Research to Real-World Impact: Building Scalable Strategy

Carl Livadas oversees Sojern’s technology organization, including  engineering, data science, applied science, machine learning, AI, and site reliability engineering. A former researcher turned entrepreneur, he applies data, algorithms, and machine learning to build innovative products, enhance advertising efficiency, and fuel sustained business growth.

The Journey That Shaped a Role

Building on my undergraduate and graduate studies, I started my career in research labs where I worked on applying algorithms and machine learning techniques to improve cyber-attack detection and mitigation applications. The work was fulfilling because I was working on the tip of the spear research, work that would define the future of the industry. However, in research back then, the time from proof-of-concept to mainstream impact was prolonged, and I was getting antsy because I wanted my work to have a more immediate impact.

Leaving pure research behind me, I decided to switch to industry, and I joined Kayak. Kayak fostered an environment of innovation and intentional  focus on customer experience and performance, and I was eager to leverage data, algorithms, and ML to improve customer experience and optimize performance. The best part was that at Kayak, the time from idea to production feature was lightning fast. At Kayak, we went from idea to production feature in days or weeks, whereas in research it was quarters or years.

After Kayak, I stayed in the adtech ecosystem, mainly because where there’s a lot of data, there’s a lot of opportunity to make an impact through the application of algorithms and machine learning. When the opportunity came to move to Sojern, it was an easy decision. On one hand, travel is both relatable and tangible–most of us do it. On the other, Sojern has a lot of data that it leverages, using algorithms and machine learning to build great features and products that help clients advertise more effectively online. It’s a vibrant, innovative company whose products not only help our clients maximize their marketing ROI, but also help travelers discover, plan, and book their trips.

Turning Traveler Signals into Long-Term Strategy

Sojern is a leader in helping clients with their overall digital marketing efforts, and we are always looking to distill day-to-day learnings into longer-term business strategy.

Since I joined Sojern nine years ago, we’ve focused on building a  platform to support all of our clients, from large corporate or destination clients all the way down to small mom-and-pop hotels. To do that, we’ve leveraged day-to-day learnings to build a travel-centric marketing platform whose features not only push the boundary of what’s possible but also are robust across client sizes. We employ a tight cycle of ideation, proof-of-concept, and then broader roll-out, and leverage testing to validate the efficacy of the  features or products we deliver.  Our rigorous testing provides the data we need to make educated decisions and to shape not only our features but our products and the business overall.

How to Spot Alliances That Matter

The partnerships that truly move the needle are those that enhance platform performance, scalability, and efficiency through automation. Automation is critical because it allows us to step away from day-to-day operational headaches and focus on building new features and products that move our business forward.  Moreover, automation enables rapid iteration, which in my mind is key to success in the tech world.

  At Kayak, we went from idea to production feature in days or weeks, whereas in research it was quarters or years.  

When evaluating partnerships, I work closely with our product leadership to assess whether partnerships have the capacity to improve performance, scalability, or efficiency. For example, in our property line of business, any solution we implement must support thousands of clients. Keeping these end goals in mind helps us focus on partnerships that are both scalable and impactful.

Permanent Shifts and Enduring Truths in Strategy

With the rise of cloud environments and the recent GenAI wave, the biggest shift is that the timeframe to bring products or features to market is faster and cheaper than ever before. We no longer have to spend money on infrastructure; we simply procure it, and with GenAI, it’s becoming increasingly simple to achieve system-to-system integrations and to effortlessly leverage data and capabilities to synthesize complex capabilities. Thanks to the cloud and GenAI, it takes less time to develop a proof-of-concept, and the speed at which we can operate has materially changed the manner in which we strategize, plan, and adjust our roadmaps. Instead of spending time projecting whether a particular product will work, we can build it quickly to see if it will satisfy the need, and iterate from there. We’re much nimbler now than ever, and I believe the cycles of innovation and development will only get shorter.

Regarding what has stayed stubbornly the same, in some sectors, the prior investments in legacy technologies can be difficult to supplant with new ones. This has historically been the case in travel as well, and although innovation in the sector is currently high, the ability to swap out legacy technologies remains tricky. The glimmer of hope here, or maybe even a blaze of hope, may be GenAI technologies, such as MCP or agent-centric approaches, as they may facilitate integrations and migrations in a way that facilitates the adoption of the latest and greatest solutions with minimal impact to the day-to-day.

When Performance Becomes Truly Strategic

The difference between scalable, strategic impact, and short-term performance is the amount of leverage we get from developing a particular product or feature. It’s easy to get caught up in developing features for specific clients, but we must think about how what we build can apply to broader segments of clients. It’s certainly a balance because we must also focus on our existing clients, but we can’t lose sight of the return we’re getting on our development efforts. At the end of the day, the long-term ROI has to be there.

That said, many of the technologies that we use  today afford us the ability to build generic features and products that are then personalized to each client in automated ways. For example, we use algorithms and machine learning to build solutions that are personalized for clients, but that personalization is done using ML techniques that are generically built into our platform.

Here’s an example: When employing targeting strategies, we use ML to build an audience to be targeted. The process of building the ML-based audience is fixed, but ML tailors that audience to the specific client because it’s based on the client’s data, so the customization is being done automatically. Again, it goes back to building features and products that apply to broad sets of clients and that are scalable. Rather than being over-specialized, they are configurable and can be leveraged for a broad range of clients.

Leading Strategy in Fast-Moving Markets

Balancing tactical needs with long-term strategy is difficult because you can’t ignore the immediate work, but staying consistently focused on how to get leverage and maximize ROI is what ultimately moves the business forward. By continually asking how today’s efforts contribute to building for the future, you make incremental progress toward more scalable, strategic outcomes. If you don’t have that consistent focus, you will always make exceptions. Once you start making exceptions, you’ll consistently focus on tactical issues and solutions, which mean you won’t get the ROI you need, and you’ll have lost the battle.

As part of this paradigm, it's important to celebrate strategic wins. Strategic focus often requires taking educated risks and sacrificing short-term gains, and recognizing successes in strategy reinforces the value of the riskier strategic decisions and strengthens the conviction needed to continue to take them. While nurturing individual client relationships remains essential, it’s critical to think more broadly so you understand which client segments a solution serves and then stay disciplined about building toward that larger need.