Kanako Sakai's Profile

Thanks Jibran for an interesting post! It seems like a great way to improve sales skills on the spot. I was wondering how they gather diverse set of data to make sure that the algorithm is not biased. The way people express their emotion is different by culture or by gender or by other kinds of background, so I wondered if the algorithm captures such subtle differences.

Thanks Kyle for an interesting blog post! I was just wondering if designers and urban planners would like this product or not. It reminded me of the Watson case we had in the class and how doctors didn’t like the product because they can do their work without a help of AI and I wondered if it applies in this case or not. As you said, AI may not be a great way to come up with something very creative and so I thought the designers and urban planners would not want to rely on the product so much even if they are facing lots of pressure to cut costs.

Thanks John for an interesting article! It seems like a great product for an unsigned musicians who do not have necessary resources to produce and distribute their music.

I was wondering how the company is making money. Are they charging the musicians? If so, can they charge enough since the unsigned musicians’ willingness to pay must be pretty low?

Also how would they be able to differentiate themselves from other distributing channel, like YouTube or other channels? I wonder if the listeners also have to be on the platform and if that number is still smaller than that of YouTube or other channels, it might be difficult for them to attract musicians to deploy their product to distribute the music.

Thanks, Bruno, for sharing your insider knowledge! It was very interesting how the company focused heavily on big data from the beginning. Do you think that the company has already leveraged its analytics capability to improve its products at the maximum level, or do you think there are still rooms to further leverage bid data analysis, maybe expanding to other products or market?

Thanks, Max, for the very interesting article! I am just wondering how successfully Starbucks was able to attract new customers with their initiatives with big data. It definitely added a lot of value to existing customers but was it enough to pull customers who like other coffee shops? Also, I wonder what would happen (or maybe is already happening) if competitors start to do the same things with big data. In a such setting, what would be the real competitive advantage? Would it go back to the basic things such as the quality of the coffee?

Thanks for sharing the post! I have been a member of the Pampers Club since my son was born and really liked many features, especially its reward program. It did indeed make me stick to the brand for the entire time! It was interesting to know that the platform was monetizing on advertising. It now totally make sense why Pampers was completely fine providing discounts for users.

I wonder whether other brands have similar apps. If so, why Pampers was so successful in gaining so much users on its app?

Thanks for sharing the article! It is super interesting how they create values for women on the platform by building a community while monetizing in B2B business. I wonder what made them so successful in keeping their users stick to the platform and making them engaged.

Thanks for sharing a very interesting post, Vikram! It is quite surprising that the company extended their service into more professional networking. I wonder how they were able to build two completely different brand images, dating and professional, at the same time.

Thanks Pranav for the comment! Yes, we indeed learned the lesson first hand!
I agree that the business model is copyable to some extent. It seems that the competitors (e.g., Indiagogo, GoFundMe) have similar model, i.e., charging transaction fee to those created a project. Potential differences maybe that they are focusing on different genres, have different funding model (all-or-nothing vs get whatever you gathered), and have different reward model (equity vs reward) etc. So it seems that different players are pursuing different strategy here.

It is amazing to see how people are starting to get used to study in a digital format due to the pandemic. I personally feel that whether these online education companies will survive or not would depend on whether they would be able to somehow collaborate with actual schools. When students are back in school physically, most of their time would be spent at school and they would probably spend less time studying at home. This means that if the company only try to get individual customers, then it is likely that many of them would just stop using the product. So, it seems very important that the company build a good relationship with schools so that they can potentially sell their products to these schools. By doing so, it will be able to capture more value and may even be able to provide better products for free for individual customers.

Very interesting case and I must say that A LOT of my friends started to play Animal Crossing during the pandemic! It was surprising to know that other companies weren’t capturing the value as much as Nintendo. It makes a lot of sense that people are choosing games that they can play with family, instead of something ones they play on their own.

I also have a sense that Nintendo did a quite good job of incorporating fitness into games. By doing so, the company succeeded in transforming the image of playing games from something “unhealthy” to something “healthy”. It has really worked well in the pandemic as people have been focusing more on their wellbeing and more people wanted to have a way to be healthy while having fun.

Interesting case! The pandemic definitely pushed companies to overcome their fear of having signatures done in a digital format. I agree that most companies will continue using the product with the all reasons you mentioned.

As Christina is saying, one biggest risk DicuSign is facing is definitely the security of its system. What happens if someone hacks a senior executive’s account and upload signature, and as the result the company pursues with a plan which wouldn’t have proceeded without the digital signature? Who will be responsible for that? Once this kind of incidence happens (even once!), I guess the trust will quickly disappear.