If your manager mentions a team-building and leadership training day, do you inwardly groan? Maybe you see it as a fun day out with colleagues but one that, ultimately, has no long-term benefits. Despite how employees often feel, though, research shows that if you take part in a professionally developed facilitated leadership experience program, the results can benefit you both at work and on a personal level.

Soft Skills

If you've been part of an organized leadership experience before, it's tempting to be skeptical. However, you need to start considering the benefits of soft skills to leaders. Think about the benefits of enhanced communication skills, the bonds of shared experience, and the engagement of employees. All these can help every level of leadership and management improve strategies and techniques.

Communication

Too often leaders’ communication styles are routine and task focused. With leadership building and team away days, though, leaders are thrown into new situations that challenge this status quo. For example, say most of your office communication is done via email. If you’re put in a situation where you must spend time communicating verbally, this can be revealed as an area of necessary improvement.

After the leadership experience, you’ll be required to debrief your team and recap the day. This is an opportunity to ask important questions. Are your instructions clear enough? Are all the leaders giving the same message? Is there room for discussion in the action phase of the task? Through this process, you’ll also discover what your team already does well.

Dynamic Challenges

If you choose a dynamic, action-based leadership development day, you could find yourself performing a historical reenactment. This tests your mettle against great leaders of their times, such as Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. Alternately, you could end up spearheading a virtual rocket launch.

Whatever the situation, you will have to lead your team, harnessing all their skills to complete the challenge in the time frame given.

This method of experiential, hands-on learning connects concepts like team building, leadership, and innovation. Traditional leadership education still has its place, but it can be reinforced for your whole team through an enjoyable out-of-office endeavor.

Morale Boost

Whether you’re a new team or you just want to build on the rapport you already have, getting out and completing an action challenge builds trust. This then boosts employee engagement and morale and fosters collaboration when you are back at your desks.

Fresh Perspective

Maybe you feel you need to reboot your enthusiasm for leadership and management, or perhaps you’re a brand-new leader. Whatever the case, it's always helpful to gain a fresh perspective. You will learn how the leadership principles of the Battle of Waterloo or the mentality required when coaching an Olympic team relate to your own experiences, and you can then see how to apply those lessons in your field.

Dick Richardson experienced this firsthand as his plane came crashing down over New York, United States. From his airplane seat on what later became known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight, he witnessed the importance of having a well-trained team.

Richardson went on to co-found Experience to Lead, which focuses on experiential learning in business. The company recently won a Gold Stevie Award for Entrepreneur of the Year in the Business and Professional Services category at the American Business Awards®.

When you’re planning your next training day, consider the benefits of what getting into the field and trying your hand at an experiential challenge can do for your team. Don't stop at the away day, though; make these opportunities to connect with your staff part of your workplace culture.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

How have modern conveniences changed business and leisure travel in 2019? What are the most desirable destinations? How do travelers prefer booking flights and hotels?

Anyone who searches for travel deals now is met with an onslaught of recommendations about where to visit, where to stay, and exactly what to do.

As the mobile experience becomes more personalized, it’s easier than ever to book exactly what you want. Travel research, however, shows travel agents are doing more than just surviving. The overall US travel agency market is projected to reach $127 billion by 2021, which is up from $112.8 billion in 2017.

Despite having access to their next vacation right from their pockets, it seems customers are still eager to pay someone to take care of all their needs.

Stevie-winner Northstar Travel Group, based in Secaucus, New Jersey, United States, is one of the leading B2B marketing solutions companies serving all segments of the travel industry. Despite the tech boom in travel, Northstar continues to flourish as a connector of buyers and sellers in global travel and hospitality products.

It’s All about Building Relationships

Northstar firmly believes in the importance of helping professionals in the travel industry meet face to face at exciting events. 

“We’re dedicated to connecting the next generation of travel buyers and sellers. We want to get to know each other through unique, collaborative content sessions; outdoor activities, such as hiking, biking, and yoga; and social events full of local flavor.”

