ahyans's Profile

This is a great read! I see many parallels between Sidewalk Labs’s use of open innovation to design thinking, and see opportunity for Google to combine human centered design with open innovation in this context. Like we learned in the IDEO case, oftentimes (despite the research cited above), consumers do not know what they want when asked and instead the best insights come from observing pain points in their daily life. I would love to see Sidewalk Labs use some of the design thinking principles to iterate on ideas generated by their open innovation initiative and create a city even more efficient than currently imaginable.

This is super interesting, however given the resistance to GMO foods, I wonder how the public will perceive 3D printed food. I think Barilla and others will need to educate their consumers on the impact, if any, on the quality of ingredients/change in outcomes because of additive manufacturing. If there are not changes to the composition of the food, I am skeptical of the benefit this technology will have on creating greater accessibility to nutritious foods considering the ingredients are the same. While I think there is potential for 3D printing in the food space, I wonder if is better suited for gourmet kitchens rather than currently under served ones.

I love the idea of crowd sourcing for this context. I wonder if there is room for Amazon to combine its predictive analytics and crowd sourcing capabilities to suggest potential new projects to users then see what their reaction is to them. This could be an interesting way to strengthen its machine learning capabilities while also giving visibility to the crowd sourcing initiative. I also like the idea of Amazon using this as a marketing/PR initiative. Considering the company seems faceless to many of its users, this could be a great way to interact with customers who want to be creators and consumers of new content. Even further, Amazon could market products to those filmmakers submitting material.

I loved this post – very poignant and interesting. Unlike Nick, I think it is important for Facebook to appear impartial in its efforts to detect/remove fake news articles from the site. However, I appreciate the assertion that many of the false stories are right-leaning and therefore if Facebook intervenes it will seem politically motivated. I wonder if it is possible for Facebook to be fully transparent with the community about its content-checking operations to both 1) educate the public on the power/applications of machine learning and 2) inspire confidence across the political spectrum that they are unbiased, yet serious about the implications of false content. As a user, I would love to feel like I am part of Facebook’s efforts to apply machine learning and would find confidence in knowing exactly how/what they are “censoring” from the site.

I think HotelTonight will be able to maintain a competitive advantage if it can reach the right customers and be top of mind at the time of hotel booking. While I am impressed by their use of ML and AI to offer services/special rates once a user is already in the app, I think they need to use their consumer insights to attract and maintain customers. I wonder if HT could leverage the data it has on customer retention/churn to create a targeted marketing campaign to build a base of loyal users such that its service becomes indispensable.

I am interested to understand whether the improved clinical results are due to the customized shape of the implant or the material used by ConforMIS. As you mentioned in the analysis, if the customized shape is their competitive advantage (and the results are not significantly better than TKRs using traditional technology) that may not be enough for the industry to shift. However, if the material used also results in improved outcomes, ConforMIS can capitalize on that opportunity while experimenting with bioprinting. Do you think the real value of additive manufacturing is in the ability to quickly/efficiently build custom products or in the future potential of manufacturing with previously hard to mold materials?