I recently attended the 2024 Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit in Rogers Oct. 28-29; here’s what stood out.
The summit had four main focus areas: retail value chain, health tech, smart mobility and emerging technologies.
While this somewhat limited the content, it did allow for a deeper look into the innovation in some of the region’s most prominent industries.
With the event’s agenda claiming that northwest Arkansas is “the global capital of the retail value chain,” that focus took a front seat at the summit, with more panels devoted to it than to any of the other areas.
The key takeaway from the retail value chain track?
It’s time to use artificial intelligence to make retail easier and more efficient.
That’s something that featured companies like Walmart Inc., Sam’s Club, Ox and Nuqleous, all of Bentonville, as well as Field Agent of Fayetteville, are already doing.
Summit speakers said AI can do everything from streamlining warehouse operations and organizing shelf space to eliminating data analysis jobs while creating new “prompt engineer” roles.
But the summit also featured panels discussing value-based health care, rural health care access, mobility solutions like drones, autonomous vehicles and advanced manufacturing, as well as fintech, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
A few panels discussed taking companies from startups to scale, as well as attracting more startups to the region. As far as health tech goes, speakers focused on using technology to meet the health care demands of the region’s growing population, as well as increasing “omnichannel” health care by integrating available health care channels like hospitals, outpatient clinics and telemedicine into one platform.
Smart mobility was also heavily featured at the summit, with the opening keynote from Shelley Simpson, president and CEO of J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, discussing innovation and startup culture at legacy companies. Dennis Anderson, chief strategy and innovation officer at ArcBest of Fort Smith, featured Vaux, the company’s autonomous forklift system.
And Arkansas is emerging as a leader in drone technology. Walmart is one of the biggest drivers of drone development in the world, second only to the war in Ukraine.
While the conference offered valuable insights from industry juggernauts like Simpson and Anderson, talks featuring lesser-known companies were what stood out to me.
My favorite panel of the summit was Hidden Gems: Six Under-the-Radar Companies You Should Know About. UpSquad of Memphis and Ask Steve of Bella Vista, as well as FR8relay, Gratsy, Font Awesome and Flowfeed, all of Bentonville, were the six featured “hidden gems.”
Each company was from a different business sector, from web development to transportation, and each panelist gave a five-minute presentation of their business before answering audience questions.
The panelists’ attitudes exemplified the startup and entrepreneurship culture that has attracted so many companies to northwest Arkansas recently.
Overall, the summit highlighted not just the technological advances of northwest Arkansas’ established companies, but also the innovative startups that are increasingly showing up in the region and the state.
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