That’s Victoria Halpin, a marketing associate at Northstar. She asserts that having everyone come together helps professionals gain insight on how the current generation will influence the future of the travel industry. Halpin says this is also a great way to help everyone build relationships for life.

Competitors, such as Questex, WATT, and Adara, also make an effort to include career-building programs and social activities during retreats, but Northstar likes to differentiate itself by providing additional value through data and benchmarks.

“In addition to over eighty-four face-to-face events in more than eleven countries related to retail travel, hospitality and hotel investment, corporate travel, travel technology, and sports travel, we also provide research and business intelligence to serve the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry: online travel distribution.”

All these efforts result in engaging more than 1.4 million monthly website visitors and over 2.7 million content customers. No other content and marketing services provider serving the travel and meetings industry approaches this scale, reach, or market share.

Although the industry is strong, several challenges still lie ahead.

Digital innovation continues to create entirely new opportunities for the market. Companies are competing for your dollars and offering alternative “off-the-beaten-path” experiences. Airbnb has become a popular way to stay in foreign countries because of the authentic cultural experiences afforded by staying with locals.

This is forcing travel brands to ramp up cost-cutting strategies and to devise more efficient ways of doing business in order to improve revenue and to sustain market leadership.

Time will tell how this evolving workforce will attract tomorrow’s talent and dollars, but Northstar and similar companies look poised to continue to refine business practices and to support their customers.

Northstar Travel Group won three Stevie® Awards at the 2019 American Business Awards®: a Gold Stevie in the Brand & Experiences - Launch Event category, a Bronze Stevie in the Brand & Experiences - Interactive Outdoor Event category, and another Bronze Stevie in the Corporate & Community - B2B Event category.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

With every passing year, it seems more and more people spend an increasing amount of time staring at screens. From cell phones to tablets to smart watches, there’s no shortage of screened devices to amuse, to delight, and to distract people.

Given that, it would stand to reason that marketing agencies should ramp up their online campaigns. Find people where they live, right? According to the research, though, not necessarily.

Photo by Richard Clyborne of Music Strive

With instant access to a nearly unlimited amount of information and a glut of available content, one major sacrifice in the consuming population has been attention span. It’s harder than ever not only to grab but to maintain the interest of consumers. This makes it incredibly challenging for marketing agencies to devise ways to stand out. Enter the rise of live brand storytelling.

What Is Live Brand Storytelling?

Live brand storytelling is a marketing technique wherein a company crafts a compelling story related to its brand or product and then delivers that story via a live experiential event.

Because consumers aren’t distanced from the brand through a screen or a printed page, they are able to connect with that brand and to truly immerse in the crafted brand lifestyle. Depending on the event, consumers can learn about the brand or the company ethos through the senses, seeing, hearing, or even tasting the kinds of real-world experiences the brand wants to associate themselves.

Live Brand Storytelling—By the Numbers

For any sceptics who believe live brand storytelling is a fad or a trend, the numbers paint a very different picture. Event Marketer released a 2018 report stating 85 percent of consumers were likely to make a purchase from a brand after attending one of their live events, and an impressive 91 percent asserted they felt more favorably about the brand after engagement in a company-sponsored live experience.

It’s not just consumers who appreciate the tactic either. C-suite executives are fully on board as well. According to a Bizzabo report, 87 percent of C-level executives believe these kinds of live experiential marketing events will become increasingly important to their brands.

Why Is Live Brand Storytelling Effective Today?

The idea of conveying a brand’s message or promoting a product through storytelling is nothing new in the marketing world, but the increasing popularity of live brand storytelling speaks to the changing demographics and buying mentality of today’s consuming population.

“In recent years, we’ve seen the strategic relevance of live events increase dramatically. Marketers are reaping the rewards of engaging with their audiences in face-to-face environments,” says Scott Cullather, CEO of INVNT, a global live brand storytelling agency based in New York, New York, United States. “Marketers have also realized that Millennials and Gen Zs, who favor experiences over material objects, are gaining greater spending power as they enter the workforce and move their way up corporate ladders.”

