Every year, new reports flood LinkedIn proclaiming the “Top Skills for the Future.” AI literacy. Digital fluency. Strategic thinking. Emotional intelligence. Cross-cultural communication.

The lists grow longer. The outcomes remain the same.

Despite record investment in training, many organisations still face leaders who avoid difficult conversations, sales teams who struggle to handle objections, and managers who lack the confidence to lead through change.

Why?

Because the future of work is not being limited by which skills people know about — it is being limited by which skills people have actually practised in real-life conditions.

The real bottleneck: Transfer to action

The hardest part of learning has never been access to information. We live in the most knowledge-rich age in human history.

The real challenge is turning insight into action:

• Saying the difficult thing when emotions run high
• Navigating uncertainty when there is no playbook
• Leading inclusively when values clash
• Building trust across distance, cultures, and hierarchies

These moments do not come with slides or pause buttons. They demand human fluency — presence, judgment, emotional regulation, persuasion, and empathy — expressed in seconds, not theories.

Why content is not enough

Most training still optimises for content delivery. But the skills of the future are not cognitive alone — they are behavioural and emotional.

No one becomes persuasive by watching a video on persuasion. No one becomes resilient by reading a resilience article. No one becomes a strong negotiator by ticking boxes in a quiz.

These competencies require experience, but experience in real life is risky, expensive, and inconsistent.

This is the core contradiction of modern learning: Skills require practice, but workplaces make failure unsafe.

So learners retreat into passive learning — understanding what to do intellectually, but never integrating it into behaviour.

Also Read: The future of work is microlearning: How bite-sized education is transforming the workplace

The rise of safe practice

The next decade of skills development will not be defined by what people watch or read, but by what they repeatedly practice.

Safe, immersive practice environments will become the standard for developing:

• Leadership under pressure
• High-stakes communication
• Negotiation and conflict management
• Cross-cultural and inclusive leadership
• Decision-making in ambiguity

This is where AI-powered experiential learning enters the stage.

AI roleplay allows learners to step into realistic future-work scenarios — testing language, tone, judgment, and emotional intelligence — without social risk. They can pause, reflect, restart, try different approaches, and gradually build confidence through safe exposure.

Learning shifts from passive intake to active rehearsal. From knowledge tests to capability building.

Depth will matter more than speed

As microlearning and social video accelerate bite-sized content consumption, there is a hidden danger: speed without depth produces surface competence.

Future skills are not superficial hacks. They involve:

• Emotional nuance
• Cultural complexity
• Ethical judgment
• Relationship-building

Developing them requires academic rigour and psychological safety, not dopamine-driven quick wins.

Learners need realistic scenarios designed with the complexity of real leadership challenges, not simplistic chatbots that reward short responses.

The skill of the future is practice itself

Ironically, the single most important future skill may not be persuasion, negotiation, or empathy.

It may be developing the ability to learn experientially — to enter challenging simulations, reflect honestly, take feedback seriously, and try again.

As volatility increases and job roles evolve faster than course content can update, real competitiveness will come from learning velocity — the speed at which individuals can build new behaviour under changing conditions.

From learning to becoming

The future of work does not require people who know more theories.

It requires people who are ready to:

• Speak when conversations get uncomfortable
• Lead when answers are unclear
• Decide when outcomes are uncertain
• Connect when differences emerge

These are not knowledge challenges.

They are practice challenges.

The organisations that win the next era will be the ones that move beyond training employees to consume content and instead empower them to become capable through experience.

Because the future does not belong to those who study skills — it belongs to those who practice them.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image credit: Canva

The post The shift from learning to becoming: Why practice is the new competency appeared first on e27.

In Game of Thrones, there’s a classic line: “Chaos isn’t a pit; chaos is a ladder.” This metaphor perfectly captures the current state of retail. As market structures fragment, traditional rules are shattering, creating opportunities for new, more efficient models to emerge.

In China, the most powerful new rung on that ladder is Instant Retail.

The promise of “everything delivered in 30 minutes” has become a daily standard in Chinese cities. It has forged new consumer habits: no going downstairs, no stockpiling, and no planning. This shift is also forcing retailers to fundamentally re-examine their supply chains, store layouts, and operational models.

As one veteran supermarket operator in China lamented, “My competitor is no longer the supermarket down the street. It’s every single app on consumers’ phones.”

Does this sound familiar? It should.

From the chaotic vibrancy of Jakarta to the vertical density of Singapore, Southeast Asia is mirroring China’s trajectory. As super apps like Grab, GoTo, and Shopee pivot from aggressive expansion to sustainable profitability, they are approaching the same operational inflection point that has just reshaped China.

By analysing China’s roadmap, Southeast Asian players can see their own future and prepare for the inevitable operational challenges ahead.

Beyond Supercharged Delivery

Many mistake Instant Retail for a simple upgrade of food delivery. Superficially, they’re right. The same riders who deliver food and drinks now deliver groceries, cosmetics, and iPhone chargers within 30 mins. But to see it as just “do-it-all delivery” is to underestimate its ambition.

