Edmas Neo

Lean Before AI: Why Workflow Still Comes First

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:01:15 -0700

Lean Before AI: Why Workflow Still Comes First

AI has moved from chat, to being embedded into tools, to helping people improve personal productivity.

But for AI to deliver real organisational value, we need to go beyond individual productivity. We need to look at the workflow itself.

Recently, I have been hearing more about the term Forward Deployed Engineer. The idea is that engineers are attached closer to user teams. They spend time understanding the workflow, learning the domain, identifying the pain points, and then designing AI workflows that can actually work in operations.

In my view, this is the right step forward.

While the AI industry calls them Forward Deployed Engineers, the underlying principle is familiar to many transformation teams.

Spend time with the business. Understand the workflow. Identify the pain points. Then redesign the workflow and the solution.

This is why I think the work of transformation teams is becoming even more relevant.

Over the past few years, I have led a team of transformation managers who worked closely with business units on Lean transformation, DILO studies and workflow optimisation. We spend time with business teams to understand how work is actually done, identify bottlenecks and pain points, and improve the process.

Through this approach, the transformatoin team has helped identify improvement opportunities and supported smoother service delivery with less frustration for staff and guests.

This is also why I think organisations should start thinking about Lean Before AI.

Before applying AI, understand the workflow. Optimise the process. Reduce wasted cycle time. Remove unnecessary steps. Then apply AI where it can create the most impact.

In some cases, organisations may also need to design AI-first workflows in parallel, instead of only improving the current process.

For Transformation...Read More

Part 2: Hyper-Acceleration - The Next Operating Model for Startups

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:00:15 -0700

Figure 2: AI created illustration based on the article

If incubation, acceleration, and venture building were each responses to the problems of their time, then Hyper-Acceleration is the response to the new AI era. In my view, this is not just an incremental improvement. It is a more fundamental shift in how startups may be designed, operated, and scaled from day one.

Instead, to scale a startup, we are no longer just talking about the number of headcounts. In an AI-native startup, I expect a 30:70 ratio to become increasingly common, though not necessarily as a rigid formula for every company or industry. In many cases, only 30 percent of the team may need to be human, focused on strategy, decision-making, innovation, relationships and governance, while 70 percent consists of AI agents executing functions.

The tight integration of Hybrid Human-AI processes, together with AI-first operational workflows across a large part of the startup’s functions, could allow startups to scale much faster. It may also create more consistency in workflows as the startup expands across different countries while maintaining central oversight. That said, market nuances still matter. Regulation, customer behaviour, language, and local business culture will continue to require human judgement and local adaptation. In general, the HQ will have a much easier task in maintaining central oversight or initiating changes.

From Incubation to Venture Building: How Startup Creation Evolved

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:00:06 -0700

From Incubation to Venture Building: How Startup Creation Evolved

Startup growth and development is a topic that is close to my heart, and which I have been involved with for a number of years. When designing and running programmes like Infocomm Investment’s TAGPASS, ACE’s BACECAMP, and Accrete’s SEA Anchor, I always take a practical and realistic approach. Having seen the methodology shift firsthand, I can say with certainty that the way we built companies a decade ago is now obsolete.

We have moved through incubation, acceleration, and venture building. Each phase emerged for a reason. Each responded to a limitation in the previous model. Looking back, the evolution is actually quite clear, and it also explains why the next phase of startup creation is now beginning to take shape.

Roughly Pre-2012: Incubation, Technology First

When I look back at the earlier days of incubation, the focus was almost entirely on technology. Most work happened in research labs where the goal was to commercialise a specific invention. As a mentor, our role was to provide space and funding, but we rarely looked at the customer.

This naturally led to many "solutions" looking for a "problem." While developing the technology was the hardest part then, the clear drawback was a total lack of speed to market. We were building in a vacuum.

Most organisations do not lack ideas. Many even have access to promising technologies and startups. Yet despite innovation programmes, pilot projects, and corporate labs, very few innovations actually scale into real operations.

Over time, I have noticed that the reason could be quite simple. Innovation is often treated as a project, when in reality it is an ecosystem effort and this should be an integral part of the organisational strategy.

When I talk about ecosystem, I do not only mean external partnerships. I also mean the internal ecosystem within the organisation. Innovation is rarely the responsibility of a single department. It requires multiple stakeholders playing different roles, moving in a coordinated and symbiotic manner to drive change.

Innovation and ecosystem building have always been two things very close to my heart. Through my work across startup ecosystems, accelerators, and corporate innovation initiatives, I have had the opportunity to observe how organisations attempt to innovate and where many of these efforts succeed or struggle.

One pattern appears repeatedly. Organisations launch innovation programmes, run pilots with startups, and set up labs or sandboxes. Yet very few innovations actually scale into real operations.