For marketing agencies to continue to enjoy success, however, it’s important they think of live brand marketing not as the final solution to connecting with an audience but simply as the next step in an always-progressing chain of marketing evolution.

“The marketing industry is constantly changing, and we’ve found that truly integrated marketing campaigns are now key,” says Cullather. “We look to create holistic campaigns that encompass both live events and branded content and ensure a brand remains top of mind long after an event ends.”

INVNT recently won a Silver Stevie Awards at the 2019 Stevie Awards for Women in Business for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in the Business Services category (11 to 2,500 Employees) on behalf of Kristina McCoobery, Co-Founder and COO.

They also won two Gold Stevies at the 2019 American Business Awards: One for Company of the Year in the Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations category and one for Founding Team of the Year - Business Services Industries. Other awards include a Silver Stevie for Marketing or Advertising Agency of the Year in the Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations category.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Every new business or product is launched with the hope it will eventually become a big brand. However, getting the amount of reach and recall that goes into building a recognizable brand is no easy feat. Barring a few exceptions, most brands are built over several years of persistent marketing and strategic public relations (PR). However, many businesses are so busy building and perfecting their offerings that they forget to dedicate time to think about marketing and PR.

How PR Can Help Build a Strong Brand

Some businesses associate PR with crisis management, and they think it’s only to be called in when a company’s reputation is at stake. Crisis management, however, is just one of the many aspects of public relations. PR, when done well, can lay the foundation for a strong brand presence and can help grow the business.

PR firms and professionals today use an ever-evolving mix of tools and strategies. These include standard approaches such as press releases, conferences, and trade shows, as well as new-age tactics such as social media, influencer outreach, and disruptive technology. These firms also tend to have authentic relationships with the media, influencers, and other partners that might be valuable for businesses.

All these channels, though, are really just facilitators for PR. The true power of PR lies in its ability to build an impactful story around your brand.

“At its core, the art and essence of PR come down to one thing: storytelling,” writes Craig Cincotta, senior director of marketing communications at SAP, in an article on Entrepreneur. “Every brand, technology, product, and person has a story to tell. Whether you are a business of five people or a Fortune 50 company, you need to know how to tell your story the right way, at the right time, to the right people.”

All these channel capabilities and the ability to create authentic stories allow PR firms to help businesses launch, build, and maintain their brands. Also, public relations is often an immersive and time-consuming task that requires consistent efforts. Therefore, it makes sense for many companies to bring in people with PR experience to help with brand building instead of just winging it.

How to Choose a PR Agency for Your Business

If you have employees with great communication and people skills and who are knowledgeable about how PR works, you may choose to do PR in-house. However, if you don’t have the resources or time to spare and want to work with external PR firms or consultants, it pays to do your research and carefully consider who you want to work with After all, you’ll be handing over your brand and image for them to mold.

Here are some pointers as you begin your search:

Look for passion. The firm should be excited about what your business does and should be invested in your growth. Look at their past successes and clients. If they’ve helped other businesses like yours scale and improve reach, that’s a point in their favor. Some firms are specialized and cater to specific business categories. Look for those with experience in your field. Proven expertise and knowledge of the latest innovations or trends in PR are important as well. When you zero in on an agency, ask around. Consider testimonials that speak toward results as well as negative reviews.

ChicExecs, a full-service branding agency based in San Marcos, California, United States, checks all these boxes for their clients. Their team of over 50 people helps companies with PR, marketing, and retail strategy.

“We're not an agency that started just to do PR and marketing. We started because we have such a passion for our brands,” says Amber Masciorini, a senior PR account executive at ChicExecs.

Prior to starting ChicExecs, the founders built ChicBuds, a product line that made it to Target, Nordstrom, Bed Bath & Beyond, Neiman Marcus, and several other retailers. They were also featured on The Today Show, in People and InStyle, and other media outlets.