To grasp its true meaning, consider the specific use case. When the cat food runs out, or you need medicine late at night, the moment you click “buy,” you aren’t just purchasing a product. You are purchasing instant gratification and certainty.

Instant Retail fills the time gap left by traditional e-commerce’s “next-day delivery” and shatters the spatial constraints of “must-visit” physical stores. It shifts shopping behaviour from pre-planned events to impulse-driven “micro-demands.”

Also Read: The canary in Singapore’s retail coal mine is ‘kiasu’

While Southeast Asia has seen the rise of “Quick Commerce” (Q-Commerce) via capital-intensive dark stores, China has evolved into a more sustainable, asset-light phase: the Store-as-Fulfilment-Centre (SFC) Model.

Instead of building expensive new warehouses, the Chinese model involves the digital transformation of existing retail terminals, such as supermarkets, convenience stores, and pharmacies, turning them into dual-purpose hubs. This pushes inventory closer to the consumer without the heavy capex of building new infrastructure.

A perfect storm: Why now?

The rise of Instant Retail in China was not accidental. It was driven by a convergence of structural shifts, conditions that are now replicating across Southeast Asia.

Market saturation and the quest for growth

In China, as traditional e-commerce saturated and customer acquisition costs skyrocketed, Instant Retail emerged as the new engine for growth. A similar pattern is unfolding in Southeast Asia. As the region’s digital economy matures, super apps are pivoting to high-frequency, essential categories (like groceries and pharma) to drive user retention and strengthen unit economics.

Technological maturity

This is more than just “putting a supermarket online”; it is a complex systems engineering project where AI, Big Data, and IoT form the operational backbone.

Take the intelligent TMS (Transportation Management System) as a prime example. By leveraging algorithms to analyse historical sales, real-time traffic, and store demand, retailers can dynamically optimise logistics. Industry data from retail tech provider Dmall indicates that such systems can boost vehicle load rates from 65 per cent to 85 per cent. For the end consumer, this back-end intelligence translates into reliability—a standard that SEA shoppers increasingly value over mere speed.

Urban density

Just as China’s “15-minute convenient living circles” policy catalysed this model, Southeast Asia’s vertical urban density and robust two-wheel logistics networks provide the perfect fertile ground for Instant Retail to thrive.

From point of sale to point of fulfilment

The core of this revolution is the redefining of the physical store.

Under the Instant Retail model, a brick-and-mortar store is no longer just a place to shop; it is a local fulfilment centre. Its service radius expands from 1km to 5km, allowing a legacy retailer like 7-Eleven to capture revenue from customers who never walk through its doors.

However, this opportunity comes with a massive “Digital Divide.” Whether it is a convenience store in Guangzhou or a supermarket in Bangkok, the operational pain point is identical: how do you manage orders from multiple apps without creating inventory chaos?

When a single store must process orders from its own app, Grab, Foodpanda, and Shopee simultaneously, backend complexity explodes. Without real-time synchronisation, inventory data lags, leading to overselling and customer cancellations.

To survive this race against time, a unified backend infrastructure is no longer optional. It is operational bedrock.

The industry solution to this fragmentation is the adoption of a “unified commerce operating system”. The technical logic focuses on centralisation: channelling orders from disparate external platforms into a single internal processing stream. Instead of juggling multiple devices, store staff utilise one standardised app for picking and packing. Crucially, once an order is fulfilled, the system triggers an immediate, automated inventory update across all sales channels.

Also Read: The future of retail is autonomous: Securing agentic AI for smarter, safer growth

A clear deployment of this strategy can be seen at 7-Eleven South China. Operating a network of nearly 2,000 stores, the retailer leveraged Dmall OS as its digital backbone to integrate third-party giants like Meituan and Douyin (TikTok) with its own private mini-program. This integration enabled real-time synchronisation of inventory, pricing, and promotions, effectively transforming each physical convenience store into a digitised, high-efficiency distribution hub.

Conclusion

China’s Instant Retail story serves as a blueprint for Southeast Asia’s next chapter.

The path to profitability lies not in building more dark stores, but in empowering existing brick-and-mortar retailers to become efficient nodes in the digital network.

For traditional retailers, the “moat” of physical location is drying up. To survive, they must stop viewing online orders as a disruption and start viewing their stores as digitally connected fulfilment centres.

In the end, retail evolution is not about geography; it’s about efficiency. Whoever can first integrate the fragmented network of people, product, and place—whether in Beijing or Bangkok—will climb the ladder of chaos and win the future.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image generated using AI.

The post Chaos is a ladder: How instant retail is turning stores into fulfilment powerhouses appeared first on e27.

So, you’re on the hunt for that mythical creature, the “unicorn” talent. That 10x Engineer who codes in their sleep and single-handedly turns your ramen-fuelled dream into a market-dominating reality. This article is for you.

But it’s also about something more profound: Ownership, diversity, and the soul of your company – its culture. If you’re a leader with actual skin in the game (and not just a vested interest in the kombucha tap), read on. This is where the real magic happens.

