MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE 2017…. rohit-prasad
Rohit Prasad
For
leading the voice-controlled revolution
Rohit Prasad and Toni Reid have turned Alexa,
the always-listening virtual assistant that’s built in to Amazon’s Echo
devices, into a category-defining consumer experience. Now, to stay
ahead of competing technologies at Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft,
they are finding clever ways to make Alexa both smarter
and ubiquitous. In early 2017, they helped bring Alexa’s voice-powered
technology to the iPhone and Ford vehicles. They rolled out cheaper alternatives to
the $180 Echo—the $130 Tap and the $50 Echo Dot—and expanded into the U.K.
and Germany. They also enabled developers’ creativity, building a platform that
has inspired programmers to create more than 10,000 voice-controlled
“skills,” such as getting WebMD health insights, Capital One balance info, and
language translation. “When we launched, Alexa only had 13 skills,” Reid says.
Key to their success, they say, is giving their teams room to dream—“[We do]
not get mired down in, How can this be done?” Reid says—and the discipline to
kill or delay rolling out features that aren’t ready for market. “There’s
a trust between us,” says Prasad, who develops the brains of
Alexa while Reid focuses on its relationship to the customer, “over what
the technology can and can’t do.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/person/rohit-prasad
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