Strategy of Things (SoT) is an AI and emerging technology firm helping mid-market companies turn real business problems into real AI outcomes. We specialize in CAIO-as-a-Service — a modern approach that blends expert guidance, rapid experimentation, and practical execution to make AI adoption simpler, faster, and far less risky.

We are business-first, outcomes-focused, and built for the realities of mid-market organizations. Our mission is simple:
Help companies unlock the value of AI without the hype, complexity, or chaos.

Before AI, we built our reputation in IoT, smart devices, and emerging technologies — advising Fortune 500s, government agencies, and global organizations on how to use early-stage tech responsibly and at scale.

From smart cities to industrial IoT to early machine learning systems, we learned valuable truths:

• Emerging technologies evolve faster than organizations can absorb

• Most failures happen not in the technology, but in planning, operations, and integration

• Pilots are easy to start but hard to get right

• Scaling requires strong governance, realistic expectations, and practical execution

• Mid-market organizations need simpler, faster pathways to innovation

These lessons prepared us perfectly for today’s AI landscape — where the technology moves weekly, risks are unclear, standards don’t exist, and organizations struggle to separate signal from noise.

As the next wave of innovation arrived, we evolved with it.
Today, AI is our focus — and helping mid-market companies adopt it safely, efficiently, and pragmatically is our purpose.

We believe the best AI partners are the ones who do the work themselves.

That’s why we launched SoT AI — our internal initiative to become an AI-native company.

We are using AI across our business to improve how we think, operate, and deliver:

• SoT Company GPT trained on our frameworks, research, and methodologies

• Agent-based “digital workers” for research, content assembly, and workflow support

• AI-integrated processes for advisory, planning, and service delivery

• Continuous field intelligence from weekly practitioner learnings

We are deliberate and focused. We prioritize the AI capabilities that will meaningfully transform our operations — not experimentation for its own sake.

As we learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to operationalize AI reliably, we incorporate those insights directly into the services we deliver to clients.

Our transformation strengthens yours.

We’re a small, senior team built for depth, not volume. SoT is led by founders Benson Chan and Renil Paramel—recognized experts in IoT, innovation, and emerging technologies with over two decades of experience helping organizations adopt and operationalize new technologies in the real world.

Our background is shaping the future.
Long before today’s AI wave, we were working at the intersection of data, devices, connectivity, automation, and human-in-the-loop systems. We’ve helped enterprises:

• Stand up IoT platforms before IoT had standards

• Conduct field pilots and multi-city deployments

• Integrate early-stage technologies into mission-critical operations

• Manage risk, reliability, and scaling challenges

• Build internal capability for technologies that were still maturing

This matters now more than ever.
Generative AI is following the same trajectory as IoT did: immature, fast-evolving, unstandardized, and full of unknowns. Our experience managing earlier waves of emerging tech gives us a significant advantage in navigating AI’s uncertainty—from experimentation through operationalization.

Yes, we are early in our AI journey as a company.
And we’re transparent about that. But we bring:

• A proven track record of making emerging technologies work in the real world

• A deep understanding of mid-market operational realities

• The ability to turn new tech into usable, scalable solutions

• A methodical way to evaluate use cases, manage risk, and deliver outcomes

We’re not a large consulting factory.
You won’t be handed off to juniors.
The people you see here are the people doing the work—experienced operators who have done this before, just in a different emerging technology era.

If you want a team that combines credible experience, hands-on execution, and a pragmatic mindset, that’s who we are.