Help For Small Merchants

Business is changing, quickly, and small to mid-size businesses in particular are looking for new tools that will keep them competitive as we start to integrate the fruits of AI into our business models.
We've been hearing quite a bit about how this works at MIT.
Some of this is on display at the Lincoln Laboratory, for example, with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.
But we're also hearing from researchers about innovations in the private sector.
For example, Christian Umbach of Autopilot talked about the development of autonomous agents for e-commerce. Noting the existence of some 7 million brands selling on Amazon, he characterized the bulk of them as 'digital mom and pop shops' that are simply trying to stay competitive.
'It's a hell of a job, because you have to deal about everything from logistics to product listings to advertising,' he said, explaining that the company wants to build fully automated systems for small to midsize users. According to his numbers, these implementations deliver a 20% increase in sales with this automation.
'For us at Autopilot, it's critical to empower these small and medium enterprises,' Ubach said. 'They're the backbone of our economies, and we can make them more independent by using automation and AI to actually help them drive more profits, and balance the playing field with companies like Amazon … a small merchant would never in the world have the ability to compete on an AI level.'
That's a little about how outside parties can assist smaller merchants, the small shops that populate broader levels of the U.S. economy, but what about some other solutions?
Daphne Pariser, PhD, is the CEO and cofounder of Heron AI, a firm that is building AI tools for business.
'I believe that entrepreneurs change the world, but I believe that entrepreneurship should have fewer barriers to changing the world,' she said at a recent IIA event. 'I believe that analytic software shouldn't be a barrier. In fact, it should be so easy to use, anybody can use it and walk away empowered to make data-driven decisions about their business to help it grow.'
She explained how the offerings helps with tasks like the handling of unpaid invoices, assisting startups in breaking through barriers.
Those are good ideas, but what else goes into assisting business?
There's this Lincoln Lab licensing program that helps with a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) where a federally funded research institution partners with private sector stakeholders. The site provides this list of relevant research areas: autonomous systems and robotics, synthetic biology, energy, quantum computing, advanced electronics and sensors, and cybersecurity. You can also view eligibility data and more.
That's a little about what MIT is doing, but that's not all. On this blog, and elsewhere, I am chronicling a lot of the helpful insights and program introductions we are hearing from all of our expert speakers, in town and at far-away conferences, throughout each year. There are many education-related things happening, too, to help the new generation survive the mammoth changes that are to come. So stay tuned.

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