“As entrepreneurs themselves, the founders know how difficult it can be to start a product line and build it into a successful brand,” says Masciorini. “By garnering exposure in the biggest media publications and placements in major retailers, they had a bird’s-eye view of what it takes to appeal to buyers and the media. They then duplicated their recipe for success and created ChicExecs.”

ChicExecs recently won a Bronze Stevie Award in the Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories for Public Relations Agency of the Year at The 17th Annual American Business Awards®.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

One of the Internet’s initial promises was that it would finally democratize the world of commerce. Two decades later, however, there’s serious talk about whether web sellers like Amazon are monopolies. 

The web has certainly lowered barriers in one critical sense: a business no longer needs huge amounts of capital to open a storefront and to start reaching customers. Part of the reason the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba are dominating market share, though, is their sheer logistical superiority. There’s simply no way most small or even medium-size businesses can ship as quickly and cost effectively—or to as many countries—as their larger rivals.

A company with headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, United States, is hoping to bridge that divide. Launched in 2015, Stevie-winner Easyship offers a platform that helps small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) more efficiently meet their logistical needs.

“We believe any business, regardless of size, should be able to sell worldwide,” says Jacqueline Ostrov, head of growth at Easyship.

By integrating with the Easyship platform, e-commerce sites can offer a wider range of international shipping options to customers around the world, and because the rates couriers charge through Easyship are already negotiated, the firm says clients save an average of 40 percent off their shipping costs.

“We've saved our brands over one hundred thousand dollars each in shipping and fulfillment alone—all while expanding their networks and sharing really cool products around the world,” adds Ostrov.

The company also helps sellers manage international duties and taxes, which is a notoriously complex challenge for smaller ventures. Its platform calculates those charges automatically, meaning sellers don’t have to worry about their products encountering problems at customs or finding themselves having to pay unexpected costs.

“Merchants need to understand that the post-purchase experience is as meaningful as customer acquisition,” says Ostrov, whose company earned the 2019 Gold Stevie® in the transportation category of the Web Achievement Awards for the American Business Awards® . “With that in mind, Easyship not only cares but wants to make your customer experience both exceptional and easy.”

The “Aha” Moment

For a growing number of e-commerce sites, overseas sales are becoming a critical part of their growth strategies. According to a survey last year by the intelligence firm Digital Commerce 360, as many as 80 percent of respondents stated that cross-border e-commerce was “a critical source of our e-commerce growth in the future.”

Among this group is Satisfye, a small US-based company that makes accessories for the Nintendo Switch gaming system. Initially, the business only sold to two countries and used just two couriers to manage shipments.

Since making the transition to Easyship, Satisfye has expanded into more than eighty countries and now uses thirteen delivery services. In the process, it’s saved roughly $60,000 in fulfillment costs, according to Easyship.

The founders of Easyship, Tommaso Tamburnotti and Augustin Ceyrac, started their careers at the European e-commerce giant Lazada. As they worked to expand the site’s presence in places like North Africa and Southeast Asia, Ostrov says they quickly saw barriers that smaller firms had to face when looking to expand their businesses. She calls this an “aha” moment for the pair.

Over the next couple of years, Tamburnotti and Ceyrac set up a main office in Hong Kong and worked on developing a new platform and building international courier relationships. In that time, the customer base and physical presence of Easyship grew enormously. The company now has offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, including its new headquarters that opened last year in Brooklyn, New York, United States.

The company also recently closed a $4 million round of funding in 2018. Cofounder Tamburnotti told TechCrunch that the financing would help Easyship develop its technology and build on its network of shipping and logistics partners.

“The future of e-commerce is the enablement of hyper-local, as well as global and domestic shipping experiences,” Tamburnotti said in a statement. “Our goal is to give merchants back the control of a complicated supply chain with the best product possible so they can enhance sales and purchaser experiences.”

Easyship recently won a Gold Stevie Award for Best Transportation Website in The 17th annual American Business Awards®.

