HBS123's Profile

Thank you for the post, Iryna. I find the concept of OPN to be fascinating. It reminds me of a consumer version of the Coke Freestyle machines that are installed in restaurants. These machines have the ability to automatically reorder necessary inputs (http://www.me.gatech.edu/featured_ccfreestyle) without any manual intervention creating tremendous value for business owners. It will be interesting to see if this model is as valuable to consumers.

Thank you for the post, Gloria. I think the used car market creates tremendous friction but until recently there haven’t been effective platform businesses that have developed. Beepi seems to be a good example of a failure in the space. In reading your post, it seems like the two issues with Beepi were how logistically intense their business model was (i.e. high cost) and the value proposition they offered to sellers was relatively weak. Two businesses that seem to have done a better job of creating platforms in the space are Carmax and Carvana. Carvana has created a business model built around reducing friction for sellers that has allowed them to scale quickly.

Great post. I think the entertainment industry is at a really interesting point in time. It feels like Disney is gearing up to launch a service that would compete directly with Netflix and Amazon in the coming years. As you point, ensuring that the organization is aligned behind this strategy will be critical. Disney clearly has the content, distribution, and brand necessary to create a successful business in this field but what they don’t have is an aligned organizational structure or the collection of data that Netflix has been able to refine over the last decade+.

Thank you for the post Zach. I think you pointed out something that is easily looked over with many of these big data strategies, which is they need to be effectively implemented. In the case of the Rockets, that means having James Harden and two other players that are in the top 25 in the league in true shooting %. More broadly, ensuring that learning from data analytics can be applied in context effectively is extremely important and where many of these promising application of data fall down.

Interesting post. One main question stands out for me: Is this technology mandated by insurance companies? It would seem that if not, offering this technology would only reduce profitability of an insurance company as the only people that would adopt this product are those that are currently overpaying premiums based on their risk demographics.

Thank you for the post. Some of those figures are incredible, especially, “every 1% increase in engagement leads to a 0.6% increase in revenues and 58% lower churn cost.” That is a lot of real economic benefit that you can bring to your company by increasing engagement. I am interested to understand how consistent the methods of improving employee engagement are across companies. Understanding that would go a long way towards understanding how scalable this business is. In addition, do you know how effective they are at understanding causation for low engagement in an organization?

Thanks for writing this post. Ultimately, by aggregating some much data from crowds with different perpsectives, Rotten Tomatoes should, in most cases, provide an accurate picture of both quality and enjoyability of any given movies. Rather than complaining about the impact Rotten Tomatoes might have on a movie release, it would seem that studios should focus on improving the quality of their product to ensure that Rotten Tomatoes, and similar services, act as an endorser of their product.

This is a really interesting form of crowdsourcing similar to the marketing company we studied in class. It seems like Squadhelp has built out a nice tiered pricing structure that allows businesses to choose the level of service that works for them. As you point out, differentiation is principally achieved through value add of the creative submissions. It seems to me that adding a filtering algorithm that weeds out off the wall submissions as well as those that have already been trademarked, would be an extremely valuable tool that wouldn’t be all that costly to build. Additionally, it would seem that the “star” system should be used to rank submissions of creatives in future contests, therefore incentivizing quality submissions, even if it ultimately wasn’t the right fit for any one contest. Finally, it would seem that allowing creatives to provide feedback on the quality of the information they are provided in order to come up with the name and logo would help improve the ecosystem.

Thank you for the post. Is there any learning’s from the PGA experience that can be leveraged to improve other uses of crowds to improve an outcome? While we can debate the usefulness of fans sinking the chances of a PGA professional based on TV footage, it seems that their may be a way to channel this logic in other ways. I wonder if you came across any similar, more useful ways of using an active audience to improve a process or outcome.

Thank you for the post. I think Peloton is one of the early movers in finding ways to create platforms that expand venues with fixed capacity. In a similar way to Uber and AirBnB are building platforms that leverage underutilized capacity in their respective markets, Peloton is taking what used to be a studio with a fixed capacity and expanding that capacity fairly cheaply. I know that stadiums are looking into this concept as well in trying to see how to expand the live, in-game experience to fans not able to attend in person because of capacity constraints.

Great post. I am a huge fan of SeatGeek. In a competitive market with parties that are incentived to multi-home, SeatGeek has created a product that is cheaper and more user friendly because of the transparency provided by the deal scoring algorithm. If they are able to complete some of the initiatives you discuss in your post above, I believe they will continue to compete well against the established players such as Ticketmaster and StubHub.

James thank you for the post. I agree with Laura’s confusion regarding how ClassPass will be able to sustain their retention. Not only on the membership side but also on the fitness studio side. I also observed the price increase a couple years ago in reaction to studios dropping the number of class spots they listed on the platform, or dropping off the platform entirely. As members dropped in reaction to studios dropping and simultaneous price increases, you saw ClassPass react with severe price discounting tactics aimed at retaining the membership base that provides the value that attracts studios to the platform. As you discussed in your post, it seems like the credit based method is an interesting strategy but may only reinforce a downward spiral of consumer leaving the platform and eroding value for studios.

I am surprised to learn that Marriott is performing well given the increased competition from substitute products such as Airbnb. Is Marriott an outlier in the industry? The new technology rooms seem like an innovative feature – it will be interesting to see how guests feel about these innovations.

Thank you for the post, Quinn. This is certainly an interesting dynamic. Do you think Amazon is willing to make the investment necessary to win in the early 2020s? Maybe a better question is ESPN willing to lose at any price given, as you point out, that the business model is so reliant on live sports?

Great post, Rob. I have never heard of Asos or Boohoo and wasn’t aware of the impact that these business models are having on companies such as H&M. Do you think these new pure digital business models will be able to scale well enough to become category leaders?