Tag: small-business

The 10 most innovative enterprise companies of 2021

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In a year when businesses of every size and description in all sectors were forced to adapt to unprecedented global upheaval, these 10 companies offered innovations that helped enterprises not only to survive but to thrive. 1. Twilio For facilitating face-to-face communication during an era of social distancing and global lockdown During the pandemic, usage of Twilio ‘s omnichannel (voice, text, chat, video, email) communications applications doubled; after receiving expedited HIPAA certification in March, the company became the go-to choice for much of the healthcare industry and began offering its video platform for free to organizations dealing with COVID-19 restrictions. The video business unit has seen a 540% year-over-year increase in weekly minutes. 2. Cloudflare For providing free security during a very insecure year One of the few U.S. internet firms doing business in China, Cloudflare expects its partnership with JD Cloud to lead to 150 new data centers on the mainland. During the COVID-19 crisis, the company offered Cloudflare for Teams to small businesses for free and also offered a free suite of its products to government agencies. Another free suite of services, Cloudflare for Campaigns, protected candidates from cyberattacks and hackers during the election cycle. The company’s largesse did not hurt its bottom line: Q2 revenue exceeded $100 million, up 48% year over year. 3. Elastic For making search faster and more secure The search technology utilized by many major companies (Cisco, Pfizer, Shopify, and Walmart, to name a few), Elastic last year released four new versions of its machine learning-native core stack and partnered with Defending Digital Campaigns, providing free endpoint security to presidential and congressional campaigns. The company’s revenue grew by 44 percent year over year. 4. Honeywell For advancing the state of quantum computing Last year, this hundred year old company came out of nowhere to launch what may be the most powerful quantum computer in the world. Honeywell ‘s Quantum Solutions utilizes a “trapped ion” process that is slower but more accurate, and since its launch in March 2020, the company has grown its share of voice within the quantum computing industry from 1 percent to 25 percent. 5. Microsoft For democratizing at scale the ability of non-coders to build apps Six years after its initial launch, Microsoft ‘s Power Platform has continued to evolve and expand to empower employees to build web and mobile apps without having to write any code. From automating workflows to building chatbots, the four pillars of the Power Platform—Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents—have facilitated workplace innovation at a time when companies of every size have had to adapt to a disruptive global crisis. 6 Read More …

The 10 most innovative dining companies of 2021

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The dining companies on this list are doing more than survive the COVID-19 crisis. They’re setting themselves—and the entire industry—up for future success. Chicago-based reservation management platform Tock is helping independent restaurants offer order and delivery services, while Slice does something similar for local pizzerias. Sensor company OneDine has adapted its technology to help restaurants set up new drive-through services, and New York-based architecture firm Rockwell Group allows them to create outdoor spaces quickly and efficiently Read More …

Google’s anti-tracking move is good for privacy, and even better for Google

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Google’s move against individual web tracking might be good for consumer privacy—and could look good to antitrust investigators—but it will also consolidate Google’s power in interactive advertising, several advertising sources told Fast Company  on Wednesday. Google, which controls more than half of the global interactive advertising business, said Wednesday it will stop targeting ads based on browsing data collected about individuals as they move around the web. Such data is gathered when a marketer or ad-tech company drops a cookie —a line of code that can be used to record website visits—into a user’s browser. Google already said last year its Chrome browser would no longer support the practice, effective in 2022, but now the company says it won’t develop an alternative way to track individuals. Read More …

How a tiny startup is reinventing the DVR for the cord-cutter era

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The rise of cord cutting and streaming video was supposed to render the digital video recorder (DVR) irrelevant. In theory, you shouldn’t need to record anything when services like Netflix and Amazon Prime make everything available on demand. But now that every big media company has its own streaming service, all that instant gratification has come at a cost. Watching TV now means bouncing between a dozen different apps, each with its own separate menu system, catalog, and watch list. Read More …

‘This is bigger than just Timnit’: How Google tried to silence a critic and ignited a movement

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Timnit Gebru—a giant in the world of AI and then co-lead of Google’s AI ethics team—was pushed out of her job in December. Gebru had been fighting with the company over a research paper that she’d coauthored, which explored the risks of the AI models that the search giant uses to power its core products—the models are involved in almost every English query on Google , for instance. The paper called out the potential biases (racial, gender, Western, and more) of these language models, as well as the outsize carbon emissions required to compute them. Google wanted the paper retracted, or any Google-affiliated authors’ names taken off; Gebru said she would do so if Google would engage in a conversation about the decision. Instead, her team was told that she had resigned. After the company abruptly announced Gebru’s departure, Google AI chief Jeff Dean insinuated that her work was not up to snuff—despite Gebru’s credentials and history of groundbreaking research . The backlash was immediate. Thousands of Googlers and outside researchers leaped to her defense and charged Google with attempting to marginalize its critics , particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds. A champion of diversity and equity in the AI field, Gebru is a Black woman and was one of the few in Google’s research organization. “It wasn’t enough that they created a hostile work environment for people like me [and are building] products that are explicitly harmful to people in our community. It’s not enough that they don’t listen when you say something,” Gebru says. “Then they try to silence your scientific voice.” In the aftermath, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pledged an investigation; the results were not publicly released, but a leaked email recently revealed that the company plans to change its research publishing process, tie executive compensation to diversity numbers, and institute a more stringent process for “sensitive employee exits.” In addition, the company appointed engineering VP Marian Croak to oversee the AI ethics team and report to Dean Read More …