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Is your organization interested in digital transformation? Using digital technologies to change traditional ways of doing business has been under way for years, but recently this wave of digital innovation has come to the fresh food supply chain and post-harvest technology.

The fresh food industry is currently in a state of dynamic fluctuation. Due to new competitive pressures, food safety issues, and changing customer demographics and buying preferences, Millennials are changing the way they purchase and consume food.

Online shopping is also changing grocery retailing, and the Amazon purchase of Whole Foods brought massive new competitive models into play. Naturally, this kind of increased competition among grocery retailers and food suppliers causes changes in business processes.

Zest Labs, a post-harvest agtech company with proven solutions for shelf life and freshness management, is one company responding to these industry changes. For instance, the company utilizes advanced software to reduce food waste in the supply chain by 50 percent or more. As its solution reduces waste and improves margins, the company believes it is well positioned to have a significant, positive impact.

No Wasted Opportunities

Food is something eminently relatable. Who doesn’t know what it’s like to buy produce, such as a clamshell of strawberries, take it home, and be disappointed when it spoils the next day?

This happens when an item runs out of shelf life; it spoils prematurely. Zest Labs prevents this by providing insights about the actual freshness of products.

“Food waste no longer needs to be a cost of doing business,” says Kevin Payne, vice-president of marketing at Zest Labs. “We can reduce food waste by more than half with advanced technologies and new approaches to solving food waste. This helps us feed more people and improve environmental sustainability.”

As Zest Labs illustrates, new software and hardware solutions can truly improve business practices and the products offered to customers. Depending on whom you ask, digital transformation can provide some of the following benefits:

• Improved supply chain visibility and traceability
• Reduced food waste and costs and increased profitability
• Enhanced food safety capabilities

At retail outlets, large percentages of fresh fruit is wasted. Most other industries would not tolerate this level of waste, yet this food waste problem persists, filling landfills, creating dissatisfied customers, and negatively impacting profit margins across the fresh food supply chain. With effective execution of digital transformation, however, these problems can be solved.

Another way to test if digital transformation data could benefit your cause is if that data would make it easier to record progress. Most companies have established patterns and cycles that, when everything goes right, work perfectly, but what happens when setbacks arise? Digital insights can reveal pain points so you can anticipate problems and situations can improve over time. Using the strategy put in place by Zest Labs, evaluate your goals to see if a similar approach would be applicable and beneficial to your business model.

Zest Labs recently won a Bronze Stevie Award in the Company/Organization Categories for Innovation of the Year - Business Product Industries in The 17th annual American Business Awards®.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

With health care expenditures in the United States totaling $3.5 trillion, or nearly $11,000 per person, telemedicine continues to be a source of hope for the industry. By enabling physicians to examine patients remotely, virtual medicine platforms are increasingly viewed by practitioners and insurers as a way to bend the cost curve, and according to Global Market Insights, the telemedicine market isn’t going anywhere. Rather, it’s expected to reach $130.5 billion by 2025.

Some are currently seeing the same potential when it comes to remote clinical trials. A 2018 study by Johns Hopkins University found the average cost of a new drug trial was $19 million but could be many times higher for certain medicines. Lessening the need for in-person follow-ups could help reduce those outlays.

Electronically assisted trials have another potential upside too. They make it more likely for patients to stay in the program, thus reducing the time needed to evaluate new drugs. Additionally, participants don’t have to travel as often, they can receive reminders about when to take medications, and they can get instant support if they suffer adverse effects.

One of the companies betting on this new approach is Scottsdale, Arizona, United States–based VirTrial. In 2018, the firm introduced a platform that allows for audio and video calls between the research team—comprised of clinical research coordinators (CRCs), principal investigators (PIs), and physicians—and the trial participants. The program also supports e-mail and text messaging, enabling the CRCs to send reminders about drug usage, as well as supporting materials.