Through...Read More

Part 2: Time Zones of Innovation

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:00:45 -0800

Just as people across different time zones work together seamlessly and the world keeps spinning, organisations also rely on different internal time zones to move forward. When these zones are aligned, the organisation keeps pace with change. When they are not, everything slows without anyone noticing until it is too late.

Following Part 1 of my article Surfing the Innovation Wave, here is Part 2 on Time Zones of Innovation.

Part 2: Time Zones of Innovation. Why Misalignment Kills Transformation.

In Part 1, I discussed about when to innovate, and how organisations can use the Gartner Hype Cycle as a guide to ride the tech wave. But timing alone does not guarantee success. Even with the best roadmap, innovation can still stall or die quietly inside organisations. One of the biggest reasons can be attributed to internal misalignment, more specifically, different groups of people within the organisation working in different “time zones,” and having different priorities that pull the teams in different directions, often with the right intentions but different lenses. In many ways, this...Read More

Part 1: Surfing the Innovation Wave

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 21:00:09 -0700

These are very valid and typical questions. They could also be right in their own way, depending on which angle you view them from and what time-zone within the organisation that you are operating in. (more on time-zones will be shared in Part 2 of this article.)

In Part 1, I share my thoughts on when is the right time for companies to invest in innovation, especially in POCs, pilots, and scaling. The key is timing, which can make all the difference between falling behind and moving ahead.

Let us take a look at Gartner’s Hype Cycle which gives us a useful lens. Every technology goes through a similar journey, from the peak of inflated expectations to the trough of disillusionment, then to the slope of enlightenment, and finally the plateau of productivity. The question for corporates therefore is not whether to act, but when they should act.

From my perspective, the right rhythm is...Read More

From Customer Analytics to Agentic Influence: The Next Evolution of Marketing

Sat, 31 May 2025 21:00:34 -0700

I have been tracking the evolution of customer engagement over the last 10 years. In my previous articles, The Future of Customer Analytics (2016) and The Future of Customer Engagement (2019), I talked about how brands must learn to sense, understand, and engage customers in deeper, more meaningful ways. I explored how data fuels personalisation, how design builds connection, and how marketing must evolve to meet customers across platforms, channels, and moments. Brands needed to leverage multi-channel strategies and data intelligence to get a 360-degree view of customer preferences. That is how loyalty is built, and conversions driven.

In The Future of Retail – Now! (2020), I explored the power of cultural and socially immersive experiences in building loyal customers. Then, in The Rise of AI Celebrities and the Transformation of Customer...Read More

The Rise of AI Celebrities and Transformation of the Customer Engagement

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 07:55:45 -0700

In 2016, I examined the promising intersection of AI and consumer analytics, looking at how emerging technologies might enhance established business models for customer engagement. My investigation predicted significant growth in the use of AI to engage and influence customers. This has led me to develop the "IDEAL" customer engagement model which I shared at SEAMLESS Asia conference in 2019, which I focused on the importance of direct and emotive engagement for fostering lasting customer relationships. In 2020, I explored the concept of memory influencing, demonstrating how brands could leverage memory hacking combined with data and AI to enhance consumer desirability. I further discussed on the changing landscape and digitalisation of retail businesses in 2022.
Fast forward to 2024, eight years after my initial insights into the potential of AI and machine learning, we've witnessed an accelerated progression in AI development and adoption, particularly in Generative AI. Today, let us delve deeper...Read More

Remote Talent & the Future of Work Now

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 20:00:51 -0800

The concept of the digital nomad lifestyle was suggested in the book "The 4-hour Work Week" when it was first published in 2006. This lifestyle has gained alot of traction in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has helped to accelerate this trend. The concept of the ability to work and travel remotely, while living in different countries resonates well with digital natives and this lifestyle has become increasingly popular among tech professionals and startup founders, who are drawn to the flexibility and freedom it gives.
In the book, Tim Ferriss had spent much of his time in Thailand, however, one of the latest popular destinations for digital nomads is Bali which is known for its beautiful beaches, vibrant culture, and relatively low cost of living. This has attracted a growing number of digital nomads looking to work and live in an affordable and tropical location. As a result the digital nomad community in Bali has grown significantly in recent years. This has led to the development of a number of co-working spaces and other resources for digital nomads in Bali, including cafes, coworking spaces, and online communities. Some examples are Hubud, The Paradise Space, Read More

The Future of Retail - Now!

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 21:00:36 -0700

Exactly one year ago, I wrote about the Future of Customer Engagement and created the IDEAL customer engagement framework. The framework proposed how brands might leverage the power of consumer insights and experiential shopping to ready themselves for retail transformation.
Amid the COVID-19 situation and the slumbering of physical retail businesses today, the physical retail landscape is facing accelerated disruption and transformation.
Within a short few months, we see big names like Zara (theguradian, 2020), L Brands (cnbc, 2020), Esprit (insideretail.asia, 2020), Target (Read More