On ownership: The gospel of ‘skin in the game’

Let’s be honest. There are two types of people in the startup world: those who are better at explaining than doing, and those who just get it done. The latter possesses what we might call the “startup spirit”. It’s a scrappy, self-driven, and sometimes undefinable combination of hunger, curiosity, and the ability to bite the bullet for the daily grind. They are the ones who lower entropy, bringing order to the beautiful chaos of creation.

“When I cast actors, I cast eyes.” – Guillermo del Toro

The great filmmaker Guillermo del Toro doesn’t look at CVs; he looks for a certain fire in the eyes of his actors. He’s looking for the soul of the character. We should hire in the same way.

When you have skin in the game, you develop an instinct for this.

You look for that spark of extreme ownership, not just in your leaders, but in every member of the team, including your interim hires. It’s those teams where everyone, from the intern to the CEO, feels that sense of ownership that truly makes your startup become unstoppable.

Diversity, your competitive advantage

As your startup begins to scale, a funny thing happens. You look around one day and realise that everyone looks… remarkably similar. You’ve accidentally created a monoculture. This is not just a social failing; it’s a catastrophic business error. Research shows that on complex, innovative tasks, diverse teams don’t just outperform homogenous ones – they lap circles around them.

Also Read: A founder’s field guide to managing performance and giving feedback that lands

Here are a few unpopular, yet essential, decisions you can make to build a truly diverse team:

• Mandate the 50:50 rule: For every male candidate you meet in the final round, make it a rule to meet with one more female candidate. Yes, it’s more work for your recruitment team. Yes, it might slow you down. But it’s the way to ensure you are truly hiring for merit, not just for pattern recognition.
• Sanitise your job description: By default, job descriptions are riddled with unconscious bias. Words have power, and the ones you choose might be inadvertently turning away entire demographics. I’ve used text analytics tools like Textio to scrub our JDs and create a more gender-neutral tone. We did this for over 100 job descriptions while hiring across Asia for a tech unicorn, and saw a significant shift in our applicant pool.
• Break the monoculture cycle: It’s tempting to hire a bunch of people from that one big tech company down the road. They all have the right skills, right? But before you know it, you’ve created a clique. Factions form, groupthink sets in, and innovation dies. We experienced this personally and had to put a hard stop on hiring from a single company once it reached a certain percentage of our team. It was a tough call, but it saved our culture.

The Glassdoor mirage and the vicious circle

Ah, culture. That nebulous, all-important thing. Does it really matter?

And let’s talk about the elephant in the room: those glowing five-star Glassdoor reviews. We all know it’s shady to ask your most agreeable employees to write them to drown out the one-star rants from disgruntled employees. We also know that almost every startup has done it.

Also Read: The art and science of feedback: A guide for first-time founders and new managers

Here’s the thing: smart candidates see right through it. They read every single review, good and bad, and they can smell a cover-up a mile away. The real question for a founder with skin in the game is not how to game the system, but whether the system is even worth gaming.

Organisational psychologist Adam Grant has a surprising take on this. He found that while founders who are passionate about “culture fit” are more likely to IPO, their companies often grow at a slower rate afterwards. I think this means that an obsessive focus on “fit” can lead to a dangerous level of homogeneity. This brings us to the Polish painter Jacek Malczewski and his haunting masterpiece, Vicious Circle.

In the painting, a whirlwind of figures, some ecstatic, some melancholic, some grotesque, dance in a dizzying circle around a central figure, the artist himself, perched on a ladder; he seems to be both the conductor of this chaotic symphony and a prisoner within it.

The circle is a representation of the creative imagination, a vibrant, powerful force.

But it is also a trap – a self-referential loop that, once entered, is nearly impossible to escape.

This is my analogy for a startup company’s culture. It can look like a cheerful dance of collaboration and innovation. But when it becomes a monoculture, when “culture fit” becomes a euphemism for hiring people who look, think, and act just like you, it becomes a vicious circle. The dance becomes a death spiral of groupthink, stagnation, and, ultimately, irrelevance.

Also Read: Fractional executive hiring: Break the vicious cycle, build the virtuous one

A Founder’s final revelation

At the beginning of the hunt for the 10x talent, you should know that it was never about finding a mythical creature of your dreams and desires; your goal should be about building an ecosystem where such talent can thrive.

This chapter begins with leaders who have real skin in the game, who understand that true ownership is the bedrock of any legendary team.

Then, it is fortified by the kombucha on tap and your singular commitment to diversity (not as a box-ticking exercise but as an imperative determination to fuel innovation and shatter that echo chamber of groupthink).

Then, only when you start to hire, you need to remember two things:

• Find the true 10x-ers who will not only drive performance but also elevate your culture.
• Create an environment that makes them want to stay – An environment that breaks the vicious circle and is a home for true innovation.

The goal is not to find people who ‘fit’ into a pre-existing mould, but to assemble a mosaic of brilliant minds who will challenge, elevate, and redefine what is possible.

