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Thanks for sharing your insights on a fascinating business.
There are clearly network effects to content creation and trust is key in these platforms – I have questions around the bidding process however: as the platform grows, I worry that competition for fulfilling Bounties increases and there is no guarantee that a user’s efforts will pay off if they spend time on a Bounty and someone else’s work is selected. Also, the reason some tasks are outsourced is because people do not have the skills in-house – it may therefore be difficult for a person to judge quality of the work and award the Bounty e.g. if the task is to translate text into another language.
Thank you for the brilliant article. New Story is solving a real need and the key to its success will be the efficiency with which it can build houses people really want and its ability to deal with local authorities. However, I do have concerns about the quality of houses over time and the repair process – will the homeowners be able to make repairs piecemeal or require a whole new piece of a building re-printed? If the latter, maintenance may add a layer of inconvenience and cost over time.
Thank you for the fascinating article! In terms of scaling, I am interested to know the upfront cost of re-configuring the machine compared to the benefit (cost and time), to determine the number of houses required for a project to be worthwhile economically.
In addition, it would be interesting to look at the impact on construction companies and workers – Winsun is cannibalising their business but still needs workers to assemble the 3D printed houses. I also question whether these workers need additional training to fit the 3D printed houses on site.
Fascinating article, thank you! I love the method of crowd sourcing ideas to increase the likelihood of discovering a blockbuster product. The process does highlight the authenticity of the brand and helps with word of mouth marketing, but I do worry about scale and engagement.
Open innovation here means there is no real brand identity, and there is a risk of developing a number of products that are not complementary and have no coherent message. Regarding distribution, I also believe there is risk that bargain hunters will register interest online to get the 40% discount, and not turn up to the retail stores to replenish their supply.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on a very interesting subject!
I also have concerns around the applicability of StitchFix’s offering to emotionally-charged purchases- more because of the process of communicating with the client and the mode of delivery rather than the actual clothing.
Most of the machine learning recommendations are just checked by humans and not interfered with so the human stylist’s role is more as a filter to sense-check the machine’s decisions. As the algorithm sees more clients with similar profiles (e.g. women post-partum), it should be able to recommend more appropriate clothing.
I do worry about the hand-holding required alongside such purchases e.g. with changes in weight/body-shape, is it better to deal with someone face to face so a client can try different sizes and pin an item for tailoring. Going forward, I see the human stylist in more of a customer service function than a styling function for the mass market segment.
Similarly, this is why purchases that are more luxury / for special events are also not catered for given clients do not feel the personalised service which can only come from a human.