AakashM's Profile

The tension seen by the government between city motorcycle taxi drivers and Uber is very similar to that seen in India. Eventually India allowed the private companies to continue, but added artificial price constraints by mandating “fees” for Uber pickups in high density areas such as the airport, and even providing local taxis with preferred standing locations around these high density spots. I see these efforts as appeasing taxi unions in the short term, but eventually promoting private companies to do business in the long term.

Similar to other comments, I also want to highlight the aspect of safety. A recent study found Thailand to be the second most dangerous country for road safety (https://asiancorrespondent.com/2014/02/study-thailand-roads-2nd-most-dangerous-in-the-world/). Even a single incident issue involving an UberMOTO driver has the potential to be highly publicized and used against Uber. In India, a single Uber driver who raped a passenger ruined the company’s reputation, resulting in a multi-month ban and high scrutiny from the government. It may be for the best that UberMOTO is banned.. for now..

Great read! The health and fitness market has seen a huge growth in the last decade, and gyms have been a beneficiary of this growth, but not a source of it. Therefore, I feel that it is only the gyms and traditional fitness channels that accept and adopt to the digitization of this market that will survive the coming way of “cleaning” of non-compatible business models.

In the video interview, as Sarah Robb O’Hagan stated, fitness devices do offer a lot of data, but its the interpretation and actioning of that data that will be of most value to the consumers. Equinox has taken a step in the right direction, but must continue to experiment, and not get too comfortable even with any one particular technology going forward. The key is to stay flexible and agile because the digital marketplace has very low costs to keep changing and innovating.

PillPack sounds like a great company to watch out for. However, my concerns come from the competitive nature of traditional pharmaceutical companies and how they feel about this new delivery channel. Traditional channels have obviously invested a lot in setting up, getting exclusive contracts and squeezing out efficiencies. Will PillPack be best served to go against these traditional channels or partner with them to gain shared value creation?

From personal experience I can see PillPack bringing about great ease and convenience to patients who consume more than 20, 30 or even 40 pills per day. Currently they have to fill each prescription individually and self organize the pills by day and time. With PillPack, they remove all of that hassle.

Great post! It’s interesting to think about the desktop to mobile transformation and how Microsoft, who wanted to buy Yahoo! also didn’t see that trend. Ultimately Microsoft missed the mobile platform competition, and fell too far behind to make a difference to iOS or Android.

This reminds me of the innovation funnel: enough ideas have to be fed in through the top of the funnel to result in mature ideas at the end when needed. Given the long lead times to get an idea through the innovation funnel, the ideas have to enter the funnel much before their anticipated need.

I see both Apple and Google using this strategy. The only difference being that Google exposes ideas in their innovation funnel to the market while Apple only exposes the ideas that make it most of the way through the innovation funnel to consumers.

Great example of how technology is being used to innovate not only around the production, supply chain or delivery of food, but also the food itself. I see this as even being embedded into vending machines, specifically for caffeine drinks such as coffee. Imagine someone who is prone to diabetes, but likes a lot of sugar in their coffee. Using this technology, the machine can serve this person 1mg less of sugar in their coffee each day, slowly reducing the sugar consumed without the person noticing a drastic shift in taste. Through the internet, all the machines can even be linked to each other and users can have “profiles” that remember their consumed meals history and preferences!

On the $129 price point: Compare this to the amounts charged by garages or mechanics to just clear a simple check engine light and it’s already worth it!

Also a clarification: the dongle does provide real-time data and tracking, it’s just not actionable data yet; so they do have to work on their algorithms to improve that.

But overall yes this technology can play a role in other industries too.

Has AB InBev thought about vertical integration at all? How much do they work with and invest in hop farmers to promote long-term water efficiencies in the industry?

Also, your post mentions more efficient barley cultivation by 40%. Does this mean that the water used to produce 1 barrel of beer will reduce to 3 barrels?

This sounds similar to Corona’s high demand in the US driving water shortages around their production plant in Mexico. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/americans-beer-corona-mexico-water-crisis) This has affected the region to such an extent that there’s no water left for human consumption!

Very well written post Peter! I appreciate how you broke down PUE into simple to understand terms.
I’m guessing that the cyclical nature of Google’s PUE is to do with the seasons each year, with peak PUE during the summer. However, it would be interesting to see the cost-benefit analysis of locating the data centers in colder climates where summers aren’t as hot. A quick search shows that most of Google’s data centers are located in varying climates (https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/locations). This is probably to do with density of population, but I would like to see the PUE of each of these locations.
Taking the technology further, this can be applied to telecom towers. I have seen that telecom towers take a lot of harsh climate changes, and cause frequent shut-downs and hence disruptions to customers. Having such intelligent technology built into each tower would alleviate some of this pressure.

Uber has partnered with The Santa Monica College to perform a study on the environmental sustainability of UberPool:
https://newsroom.uber.com/us-california/uberpool-and-smc-sustainable-transportation-through-shared-rides/

I agree with your logic, but only time will tell if this business model can replace traditional transportation methods and still benefit the environment.

Trading carbon credits is an interesting part of the industry, but how do these companies deal with the volatility of the market? Further, do these companies trade their credits directly with each other or through broking firms? Would be interesting to study one of the middlemen and how their business is affected by the changes in demand, supply and carbon protocols.

Wow, did not know about this side of their “business model” at all. However, I do not think that Elon Musk is relying on this revenue to turn a profit. While ZEV revenues will definitely be a welcome upside for a company with operating losses, Musk does eventually aim to make Tesla profitable through car sales and prove to the auto industry that the future of cars has arrived.

Very interesting article, but I’m a bit confused by the two images. The first one states that buses are the least efficient and planes the second most efficient. However, the second image shows that planes are the least efficient and buses the most efficient. Am I reading those wrong?

Nevertheless, I agree that transport has to be made more energy efficient. From your data, an EV Car using clean energy as a power source is even more efficient than the Eurostar. I see the future of transport being self-driving electric vehicles shared between multiple people. That model would appeal to all segments of travelers, and also offer door-to-door transport for everyone.

Perhaps Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is the answer..

I was following this company and found their products fascinating. Impossible Foods is one of few companies to actually apply tech to the food itself rather than the abundance of technology we’ve seen around the production or delivery of food. It’s amazing how much more efficiently they can produce meat by taking the animals out of the equation! From the marketing point of view, it’s not requiring the consumer to change their food preferences or habits at all, just providing nutritional and environmental benefits. This is the future of the food industry.