On Friday night in Miami, amidst the excitement of the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix, business leaders gathered for a TIME100 Talk to discuss a rapid transformation of a different kind: the evolution of technology.
In a panel titled “The Recharge Gap: Rethinking Recovery, Resilience, and Readiness,” industry experts Sarah Meron, IBM’s chief corporate affairs and brand officer; Kaylen McNamara, chief business officer at VaynerX; and Olivia Ramos, CEO of Deepblocks, shared insights about coping with what moderator Nikhil Kumar, executive editor at TIME, called the “blistering pace of change” that companies face. As AI tools become increasingly specialized and prevalent, leaders are seeking creative approaches to leverage this technology at nearly every operational level.
Even legacy tech companies are not immune to this wave of change. “If IBM wasn’t prepared to embrace transformation, we wouldn’t be here today,” Meron emphasized. “By adapting to technological innovations, we’ve thrived amid fierce competition.”
Meron also discussed her views on the practical applications of AI in everyday work. “I take a positive view of this technology,” she joked. “I encourage my team to pinpoint tasks they dislike, and let AI handle those.”
At VaynerX, McNamara echoed the significance of “practitionership” in adopting new technologies, especially for leaders. “I dedicate about eight to ten hours each week to explore the latest AI advancements,” she noted.
She frequently advises clients, even those currently focused on social media strategy. “We ask them, ‘Have you checked TikTok this week? Are you aware of the changes in LinkedIn’s B2B offerings?’” McNamara added, “There’s a lot of pattern recognition beneath the surface of innovation.”
For Ramos, leveraging AI is a core aspect of her business model. Deepblocks utilizes artificial intelligence to “digitize cities’ zoning laws and other data sets to uncover investment opportunities in real estate.” Modern AI capabilities enable her team to efficiently digitize the over 19,000 municipalities in the U.S. “We’re continually evolving to enhance our company’s speed and growth,” she remarked.
While AI captures the spotlight today, McNamara highlighted the importance of considering both past and future technologies in business strategies. She noted that VaynerX is observing a growing interest in analog among Generation Alpha, or those born between 2010 and 2025. “Our collectibles division reflects our belief that physical goods will continue to hold value,” she said.
At Deepblocks, Ramos and her team are closely monitoring trends on Wall Street to inform their industry’s future. “We anticipate that fractional trading in real estate will resemble stock market developments over the past four decades; that real estate could be traded via automated systems,” she explained. “Thus, we’re constructing the infrastructure for this type of trading.”
Before concluding the evening, Kumar posed a challenging question to Meron regarding IBM’s significant investment in this evolving technology.
“There’s always that possibility,” she acknowledged. “However, I believe that many companies which have been around for over a century and are absent from this stage… are primarily those that were unwilling to take risks.”