This is how you will build a legacy.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Header image generated using AI.

The post A Founder’s field guide on 10x talent appeared first on e27.

I have sat through hundreds of pitch decks. I have seen countless presentations from founders brimming with passion and caffeine. And in almost every single one, there is the inevitable slide labelled TAM (Total Addressable Market).

It is presented as the cornerstone of the investment thesis. Look at this huge number! Look at the billions we could capture! It is meant to inspire confidence, but to a seasoned eye, it often signals one thing: a profound lack of imagination.

Let me be clear: in the current economy, obsessing over a predetermined, static market size is intellectual laziness. It represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how exponential value is actually created. Your market-size slide is useless. It is the metric of the incremental thinker—the person who assumes the world today is the final, finished product.

The tyranny of the existing pie

The typical market analysis starts with an established industry, slices it up into tidy segments, and then claims a tiny percentage of the existing revenue stream. This approach is profoundly limiting. It commits the entrepreneur to a war of attrition where one fights aggressively over the same customers that two dozen well-funded competitors are already fighting for.

This mindset forces you to think vertically: How can I get ten per cent more of the market already defined by my incumbent rival? It anchors your ambition to the current state of affairs, assuming that customer behaviour, technology, and needs will remain exactly as they are right now.

The largest, most enduring companies of the last two decades — the true titans of value creation — did not win by taking a tiny slice of an existing, defined market. They won by performing a strategic judo move: they created entirely new markets that were invisible to the old way of thinking. Before these companies existed, their market size was functionally zero.

Also Read: Gold hits US$4,500 while Bitcoin bleeds: The year-end market disconnect explained

Lateral movement: The key to invisible markets

The strategic move that matters is lateral movement. This is the ability to look at an existing, painful problem and solve it by linking two previously unrelated concepts, thereby defining a whole new category of demand.

Consider the example of the modern smartphone. Its initial market size wasn’t based on the “mobile phone market,” which was finite. It’s true, a massive market size was created by linking three separate, previously unconnected markets: mobile communication, digital photography, and personal computing. The market was created in the overlap, not claimed from the existing carriers.

Lateral thinkers use the existing market size only as a base, a launchpad for understanding the current customer’s frustration. They don’t see the figure as a ceiling; they see it as a springboard. They ask: What is this customer trying to achieve today, and how can I invent a solution that makes their current behaviour obsolete?

From analysis to strategy

This is the main strategy of entrepreneurship: transforming a rigid, defined need into a fluid, limitless opportunity. It requires moving the focus from the external metric (the size of the market) to the internal insight (the depth of the customer pain).

The strategic conversation should not be: Our TAM is US$50 billion. The strategic conversation must be: We are solving a problem that is so severe, so expensive, and so pervasive that it will compel the creation of a new, US$100 billion category of spending.

Also Read: Holiday liquidity warning signs emerge across stocks gold and crypto markets simultaneously

For the founder, this means abandoning the easy comfort of benchmarking against rivals. It means looking for the latent demand, the unvoiced frustration, and the structural inefficiency that no one has dared to tackle because it required combining resources in a way the old industry structure deemed impossible or illogical.

So, the next time you are building a pitch deck, use the existing market size figure for two purposes only: context and contrast. Use it to show the investors what the existing, poor solution looks like, and then immediately pivot to demonstrating how your lateral strategy will invalidate that entire number, compelling customers to flow into the vibrant, wide-open space you have just engineered.

If your sole competitive strategy is to capture five per cent of a market that already exists, aren’t you just admitting you plan to be marginally better, rather than truly indispensable?

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image generated using AI.

The post Why your market size slide is a meaningless distraction appeared first on e27.

Meta has announced the acquisition of Manus, confirming that the Singapore-based artificial intelligence company is joining the US tech giant to scale its autonomous agent technology to billions of users and businesses worldwide.

In a joint announcement, Meta stated that Manus has built “one of the leading autonomous general-purpose agents,” capable of independently executing complex tasks such as market research, coding, and data analysis.

The Manus service will continue to operate and be sold as a standalone product, while also being integrated into Meta’s consumer and business offerings, including Meta AI.

Meta said Manus is already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses globally. Since launching its first General AI Agent earlier this year, Manus has processed over 147 trillion tokens and enabled the creation of more than 80 million virtual computers. Meta added that it plans to scale the service to reach many more businesses across its platforms.

As part of the acquisition of Manus, the Manus team will join Meta to help deliver general-purpose agents across Meta’s products. Meta said the combination of Manus’s tech and talent would help unlock new opportunities for businesses and improve the lives of billions of people who use its services.

Also Read: How an AI cybersecurity company harnesses the power of AI for optimal business performance

Manus, in a separate statement, described the deal as a significant milestone and a validation of its work on General AI Agents. The company said it has focused on building a general-purpose agent designed to help users tackle research, automation and other complex tasks through continuous product iteration.

