AH's Profile

Chariot has an interesting model, especially given the competitive nature of the ridesharing space. While I do think crowdsourcing is valuable for product selection (i.e. route identification), Chariot’s downfall is with missed opportunities given timing. Say I’m a commuter looking for a new route. I indicate my interest and have to sit back until my route is supported by 49 users. That could take a few days but it may also take a few months (assumption). As a commuter, I still have to get to work so I have to figure out how to get there in the meantime. Once I get into my commuting habit, I may not want to break out of it so that means lost revenue for Chariot. This is all to say that Chariot should leverage crowdsourcing for information but shouldn’t have their entire business model be contingent on it because of these “lost waiting commuters.”

Lastly, Chariot could potentially consider partnering with the government to offer another option for commuters. Public transportation is already severely strained in many populous cities (e.g. NYC). As such many commuters have opted to pay more to take private Ubers/Lyfts to work in order to have a more pleasant commuting experience. This is very costly. A partnership with Chariot could mean prices that are between subway and Uber/Lyft prices which may be enough to convert a good portion of the commuter base.

I haven’t thought about Adidas since middle school. In fact, I had to Google its slogan to remind myself what it was. Their slogan, “impossible is nothing” [1], didn’t ring a bell. You asked if we think Adidas could potentially surpass Nike and my lack of brand awareness makes me think not. While I do appreciate their efforts to innovate via the Speedfactories, they need to double down on advertising the crowdsourcing component. Given the diffusion of social media today, my advice to them would be to kick off an online design competition with the winner’s design transitioning to mass production. Another idea is to host a bootcamp for teens and have designing be part of the camp activities aside from sports (similar to what Nike did pre-2010 World Cup). Crowdsourcing serves as a product development expeditor but can also serve as a marketing mechanism.

Citation:
[1] https://www.adidas-group.com/en/group/history/, accessed November 2018.

3D printing has come a long way. Pretty soon, instead of 3D printing the metals/parts, they’ll be able to print the entire plane. That’ll be the day!

I understand the usefulness of the technology in the space. I would like to learn more about how much more or less time 3D printing takes than your traditional way of procuring the required materials. Is producing the metal in-house really that much better than outsourcing it?

Additionally, how reliable are these metals? Having a plane malfunction because of a poorly-made piece of metal would be detrimental to the advancement of this technology. Know AM is currently only used for non-critical portions of the plane. In the event AM is “proven”, that is demonstrated via no incidents of metal malfunctioning, how receptive will passengers be to riding on planes with 3D parts. I guess as a passenger we don’t really think about plane parts but I’d be skeptical if I ended up finding out my plane was made of printed materials.

Appreciate you showcasing the use of additive manufacturing in a developing country. Your note clearly outlines why and how this would be beneficial. I truly believe that this technology is the key to helping improve healthcare across the board. This, however, begs the question of cost and attainability. As you mentioned, the costs for 3D printing is still very high and we will need critical mass in order to see those costs drop. To accelerate this, would be helpful for firms with this existing technology to become players in the space. Instead of entering this market as businesses, however, firms could enter under a humanitarian umbrella. Another way to spur innovation on a budget is to create competitions where students or companies have to cheaply manufacture organs. Either way, GOR may not be able to rapidly advance unless a third party helps out.

The user opportunity here is promising. Given its accessibility, especially to those who wouldn’t be able to afford language classes normally, Duolingo can capture more of the mass market. To further expand its portfolio, the technology should be applied to other educational areas while keeping its accessibility. The extension could be a platform to be used in K-12 classrooms. If they want to take it another route, they could create a learning platform for companies. With the modern worker in constant need of training, Duolingo could capitalize on this need. This latter approach may be more challenging as this could require customization. Instead of focusing on company-by-company specific models, they could focus on higher-level content.

From a top-down perspective, Humu sounds like every company’s dream because of the insights the data can provide. From a bottom-up perspective, I’m a little skeptical about how this will be received by employees. Will they feel that they are being watched by “big brother” and that their every move is recorded as a data point that will feed into the processing machine? While the benefits outlined above are clear, since the crux of the product is machine learning, the quality of outputs is only as good as the quality of inputs. If employees aren’t being honest (e.g. lie when asked, “I feel comfortable speaking up at work even when bringing up tough issues/problems”), the quality of results is impaired. Employees may be more cautious about what they put out there because the data ultimately gets used to inform decisions.