I recently had the incredible privilege of traveling to Thailand with a few of my fellow Wharton Alumni. As someone who spent part of their MBA journey remote and unable to partake in any global courses, the school felt we should be able to do a few of these post graduation—and they're incredible.

In my time in Hardware Engineering at Apple, I had the fortune to travel to China many, many times (more than 50 over a decade). Most people are aware of the tech talent in China, but this trip taught me that Thailand also has such a vibrant, up-and-coming tech scene.¹ Walking through downtown Bangkok, I was struck by the energy and innovation happening in spaces that most Western tech professionals rarely think about.

I couldn't help but wonder how these companies are handling global communication challenges—something close to my heart. The world is full of incredible talent, but time and distance create real barriers that technology can help overcome.

Rediscovering Global Tech Talent

Our class kicked off the experience with a discussion with Omri Morgenshtern, CEO of Agoda, a travel booking site. This engaging conversation led to several insights:

• Close to half of Agoda's workforce is in Thailand²

• You can find brilliant minds in Thailand, but many still lack experience in global markets

• A successful strategy to mitigate this current lack of experience is to bring in foreign talent to complement the local workforce and impart knowledge and best practices

One way to bring expertise into a company is to hire foreign talent and create an ex-pat community. But not all companies have the luxury of pulling in talent physically—most must rely on remote tools to bridge the gap.

And that poses a fundamental challenge: there are only so many hours in the day that overlap different time zones.

The Time Zone Challenge: A Personal Journey

That was a question that plagued me for nearly a decade during my tenure at Apple. Getting a pulse on the status of projects, code, and any blockers is critical when managing international teams: there's an urgent need to keep everyone aligned. However, this alignment causes an efficiency hit: it simply takes time.

On a typical day, I would spend an hour each morning going through messages understanding the team's work from the day before (since China was just going to bed as California was just waking up). According to a 2023 study by Asana, knowledge workers spend an average of 2.3 hours daily just searching for information they need to do their jobs.³ For global teams, this number is often higher.

It's easy to extrapolate these costs and estimate the financial impact. Let's assume an international team of 10 spends 1 hour per day either in meetings or reading and writing messages to their overseas counterparts.

Some math:

Assume a salary of $100k per employee for tech workers, and that's roughly $125k spent in overhead per year for this one team alone.

Can this be improved?

The Evolution of Global Work Technology

Listening to several technology and banking leaders speak to my class, I reflected on how far workplace technology has come—and how far it still needs to go.

Back when I first started traveling to China for Apple, our primary tools were email and the occasional phone call. International calling was expensive, and video conferencing was rudimentary at best. Today, we have a rich ecosystem of tools that have transformed how global teams collaborate.

Birth of Attrove: Turning Frustration into Innovation

😡 →💡

Sitting at breakfast overlooking Bangkok's skyline, watching all the billboards for advertisements of global corporations, the vision for Attrove crystallized in a new way for me.

I've written about Attrove's inception before, but seeing these global communication challenges play out in Thailand's rapidly growing tech ecosystem reaffirmed our mission. This global workforce organizational overhead exists across industries and takes its toll on productivity, creativity, and well-being. According to a recent study by Harvard Business Review, companies lose $62.4 million per year due to poor communication for every 100,000 employees.⁵

At Attrove, we've built an AI-powered solution that doesn't just organize communication—it distills it. Our platform analyzes messages across varied communication platforms (email, chat, and meetings) to provide concise, contextual updates about what happened while you were asleep or offline. It's like having an executive assistant who reads everything and tells you only what you need to know.

I firmly believe that advancements in AI and LLMs allow us to parse massive amounts of text faster than ever before. Conveniently, communication online consists primarily of text. Put the two together, and you have a tool that can turn an hour of email review into five minutes of focused updates.

Watching local Thai collaborate with teams across multiple time zones reinforced my conviction that this is a problem worth solving. It's not just about efficiency—it's about unlocking global talent by removing the friction of time and distance.

Empowering Smart People: Technology Should Do The Heavy Lifting

In Thailand, I saw first-hand people who were solving complex problems for global clients but spending too much of their time fighting various apps and communicating constantly. This isn't unique to Thailand—it's a global phenomenon.

Empowering talented individuals is a cornerstone of organizational success. By fostering an environment that reduces friction and promotes strategic thinking, companies can unlock the full potential of their workforce.

Technology should handle the heavy lifting of information processing, freeing human minds to focus on creativity, innovation, and strategic thinking. When we reduce the cognitive load of context-switching and information-gathering, we allow people to operate at their highest level of contribution.

At Attrove, we're focused on transitioning teams from routine status updates to strategic thinking. Our platform helps employees focus on long-term goals and the bigger picture by automatically handling the mundane but necessary task of information organization. As business strategist Roger Martin notes, encouraging critical thinking helps individuals analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information, leading to more informed decision-making.⁶

Conclusion

Was flying halfway across the world for a few days worth it? Absolutely, if for nothing more than to experience a new culture and perspective.

It was eye-opening to see first-hand the economic expansion happening in Thailand (BTW, One Bangkok is incredible—a $3.5 billion mixed-use development that will become the largest private real estate development in Thailand when completed).

But more importantly, my time there rekindled my conviction that organizational AI has tremendous potential to reduce the communication challenges inherent in a global workforce. Seeing the vibrant ecosystem emerging in Bangkok was inspiring; what wasn’t so great was seeing people facing the same challenges I encountered at Apple nearly 2 decades ago. This confirmed that we're building something truly valuable at Attrove—and solving a problem that still exists.

The future of work isn't just about better video calls or chat apps—it's about intelligent systems that understand how humans communicate and help us do it more effectively across time zones, languages, and cultures.

If you're struggling with global team communication and spending too much time just staying updated, I'd love to hear from you. We're looking to help, and your input is invaluable as we refine our solution.

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Sources:

1. Exciting Technology Update of Thailand

2. Thai Prime Minister's Visit to Agoda Supports Thailand's Vision to Become Asia's Next Silicon Valley

3. The Anatomy of Work Index 2023

4. The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies

5. The Cost of Poor Communications

6. Management Models