The company positioned itself as an “execution layer” for AI, transforming advanced capabilities into scalable and reliable systems that can perform end-to-end work in real-world settings. It reiterated that its agent has already processed more than 147 trillion tokens and powered over 80 million virtual computers in just a few months.

Manus stressed that the acquisition would not disrupt its customers. The company will continue to offer and manage its subscription service through its app and website, and it will maintain its operations in Singapore.

Manus said its solution is already driving value for millions of users worldwide and that, over time, it hopes to expand its subscription offering to millions of businesses and billions of people on Meta’s platforms.

Also Read: Navigating the trust labyrinth: My perspective on ethical AI marketing

“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus. “We’re excited about what the future holds with Meta and Manus working together, and we will continue to iterate on the product and serve users who have defined Manus from the beginning.”

Both companies framed the Manus acquisition as a step towards accelerating the adoption of autonomous agents across consumer and enterprise use cases, while maintaining continuity for existing Manus users.

—

Image Credit: Manus, Meta

The post Manus to join Meta in acquisition deal appeared first on e27.

The playbook is getting clearer every year. Sell into the U.S. and other mature markets, build using Southeast Asia’s talent engine. It’s not just about lowering costs anymore. It’s about creating leverage, speed, and scale by combining global revenue opportunities with regional execution advantages.

As founders, we’re watching the geography of tech shift in real-time. And those who understand how to bridge this gap—between customer and creator, headquarters and build hub, AI strategy and human capital—will win the next decade.

From cost centre to growth engine

For years, Southeast Asia was viewed primarily as a cost-saving destination. Offshoring, outsourcing, and BPOs dominated the narrative. But what’s changed is the quality of talent. Whether it’s engineers in Ho Chi Minh City, product managers in Manila, or designers in Jakarta, the region has grown a mature, hungry, and technically fluent workforce.

What’s more, countries like Singapore have positioned themselves as financial and regulatory gateways, helping global companies establish local HQs while tapping regional labour. Government incentives, English-speaking populations, and increasing venture capital activity have all accelerated the trend.

At NewCampus, we scaled our learning experience and delivery teams in Cebu and Manila to build a high-quality, cost-efficient training engine rooted in local expertise. Our Philippines team adapted content and operations for regional nuance, while our coaches in Vietnam and Indonesia delivered programs in local languages.

By hiring locally and thinking globally, we deepened engagement, boosted learner outcomes, and scaled delivery without sacrificing quality. This approach turned Southeast Asian talent into a competitive edge, enabling us to serve global clients with authenticity, agility, and cultural fluency from the ground up.

What used to be a back office is now a growth office. Product teams. Growth squads. Customer success pods. These aren’t secondary, they’re integral. And increasingly, they’re led from Southeast Asia.

Also Read: From lead generation to pipeline hygiene: What startups often miss

Global ambition, local execution

Take Canva for example. A multi-billion-dollar design platform built with deep Australian roots, but with a heavy operational and engineering footprint in the Philippines. Their support and design operations run lean but powerful, giving them the scale to service a global base while retaining product velocity.

Then there’s Xendit, the Stripe of Southeast Asia. Headquartered in Indonesia, they’ve used their deep regional knowledge and infrastructure to serve both local and international businesses. Their growth is a case study in how local teams, armed with global playbooks, can outcompete bigger, slower players.

Another standout is Deel. While not SEA-born, Deel has leveraged Filipino, Vietnamese, and Malaysian teams across operations, sales, and customer support. It’s a key part of how they scaled to a $12B valuation while offering 24/7 service and onboarding customers globally.

The takeaway here isn’t just that you can build cheaply in Southeast Asia. It’s that you can build well—with speed, quality, and cultural fluency that rivals any major tech hub.

The future is distributed (and competitive)

With AI reshaping how we work, there’s a misconception that geographic labour advantages will disappear. But the reality is more nuanced. AI is great at scaling what you already do well. That includes well-run, geographically diverse teams.

A support agent in Manila using an AI co-pilot will outperform one in San Francisco, still toggling between tools. A product manager in Kuala Lumpur working async with a design team in Bali can ship faster than an under-resourced team co-located in NYC.

Also Read: Startups, is your email strategy driving growth, or just gathering dust?

But only if the systems are in place. Founders need to think deeply about documentation, time zone overlaps, tooling, and most importantly, culture. Distributed teams don’t work by accident. They work because leaders design for clarity, autonomy, and shared rituals.

That means building AI literacy into onboarding. Investing in good managers who can lead without micromanaging. And recognising that time zones don’t kill productivity, unclear priorities do.

Moving forward

The arbitrage between Western revenue and Eastern execution is narrowing, but it’s not gone. In fact, it’s becoming more valuable as companies are forced to become more capital efficient, more globally aware, and more operationally excellent.

If you’re a founder today, you don’t just have an opportunity, you have an edge. The ability to tap top-tier developers in Vietnam, growth hackers in Singapore, or CX leads in the Philippines is no longer reserved for Fortune 500s. It’s accessible at Seed, Series A, and beyond.

