2024 Innovation Award: Evan Kraus, APCO Worldwide

Congratulations to Evan Kraus and APCO Worldwide on winning the Page Up Innovation Award!

At this year's Page Up Annual Conference in Boston, we were thrilled to present the Innovation Award to Evan Kraus and APCO Worldwide for their development of the AI platform "Margy".

In his acceptance speech, Evan shared APCO's innovative approach to harnessing the collective expertise and wisdom of their employees worldwide. Rather than just focusing on the latest AI and technology tools, Evan explained how APCO is using Margy to amplify the deep industry knowledge and specialized skills of their team The name is a nod to APCO’s founder and executive chairman, Margery Kraus.

"The reason we named it Margy is it's a signal to what we think about value. Margery represents, as the founder of our firm, the collective wisdom of our 40 years and our 1,200 people," Evan said. "Margy is the AI manifestation of that collective wisdom."

Evan described how APCO trained Margy's language models using input from their subject matter experts across different markets, sectors, and disciplines. This allows APCO to provide clients with a "live interface" that taps into that accumulated expertise, rather than just producing static reports.

Evan's speech highlighted the importance of harnessing human expertise and experience, not just relying on technology alone. His vision for how APCO is using AI to enhance their advisory services, rather than replace their people, was inspiring. "We get to think about new ways of aggregating that knowledge, applying it and tuning it and improving it over time," Evan shared. "And so we get to think about adding exciting pieces to things like we always have in terms of bringing in talent that the companies can't hire internally because there's not enough demand for it consistently."

During the award ceremony, Evan was shown an AI-rendered interpretation of how he created Margy, prompted with the help of Page staff.

Congratulations again to Evan and the entire APCO team on this well-deserved recognition! We're excited to see how Page Up members continue to innovate and set a new standard for the industry.

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