Angela Zhang's Profile

Wow, this is a really cool concept. I think you’re right to point out that there is a big difference between predicting when an item is going to be purchased and predicting when a specific person will make a purchase and when. But even if they can predict that someone in Cambridge, MA will buy this product, ship it to the nearest warehouse, and show that there is 1 day or same day delivery to all customers in that area, it could really create an convenience advantage. It would certainly cut into the value proposition for apps like Favor and Google Express, which I think some people use for products they could get on Amazon but after 2 days.

I agree with Jennifer that HBS should totally switch to this model over using scribes. But I’m not sure I understand how Minerva is able to provide better rankings for critical thinking, creativity, communications, and interpersonal effectiveness. My understanding is that Minerva just provides the tools for recording and a platform for teachers to more easily grade their students and call effectively in class. But how does this translate to ranking/comparing effectiveness across schools? Because Minerva is not actually doing the actual grading across institutions, and I’m still not sure how it shows how student at institution A compares to institution B on creativity and critical thinking. Also, although skills are an important part of university education, knowledge and exposure to new ideas is also a critical part of studies, and I’m not sure how their platform facilitates transfer of those aspects of higher education.

I definitely agree that we need to leverage data better to predict health outbreaks. I am curious how much initial data Bitscopic needs in order to prove out their concept. It seems like the real value from this comes from having huge scale. But as in the typical network problem, how to do convince governments and hospitals to join the network and share EHR data before you’ve been able to show that you’ve identified an outbreak faster and more accurately because you didn’t have scale? If they are just using social media and search in the beginning, then it seems like it’s too similar to the Google Flu Trends methodology.

I really enjoyed your post, Ximena! I agree with GA that the case method tends to work better with folks who have experience and it might be better suited for social sciences. I do think though that some of this can be overcome by the teachers assigning the students to do research on the topic before the case discussion. For example, if the case were on the creation of the US Constitution, the students could spend a few weeks reading/learning about the different points of view that the writers of the Constitution held at the time.

Very interesting post. I wonder whether there is any adverse selection for physicians who have less busy practices and who therefore have more time to respond to questions. Although some physicians who are less busy may choose this purposefully, others may be more inexperienced, causing them to be more free. I’m also curious about the breakdown of the physicians on the platform geographically. The $5-25 bonus seems low for the developing world. I can imagine SERMO raising this for the developing world as they become more profitable and can afford to pay their physicians more in an effort to incentive participation.

Really cool post! I agree with JP that eventually Julep may need to provide incentives for the mavens, particularly because I think it’s likely that most of the input that the mavens provide through the process won’t turn into something tangible in the market. For example, after a year, only 1 product has come out of IdeaLab. For those people who didn’t contribute to the product that the company selects to go to market, it can get fatiguing to contribute on their time and feel like their input always ends up not being used.

Thanks for the interesting post Emilie and KMY for writing exactly what I was thinking as I read it! I actually wonder if big data advertising is actually the right background for understanding how to harness the data. Advertising seems pretty far removed from improving healthcare delivery and drug development, and ultimately those must be some of the big goals for what to do with the data.

Very interesting! You mention that CaterCow has been able to differentiate themselves from larger players such as Seamless and exCater by being very small business friendly. I wonder if this strategy has worked so far because the larger companies have not tried very hard in this niche. I am a little concerned that there will be a lot of multihoming if the larger companies do attack in a significant way, and because of the prevalence of Seamless for example in other delivery jobs, users will be more willing to switch platforms.

Thanks for the post! I’m curious how sticky Snapchat is after students leave school and move into the workplace, which is also when they have a steady income and greater buying power. I had seen an article about Facebook having lower penetration in younger demographics (e.g. high school students) but that they were not concerned about it. I imagine that graduates may start to move towards Facebook, which may be an easier way to stay in touch with people who are in far flung places. On Facebook the grads can choose to engage with their network more sporadically but also deeply through looking through new photos/their timeline updates since the last time they crossed them on the platform. As the students’s networks grow larger, it may just be difficult to keep up with tons and tons of snaps every day.

I also agree with you that the rise in digital creation and consumption will make paper communications rarer and rarer. However, I wonder if some of what Google docs and Microsoft 365 is holding on to is not so much paper but a common standard by which business people and students find efficient and convenient to create and consume content. For example, I think the form of ppt slides serves to allow presenters to focus on one idea at a time before moving on to the next. As Rob C. says, what would be really neat is for Quip to think about how we can better communicate given that we don’t have the constraint of paper. Until they find something that is more effective than the “old” ways of presenting or writing memos to each other, I can imagine inertia causing people to stay with the old methods.

I think Curriculum Associates is definitely onto something, especially as students and teachers become more tech savvy. I wonder also what the subscription pricing means for the customers, the schools. I can imagine actually that as tablets become cheaper and cheaper, it could be cheaper for schools to pay for 1 tablet and 1 subscription to Curriculum Associates per child than buying books. It would be interesting to see what the prices would need to be in order for the products to make financial sense for schools with limited budgets.

Hi hawkeye, really like this post! I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Cogito? It’s doing something related but with voice instead of video. Cogito analyzes voice for behaviorial data and then looks for usable information about the speaker. I actually think it could be interesting if the two companies worked together.