And as the next wave of tech companies emerge—those built on crypto, AI, climate, and commerce—the ones who master this balance will win. Build globally. Sell globally. Operate locally. That’s the new startup stack.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image generated using AI.

The post Tech’s smartest trade: Sell West, build East appeared first on e27.

We live in an age defined by paradox.

The world has never been more connected — yet opportunity has never been more unevenly distributed. Technology has lowered the barriers to entry, yet raised the bar for participation. Knowledge flows freely, yet economic mobility feels increasingly restricted.

Economists once used the phrase “islands of modernity in a sea of underdevelopment” to describe colonial economies: pockets of advanced activity built for exports and foreign capital, surrounded by a much larger local population trapped in low-productivity subsistence sectors. Two economies exist side by side, with almost no bridge between them.

Today, that pattern has returned — only now, these islands are digital.

The K-shaped economy: One country, two systems

It’s not just inequality; it’s economic bifurcation.

A modern dual economy, unfolding in real time.

On one side, you have the tech-enabled class: remote workers earning in USD, SMEs using automation to scale, founders leveraging AI, and professionals selling their skills globally rather than locally. They belong to a borderless economy where geography matters less than capability, and where global demand rewards speed, skill, and systems.

On the other side, you have the local economy, where opportunity remains limited by geography, wage ceilings, and the slow pace of traditional industries. Here, jobs are replaced faster than they are created. Retail, F&B, manual labour, and low-skill office roles face both automation and competition. The hardest hit are the young — university graduates entering a job market where entry-level roles are disappearing, replaced by AI or consolidated into senior roles requiring experience they never had the chance to gain.

This divergence forms what economists now call a K-shaped economy — an economy where some groups accelerate upward while others stagnate or decline. The upper arm of the K rises: tech workers, global freelancers, AI-enabled founders, cross-border teams. The lower arm falls: retail, hospitality, local services, admin-heavy roles, SMEs struggling with digital adoption.

These two economies operate in the same country, but rarely interact. They use different tools, speak different economic languages, and respond to different incentives. One ascends; the other treads water.

Also Read: How to thrive in digital entrepreneurship in Asia today

The uncomfortable truth

The uncomfortable truth is this: The digital revolution was supposed to close gaps, but instead, it has deepened them.

Technology increases productivity, but only for those who know how to use it. Remote work increases income, but only for those with global-facing skill sets. AI amplifies talent, but only for those who are trained to leverage it.

Everyone else is left running on a treadmill that only gets faster, as they compete for limited opportunities in slower, smaller, and more fragile markets.

And this is where the danger lies. The gap is not personal — it is structural.

The technological trends of the 2020s have recreated a dual economy, accelerated by digital transformation. The globalised class becomes more mobile, more valuable, more connected. The localised class becomes more fragile, more replaceable, and more exposed to shocks.

What we’re witnessing is not merely different income groups. It is two different economies living in the same country, the same industry, sometimes the same company, but moving in opposite directions.

The digital “islands” have systems, tools, and global connectivity. The “sea” around them has talent, ambition, and potential, but lacks infrastructure to turn it into mobility.

Yet this divide is not inevitable.

Also Read: Asia’s digital gold rush: How to win in the US$600B digital economy

Bridging the digital divide

The gap widens when people and SMEs cannot access the tools that plug them into global markets — when they are trapped behind information barriers, trust barriers, and capability barriers.

The solution isn’t charity: It is access, systems and infrastructure.

It’s giving traditional businesses and workers the means to participate in the modern economy rather than watching it from the sidelines.

This is where market infrastructure matters. Not platforms that merely facilitate transactions, but systems designed to bridge structural economic divides. To give SMEs the same leverage, data, and operational discipline as the global players. To transform local businesses into regional ones. To bring clarity where the market runs on opacity. To give talent, vendors, and entrepreneurs the infrastructure to compete on merit, not connections.

Because if the world is splitting into islands of digital prosperity surrounded by seas of stagnation, then the real work — the necessary work — is to build the bridges.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image generated using AI.

The post The digital divide: Islands of modernity in a K-shaped economy appeared first on e27.

The majority of Singapore retailers are still using a POS system with simple inventory management instead of a comprehensive ERP system for retailers.

Singapore’s retail landscape remains heavily reliant on traditional Point-of-Sale (POS) systems. While these systems provide basic inventory tracking and transaction processing, they fall short of delivering the integrated capabilities of modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. ERP systems offer end-to-end visibility across supply chain, finance, membership management, and customer engagement. Yet, many small and mid-sized retailers in Singapore continue to operate with legacy POS systems, citing cost concerns and resistance to change. This reliance on outdated systems could hinder competitiveness in a market increasingly shaped by digital transformation.

Johor-Singapore Train: Good news or bad news for Singapore retailers?

