Pranav Gupta's Profile

Thanks Merrill. It is interesting you mention crowd management as the company has recently used their software and applied it to manage the movement of goods in factories ensuring that they arrive on time and in the most effective manner possible!

I have used the company’s augmented reality app that allows you to place virtual furniture in real-time in your very own house and think it truly is a game changer. They took one of the most common pain points of furniture buying, dimension taking and making sure the furniture will fit, and turned into a easy to use and very interactive experience for the user. The app, I am sure is also generating a lot of data that can feedback into the product design loop. This certainly changed my perception of IKEA as a legacy furniture store to a futuristic cutting-edge company.

Thanks for a really interesting post! I thought it was interesting that Spotify built its machine learning capabilities through a series of acquisitions rather than develop in-house talent. Moreover, in a world where personalization and tailored content are becoming more valuable, the question of data ownership (as well as privacy) is becoming more prominent and relevant. In this case, Spotify is capitalizing on user data and usage patterns. Does the user have ownership rights to this and should they have it or does the user surrender those rights in the terms and condition document that we all so blindly accept before downloading the app? Lastly, I found some similarity between this and Josephine’s post about machine generated art. It would be interesting to see the education needed and adoption curves expected for machine generated music.

Hi Jo, this is a great post! I particularly find the education aspect of AI Art interesting. As with any new technology, there is a learning curve but also equally important is the time it takes users to get comfortable with something like a machine creating art, let alone appreciate it. I wonder if there is a way for companies like Artrendex to plan a roadmap that builds the public’s confidence about AI Art and perhaps introducing at different touchpoints like hotel lobbies might be one route.

Hi Kanako,

Thanks for writing such a great blog! I wondered though, when it comes to scale and sustainability, how ‘copyable’ is the current business model? As we have seen, a great strategy is often replicated and I wonder what is their unique value creation that will be hard to replicate?

Hey!
I think it is interesting how poshmark forced its users to multihoming and you are right, while the asset-light nature is attractive the question is how much can they scale and sustain the business model.

Thanks for writing the article!

Hi Vikram,
Thanks for writing a great and timely article! One question though: do you think long-term sustainable value creation is coming more from the premium buy-ins or the ecosystem of added services that bumble is aggressively expanding into, some of which you have highlighted above as well?

Hi Jo, thank you for you comments. I agree, the context around the success of this program is subjective and has several variables at play. It would indeed be interesting to see if this can be replicated in a different environment and if not what were the driving factors for its failure.

Thank you Giulia for your perspective as an HKS MPA student. As Tomas points out, this was all made possible in-part due to a high-end IT infrastructure which in turn, as you have rightly pointed out, was made possible due to the financial resources at the disposal of HBS. Perhaps there lies an opportunity in this challenge then – to create the same level of connectivity while ensuring its accessibility and affordability to all.

With any new technology or in this case use-case of existing technology, three are barriers to adoption and i agree that the need for high-end infrastructure should not become the norm. However, if an organization decided to capitalize on the many advantages this high-end IT systems bring, the onus should be on the organization to provide that without the costs trickling down to the end users.

I agree with you Bruno, and the point on communities being a critical piece of the puzzle is echoed by other comments too. I don’t know if this hybrid approach will become the new normal but I know that the school, the communities, and the public will have confidence in HBS’s ability to withstand, adapt, and thrive no matter what the future brings.

I agree that collaboration and cooperation of the community has been a critical enabling force. I wonder if digital solutions can drive that for organizations that you rightly mentioned do not have the required resources. As for what HBS will look like after the pandemic, I think the culture and mindset of continuous innovation and experimentation in both the organization and the community, will far outlive any pandemic we will face. And that is perhaps the real value that has been created.

Super interesting especially to see how the pandemic has affected the valuation of the company, and of course a super relatable article. It would be interesting to see how the business sustains this success especially after the demand surge due to a global pandemic cools down. Nevertheless, they truly did position themselves strategically and have created and captured value across the country.

The advantages of telemedicine are clear and due to covid-19 some of the main barriers like regulations, costs, and resistance to adoption are significantly lower. It would be interesting to see how the momentum carries on in a post pandemic world and if Covid was indeed the catalyst this technology needed or not.

Very interesting article! It would be interesting to see what specific changes the product development process and therefore product teams underwent that enabled them to stay on schedule despite the global pandemic, especially when companies like Intel were unable to do the same. The company seems to be positioning itself to capture value in a post pandemic world with its acquisition of Arm Holdings and it would be interesting to track to see how NVidia capitalizes on the same.