The idea came to VirTrial CEO Mark Hanley when he was serving on the board of a telehealth company and realized the same technology could be tweaked to support the clinical trial process. 

“The clinical research industry is in a state of growth and evolution,” says Hanley. “Most research professionals agree the recruitment and engagement process needs to change in order to increase the percentage of successful trial outcomes and to speed the introduction of new medications to market.”

The pioneering patient management program of VirTrial is already garnering a lot of attention, both inside and outside the pharmaceutical industry. It recently snagged three Gold Stevie® Awards in the Health & Pharmaceuticals category (Service, Cloud Application/Service, and Healthcare Technology Solution). In what turned out to be a busy night at the 17th Annual American Business Awards®, the company also took home the People’s Choice Stevie® Award for Health & Pharmaceuticals.

The End of Inpatient Visits?

For Hanley, virtual platforms allow research sites to offer better patient engagement and higher retention rates throughout the clinical trial.

“Continual in-person visits to a research site can be difficult for patients, and those patients often can’t continue through the course of an entire trial because of the commitment required,” he says. “By offering virtual trials and enabling patients to comply with the required schedule via video from their homes or workplaces, it makes it much easier for them to complete the trial, thus reducing delays in the study.”

Unlike some remote medicine platforms that have entered the market, however, VirTrial doesn’t see remote capabilities as completely replacing in-person visits. Hanley says his company’s goal is to handle about 25 percent to 40 percent of visits, with the rest being performed face to face at clinical research sites.

“Having firsthand experience with more than ten thousand trials, the management team at VirTrial strongly believes in the intrinsic value of direct human interaction and advocates that in-person visits are necessary in certain cases,” says Hanley.

The company asserts that, practically speaking, less than 1 percent of trials could be done exclusively through virtual follow-ups. Therefore, VirTrial is positioning itself as a more realistic solution when it comes to operating a large-scale clinical trial.

Whether the pharmaceutical industry embraces this hybrid model is only one of the company’s hurdles going forward, though. VirTrial is also trying to stay ahead of the curve from a technological standpoint so research organizations can see the value of its solution over that of competitors.

VirTrial is currently working to develop functionality into its platform that allows for integration with Fitbit bands, Apple Watches, and other smart devices that can track health-related information, such as sleep patterns and cardiac function. No matter how much data those wearables can capture, though, Hanley sees them as supporting, rather than replacing, in-person visits.

“The evolution of clinical trials must incorporate technology to reduce patient burden and to increase site efficiencies, and it must also continue to leverage the value of direct human-to-human connections,” he says.

VirTrial recently won three Gold Stevie Awards in the New Product & Service Categories—one for Health & Pharmaceuticals - Service; one for Cloud Application/Service - Business Technology; and one for Healthcare Technology Solution - Business Technology—in The 17th annual American Business Awards®. They also won a People's Choice Stevie Award for Favorite New Products for Healthcare or Pharmaceutical Product or Service.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Steady job gains and a slowly declining unemployment rate are good news for American workers across a range of industries. However, for employers—especially those trying to fill positions in high-demand fields—the shrinking labor pool is making it tougher than ever to find qualified candidates.

Tech companies, in particular, are feeling the talent crunch. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for information-based jobs hit a paltry 2.7 percent in June, compared to 3.8 percent for the entire economy.

What happens when tech companies try to expand their workforces when most professionals are already employed? Often, recruiters turn to one of the newer tools in the field of talent acquisition: big data.

With most prospects already placed in jobs, headhunters are increasingly turning their attention to passive candidates—those who aren’t necessarily looking for new gigs. After a decade-long economic expansion, many job listings are no longer generating thick stacks of résumés.

For a lot of tech recruiters, the solution is to scour everything from social media platforms to software development sites looking for individuals with the right skill sets. According to one industry survey, more than 40 percent of companies are now using big data to identify candidates. Some are even going a step further, using the predictive capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to screen for new prospects in far less time than a human could.

Are Human Recruiters Here to Stay?