The upcoming Johor-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link, expected to be operational by 2026, presents both opportunities and challenges for Singapore retailers. On one hand, easier cross-border travel could increase footfall from Malaysian shoppers, boosting sales in Singapore’s retail hubs. On the other hand, Singaporean consumers may find it more convenient to shop in Johor Bahru, where prices are often lower due to reduced operating costs. Retailers in Singapore must therefore rethink their strategies, leveraging ERP-driven insights to optimize pricing, promotions, and membership programs to retain customer loyalty.

Also read: Why Singapore manufacturers must embrace MES for the future

What are the other challenges of retailers in Singapore in 2026?

Retailers in Singapore face a complex set of challenges in 2026:

• Rising rental costs in prime retail locations
• Intensifying competition from e-commerce platforms
• Labor shortages and rising wages
• Shifting consumer expectations for personalized experiences
• Regulatory compliance in data privacy and digital payments
• Sustainability pressures, including demand for eco-friendly supply chains

These challenges highlight the need for integrated ERP systems that can streamline operations, manage memberships, and provide real-time analytics to support decision-making.

What are the differences between Retail ERP and POS System?

A POS system focuses on front-end sales transactions (billing, payments, receipts), while a Retail ERP system manages the entire back-end business operations (CRM, inventory, accounting, HR, supply chain, etc.). POS is about selling, ERP is about running the business.

Comparison: Retail ERP vs POS System

Risk of sticking with simple yet outdated POS systems

According to Stanley Pang, a veteran ERP expert from Multiable with over 15 years of experience in enterprise management systems, “Retailers who continue to rely solely on outdated POS systems risk falling behind in a rapidly evolving market. These systems may handle daily transactions, but they lack the agility and intelligence needed to respond to modern consumer demands. Without ERP integration, retailers face blind spots in inventory forecasting, membership engagement, and compliance management. The longer businesses delay upgrading, the greater the risk of losing competitiveness and profitability.”

Also read: How the top 10 best HR systems in Singapore reveal the new standards for HR technology

How will Retail ERP benefit Singapore retailers?

Retail ERP helps Singapore retailers by centralizing operations, improving inventory accuracy, enabling omnichannel sales, and enhancing customer experiences. In Singapore’s fast-paced retail market, ERP systems give businesses the agility and insights needed to stay competitive

Benefits of retail ERP for retailers

Why we write this article

PRbyAI aims to share updated market news using our team’s tech knowledge, helping B2B customers make informed decisions.

—

Want updates like this delivered directly? Join our WhatsApp channel and stay in the loop.

This article was shared with us by PRbyAI

We can share your story at e27 too! Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. You can reach out to us here to get started.

Featured Image Credit: Canva Images

About PRbyAI

PRbyAI is a tech-driven Martech startup leveraging cutting-edge AISEO to help customers generate leads and tap into new markets.

The post POS vs ERP: Singapore retailers at a crossroads in 2026 appeared first on e27.

Banks are leveraging GenAI for a variety of uses, from fraud detection to portfolio management, and across various functions from IT to wealth management. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that across the global banking sector, GenAI could add between US$200 billion and US$340 billion in value annually.

The treasury function in banks also stands to benefit from this GenAI wave. The traditional treasury system was designed to provide the treasurer with tools to manage liquidity, funding, and risk. They have faced new and more complex challenges in recent years, such as more volatile financial markets requiring instantaneous liquidity and risk computations, new instruments and markets enabling more complex structures that stress existing treasury system capabilities and innovations which have enabled faster trading and delivery cycles for flow instruments. Today, this treasury system faces another new inflexion point, the rapid rise of GenAI.

Earlier iterations of AI involved pattern recognition and taking over repetitive functions. GenAI, however, introduces levels of cognition and intelligence that can comprehend context, analyse complex data, and support instantaneous, data-driven decision making. This evolution, known as agentic AI, heralds a new milestone in treasury management. Much like how electronic trading transformed market execution, blockchain revolutionised payments, and the cloud redefined operational agility across technology stacks, GenAI is poised to become a strategic partner for the modern treasury function.

From automation to augmentation

The traditional treasury management system has automated the fundamental functions of a treasury. These include tracking positions and limits during trading hours, executing payments, aggregating balances, and reconciling transactions. GenAI takes these activities to a new level. By deriving insights from structured and unstructured data across multiple systems, GenAI helps treasurers interpret dynamic market fluctuations, assess liquidity exposures, or forecast funding needs in real time.

Instead of making sense of dashboards or spreadsheets, a treasurer could simply input the following question into a GenAI-powered LLM platform – “How would a 25-basis-point rate cut impact my short-term liquidity position?”, and receive an instant, data-driven response. In this, GenAI evolves the treasury system from a technological tool to a trusted strategic advisor able to synthesise information, make tailored recommendations, and even execute routine actions within pre-set risk parameters.

Also Read: 2026’s fintech imperative: Lend responsibly, scale smartly, and build for the long term

An example of GenAI being deployed within a treasury function is Kondor Assistant, an AI-powered chatbot that simplifies complex tasks and enhances user experience by providing intuitive and efficient access to financial data. It helps treasury professionals interact with complex financial data via a seamless and interactive GenAI-powered interface with natural language, simplifying access to insights and generating detailed reports.

