to the challenges across critical activities, including sustainable food production, material innovation, waste reduction, warehouse automation, smart-grid management, and transportation optimization. Solutions like computer vision that can identify the ripeness of a berry or measure the void in a package prove that this technology can dramatically change what is possible in e-commerce fulfillment, as they open up a world of new applications for automation because they can sense and react to the physical world. AI is poised to become a powerful driver of sustainability in e-commerce by showing consumers the environmental impact of fulfillment. It can engage consumers directly by offering them informed choices and helping them understand the consequences of their decisions. Just as consumers can discover new products through personalized recommendations, they will grow comfortable making informed decisions about the environmental impact of e-commerce fulfillment. Most e-commerce companies already have the needed data to understand fulfillments environmental toll. What is missing is how to take action on that data. With AI, concrete steps can be taken such as tracking carbon footprints, optimizing delivery routes, and using eco-friendly packaging. Chatbots can guide consumers toward options like wait-and-save which bundles multiple shipments to reduce emissions. Smart packaging can reduce materials waste and freight costs. However, even when offered these choices, consumers might not prioritize sustainability over convenience. Consumers tend to pick convenience over sustainability According to psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, we are wired for instant gratification and we tend to focus on the good parts of buying “eco-friendly” products while often ignoring the environmental damage caused by having them delivered quickly. We also fall for the sunk cost fallacy. We believe if we paid for a premium subscription, we must take advantage of fast delivery to get our moneys worth. While consumers have consistently shown they prefer sustainability and a desire to support brands that they view as ecologically responsible, a recent McKinsey study shows that other factors may be more important. The challenge for e-commerce is to align sustainability with shopping convenience and cost savings because people wont pay more or be inconvenienced just to buy green. Remember what Freddie Mercury said. AI solutions are already impacting the complex sciences behind e-commerce fulfilment by identifying packing boxes that are too big for the item being shipped and by assisting packers to identity the optimal packing material to use to ship a product. By incorporating AI, e-commerce can give consumers greater opportunities to act in favor of sustainability without giving up convenience or cost savings. AI can educate and engage consumers, giving them the chance to optimize, engage and conserve when buying online. Omar Asali is chairman and CEO of Ranpak.
Category:
E-Commerce
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