That shift, however, begs a question. Will technology replace the human component when it comes to looking for talent in high-demand fields? While some recruiters see AI as a threat, the majority view big data and AI as tools that assist rather than replace recruiters. For example, a survey last year by the website Dice found 55 percent of recruiters believe automating more time-consuming tasks is to their benefit.

Among the firms espousing this hybrid approach is New York City, New York, U.S.–based Andiamo, which provides technology and sales staffing to companies in the United States and Canada. Alongside its recruitment team, the company employs a group of data analysts to mine vast amounts of data from sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, and Stack Overflow to understand the talent pool and to reach out to the professionals who represent the best fit for its clients.

With a staff of 70, Andiamo helps fill contract and permanent job openings for developers, engineers, designers, architects, and project managers with experience working on innovative technologies. Andiamo won a Gold StevieⓇ Award for Best House Organ (for a General Audience) at The 2019 American Business Awards®.

By using software to sort through vast amounts of data at the front end of the candidate search, Andiamo claims it’s able to provide clients—including big names like Amazon, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, TripAdvisor, and Mastercard—with the top 2 percent of the available candidates. By using research and analytics, it’s able to speed up the recruitment process as well; Andiamo notes its average submission-to-hire time frame is only 14 days.

Technology has its limitations, though. Steps like understanding the client’s needs and vetting candidates to see why they want a new job remain vital components in the process—and they're the ones that still require a human element. Andiamo believes its ability to use the best of both worlds will only help expand its market share as recruiters jostle for tech clients.

“As the tech market grows, recruiting agencies constantly battle for limited space and attention among top firms and start-ups,” says Brian Schuppel, the company’s head of marketing. “In order to stay ahead of the curve, it’s up to us to continue to deliver a rock-star product along with intellectual, statistical content that is relevant, useful, and digestible.”

With the economy continuing to add jobs, Schuppel sees the competition for talent getting even hotter in the near future.

“In the next few years, we expect the tech market to continue to be aggressively competitive,” he says. “We expect top tech firms and start-ups to keep trying to attract and retain the nation’s most elite technologists and the most sought-after tech stacks to overcome their rivals and to lead the market.”

Andiamo recently won two Gold Stevie Awards in the Publication awards category—one for the Best House Organ and one for Best White Paper or Research Report in the Business Services industry—in The 17th annual American Business Awards®.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Walk through virtually any major city in the United States, and you’ll likely find coworking spaces. In these environments, budding entrepreneurs are not only able to work but to bounce their ideas off like-minded professionals.

When young business leaders enter any of eight U.S.-based OnePiece Work locations, however, they find more than just physical spaces for collaboration. They also get access to an array of resources that help them plug in to some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies.

At OnePiece, members attend speaking events with global business leaders, as well as tap in to a network of partner companies in Asia and Europe, getting help with everything from business development and market research to recruiting and product localization.

“We’re a truly cross-border coworking platform, and we held over 100 events last year with lots of investors, Fortune 500 companies, academic leaders, and entrepreneurs from across the globe,” says Yue Xiong, the marketing director at OnePiece.

Launched in 2017, OnePiece has hosted more than 200 multicultural events with over 30,000 international visitors, including representatives from giants like Alibaba, Mitsubishi, Seiko, Cheetah Mobile, and Samsung. It has also brought in several high-profile leaders in the public sector, such as Hirofumi Yoshimura, the governor of Osaka, Japan, and representatives from the United Nations.

“Our mission is to provide the best support to the next generation of start-ups with our cross-border advantages,” says Xiong.

“We Accept and Respect Differences”

In 2016, Vickey Li, a young commercial real estate developer, opened the first OnePiece Work location in San Jose, California, United States. The space was intended as a boutique coworking area, and the hope was to provide a friendly environment to business customers.

However, when Li met Wei Guo, a Forbes 30 under 30 investor who has supported more than 300 companies to date, the venture took a sharper focus on the technology industry. The partners soon moved OnePiece headquarters to the heart of the tech world, San Francisco, California, United States.