Responsible AI for a regulated world

The transformative potential of GenAI within the treasury function comes with an equally important responsibility: to build and deploy it safely. Treasury operates within one of the most tightly regulated environments in BFSI, where data privacy, compliance, and operational resilience are paramount.

GenAI systems must adhere to stringent governance, transparency, and security frameworks. Every AI-generated insight must be explainable; every data access must be authorised and auditable. Treasury functions looking to deploy GenAI must ensure that data privacy controls, human oversight, and compliance-by-design principles are baked into every stage of development and eventual deployment.

Regulators in the region are already cognisant of this. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has undertaken Project Mindforge to examine risks associated with AI, and developed a toolkit to promote the fair, ethical, accountable and transparent use of AI in Singapore’s financial sector. Hong Kong’s Financial Services and Treasury Bureau (FSTB) also laid out guidelines when it comes to BFSIs deploying AI. Against the backdrop of these regulations, treasury teams must ensure their deployments are adherent to them.

Also Read: Why fintech companies should learn about customer retention from e-commerce companies

The treasury function’s new paradigm

GenAI is a game-changer in how treasurers manage complexity. As agentic AI systems mature, they are increasingly embedded across the treasury value chain, from cash and liquidity management to risk analytics and regulatory reporting.

It enables the sales trader to understand their customer better and manage order flows. The risk manager can focus on the limit exceptions and alerts identified by their assistant rather than trawling through reams of data. The operations user is able to quickly make sense of a complex trade record.

GenAI is more than automating treasury; it is augmenting it. The future belongs to treasurers who see AI not as a back-office tool but a strategic extension of their team. GenAI could help set treasury functions on a path toward a more intelligent, responsible, and proactive style of treasury management.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image credit: Canva

The post From chatbots to co-pilots: The GenAI revolution in treasury appeared first on e27.

Artificial intelligence has redefined productivity everywhere, and Southeast Asia has embraced it with exceptional speed. From Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 to big digital pushes in Malaysia and Vietnam, the region is showing what’s possible when governments, companies, and everyday people leverage AI, instead of avoiding it.

While that traction is encouraging, we’re still thinking about AI through the lens of individual optimisation: write faster, analyse better, build quicker. To realise the region’s full potential, we need to shift our focus beyond just personal productivity to collective creation. 

Collaboration matters more than ever

Innovation is a team sport. The most enduring ideas, from open-source projects to global social platforms, were built by communities that shared knowledge freely. AI should follow that same path.

Today’s systems make it super easy for an individual to generate, automate, and build – but real progress will come from how well we design for shared creativity. As we move toward more collaborative workflows with AI, the goal is to align ownership incentives so that everyone who contributes to an idea shares in the value it creates. To achieve this, we need a transparent set of principles defining who is credited, how rewards are shared, and how human input remains visible even in AI-assisted work.

From solo tools to shared systems

No-code and low-code platforms have opened doors for millions, but they also show the limits of working alone. You can prototype quickly by yourself, but this doesn’t mean the final product will be better. The real progress will happen when AI platforms focus on co-creation instead of just convenience. 

In Southeast Asia, that shift is already underway. Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 promotes cross-sector partnerships that unite government, academia, and industry. Meanwhile, innovation networks and large-scale hackathons in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam are proving that open collaboration drives faster, more inclusive growth. Together, these ecosystems offer a glimpse of what the next evolution of AI could look like: diverse, decentralised, and deeply social.

Also Read: Unchecked shadow AI poses a major cybersecurity risk for 2026: Exabeam

The next wave of progress won’t depend on better algorithms alone; it will hinge on new collaboration models that understand context, intent, and contribution. When incentives are shared, and systems are designed to recognise every input, AI becomes more than a productivity engine; it becomes a medium for creative partnership.

The case for shared credit

AI has become part of workflows in practically every sector, but the real breakthroughs come when ownership encourages participation. Open-source infrastructure like Kubernetes powers vast digital ecosystems, yet the question of ownership remains unresolved.

In this new era, tokenisation and transparent attribution systems could redefine how value flows through creative and technical ecosystems. If the industrial age divided labour to increase efficiency, the AI age must distribute credit to sustain innovation and motivation.

A regional blueprint for collective AI

As Singapore advances its AI governance agenda and neighbouring countries invest in data ecosystems and upskilling, the opportunity before Southeast Asia is clear: to lead the world in building AI that is ethical, inclusive, and collaborative.

The region’s diversity of language, talent, and perspective is its greatest strength. By designing AI systems that reward participation and transparency, Southeast Asia can model a new kind of growth: one where collaboration drives competitiveness. The future won’t be built by AI alone, and it won’t be built by individual brilliance either. It’ll emerge from communities working together, using AI tools to share ideas, track contributions, and distribute credit fairly. 

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

Enjoyed this read? Don’t miss out on the next insight. Join our WhatsApp channel for real-time drops.

Image credit: Canva

The post Beyond productivity: Building a collaborative future for AI appeared first on e27.