Seven Israeli and Israeli-founded companies were among over 400 firms featured by US business magazine Fast Company on its annual "World's Most Innovative Companies" for 2019. The monthly publication's editors and writers said they sought out groundbreaking businesses across 35 industries in every world region, listing the top 10 in 41 categories such as AI, Biotech, Branding, Health, Robotics, Food, Security, and Middle East, for a total of 410 organizations. Fast Company also released its annual "50 Most Innovative Companies" but no Israeli firms made that list. In 2018, Israeli-founded navigational app Waze was featured in the top 50 alongside giants such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify, and Israel had its own category with 10 top startups. An additional 5 Israeli companies and startups were featured in other categories.

TD's own Brett Henry will be presenting at ITB Asia in Singapore on 17 October. Henry will interview guests Ken Kuguru, managing director, Asia Pacific at Egencia (based out of Singapore), and Samantha Williams, regional director, account management Asia Pacific at Travelport. They will talk about how the inevitable advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), combined with the already-mainstream use of big data,will affect our industry, with a focus on corporate / business travel. Egencia together with its global alliance partners cover 15 countries in Asia Pacific with Egencia dedicated points of sale in China, India, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand. Kuguru is focused on driving growth throughout the region and optimizing technology and innovation to enhance the customer experience.

Egencia has been taking a look at how technology such as artificial intelligence will effect the corporate travel world in the near, medium and long-term. Alongside Phocuswright, the Expedia-owned travel management company has put together a white paper entitled the "Emerging Tech-Driven Corporate Travel Revolution." The study provides a current state of the nation look as regards technologies such as AI, machine learning, Natural Language Processing and chatbots in business travel as well as looking further out. In three years time, for example, the research predicts AI will be embedded in corporate travel in terms of how data is used to make for smarter, more efficient travel and improved compliance. Natural language processing and chatbots are not expected to be fully embedded at this early stage.