In just three years, OnePiece, the 2019 Gold StevieⓇ Award winner for “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the real estate category, expanded into seven more tech markets on the U.S. Pacific Coast. It plans to open its first Chinese-based workspace in Shenzhen. Those locations house nearly 250 companies from over 30 industries, including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, consumer goods, fintech, education, social networking, and gaming.

From the beginning, the OnePiece founders—each backed by significant international business experience—made international growth a key point of differentiation from other tech incubators.

“We trust our members’ crazy ideas and help them expand to broader markets,” Xiong says.

Given the potential sales opportunities in Asia, it’s not hard to see the appeal. Despite a slowdown in recent years, China’s economy, for example, continues to grow at a more than 6 percent clip. For a country with nearly 1.4 billion people, that means a lot more consumers will see their spending power grow in the decades ahead.

Xiong says the emphasis on global business opportunities also ensures there’s a lively exchange of viewpoints and experiences, which brings value to young companies.

“We accept and respect differences,” adds Xiong, “and because of these differences, we’ve built a cross-border community that helps us stand out.”

OnePiece Work recently won two Stevie Awards—a Gold Stevie in the Entrepreneur of the Year category in the Real Estate industry and a Bronze Stevie in the Startup of the Year in the Business Services industry—in the 17th annual American Business Awards®.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

As the world becomes more reliant on real-time computing, businesses are realizing it’s more imperative than ever to have high-quality performance and near-zero latency. To that end, according to Gartner, Inc., by 2022, it’s projected about 50 percent of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside of traditional data centers or the cloud, which is up from less than 10 percent in 2018.

QOS Networks is one company actively working toward that projection. The company’s mission is to architect strategic network solutions that enable distributed enterprises to connect in an expanding world, allowing clients to achieve improved experiences.

“We strive to deliver best-in-breed solutions mixed with fanatical customer support,” says Stefanie Whittington, the vice president of marketing.

Pairing Talent with Technology

QOS has a team of passionate individuals who always aim to innovate and to identify the best fit for each customer in order to create pathways and products that revolutionize the way people do business.

“We do what we do because, at the end of the day, when a customer sees answers to problems, it's a gratifying experience,” says Whittington.

According to Whittington, even though the company deals in a cutting-edge industry, traditional values are still key, and it’s the people of the QOS team that comprise the heart of the business.

“Culture and people definitely top the list. Without spending time and effort to drive the company culture toward something inclusive, inspiring, and satisfying, our customers would never feel the reciprocal dedication. Our team is the core of the business, and when it comes to people, it's immeasurably important to strive for the best.”

The company ensures these cultural values are ingrained from the day a new employee steps foot in the office.

New Possibilities, New Challenges

According to many industry experts, 5G connectivity is going to significantly change the way business is done, and some service providers are already beginning to implement the technology, even though it’s still only trickling into the market. These new advances in enterprise and customer technologies require careful implementation into a constantly evolving world, which requires a team that has its eye on the bigger picture.

“The advancement of 5G in the market is a fun development to watch,” says Whittington. “As this new wave of connectivity comes into the marketplace, it has reaching implications for both consumers and businesses.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is another potential game changer—and not only for problem management or tactical edge management. Whittington believes AI is going to become an increasingly significant force as technology in this field advances.

QOS aims to analyze the data from these new advances, pare it down, and use it to deliver a better client experience. How long until this process is completely viable, though? While an educated guess can be made, one thing remains clear: QOS wants to get more practical use out of emerging technologies so they can truly benefit the user, but this can only happen when the right team approaches the problem with the right values.

Prioritizing everything from weekly all-hands meetings in order to share successes and goals to company inclusion events, such as lunch clubs and news briefs, it’s clear the entire business operates with a deliberate focus on its people.

QOS Networks recently won a Bronze Stevie Award in the Fastest Growing Company of the Year category in the industry of Telecommunications at the 17th annual American Business Awards®.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?