The Best of the Best of CES 2017: An Unusual Compilation

Along with 170,000 other people, I am fresh back from CES 2017. Before I left, I had some idea of what to expect there. I had three missions during the show. One was to shoot some video with our partners at CNET for our continued focus on Smart Home tech. One mission was to look more broadly at trends that may affect our company’s (Travelers) contribution to making a safer world for our customers and communities. That includes new marketing ideas. The final mission was to look more broadly at ideas and how people are pursuing innovations that may matter in small and large ways. And I also get to peek at cool concept cars like the one above from Toyota.

But CES 2017 is a big show - 2.47 million net square feet, traffic slowdowns that make jumping between venues an hour-long adventure, and a ton of hustle that makes recognizing the important ideas in the forest of pitches just plain hard.

Here are three round-ups from different smart sources and what they saw there. Each delivers a different POV that adds value and goes beyond the same old product list.

Follow the Money: Top 10 from CB Insights

CB Insights make it easy to see inside the black box of investment and get a sense of where investors are placing their bets. Presuming that many of these venture capitalists, corporate investors and bankers are analytical and thoughtful in their rigor, these choices may reflect where smart money goes. That may include Netatmo and its home weather station.

Smart Home Deep Dive: A Way to Analyze Companies from CNET

We would work with the gang at CNET so I have gotten to know their smart insights from Brian Cooley’s view on tech and automotive to Rich Brown’s hands-on knowledge from running the CNET Smart Home. Here is a great POV from Executive Editor Rich Brown on how to think about how “smart” many of the smart home contenders are.

Sharp Design: 10 Coolest Products from Wired

I love that Wired even focuses on design. Here @Lizstins covers products that have some authentic design excellence. That type of curation is hugely valuable as great design is one predictor of user adoption and business success.

(the photo is from Amy Lombard for Wired; she does a terrific job)