AJ's Profile

I agree with Graham’s point about utilizing the Disney streaming service as an opportunity to cross-sell its products. If instead of making the UI of the subscription service similar to Netflix, Disney could move into a all-service website that allows individuals to have all of their favourite movies/TV, Disney games, Disney products, and Disney travel all in one space. As many individuals above pointed out, Netflix’s model is simply too sticky for Disney to compete with head-on. Therefore, potentially offering a freemium model where a Disney plug in can allow for differentiation from the already in-place movie-subscription offerers, and instead create a Disney-world at home.

In response to the piece about day-of releases, I actually think that there are options for the movie theaters to benefit from this. Instead of offering subscribers opportunities to watch the movie at home, offering a discount/pass option to see the movie in theaters could bridge this gap. For example, if an individual had Disney-Prime (or whatever it would be called), they could be eligible to a discount off a movie experience. The limited foot-traffic in the movie theatre is hurting both companies, so it could be a synergistic way to tie this gap. In addition, by offering it, as well as a release at home within x number of days (as Graham suggested), could be a nice way to ensure that you hit a large portion of Disney-consumers.

Sephora’s need for customization of experience, definitely seems really crucial. One of the key things I thought was really interesting was contrasting data collection and this customization. Data is powerful yet expensive thing to harness – I think one of the things that I would be curious about is the ability to develop systems and processes that can sift through what is crucial, and what is detrimental. Creating a platform to designed customized beauty products can develop incredibly efficient systems, but it could also increase the amount of specific production, leading to slower development of the product, and longer turn over times. Data, therefore, can be extremely cumbersome, and could lead to a slower production line. In Sephora’s case, my largest concern, therefore, is their actual ability to implement these changes.

This was a really interesting look into the beer brewing industry: Guinness (and Diageo) seem to be in an incredibly unique position due to their cross-Europe presence. Although EN, in their comment, brought up the idea that the investment could be for naught, the packaging as it stands seems to be an incredible time and cost burden on the supply chain because traveling to Belfast in order to package, and then returning seems incredibly inefficient. In a time when Guinness could receive some sort of remuneration from the government due to the change in policy, it seems like a great time to make the line more efficient by bringing packaging at least closer to the factory and the docks. It would save them investment in travel, and time. If Guinness invests now, the long term benefit could be huge.

In addition, the cost of shipping externally, especially with huge isolationist movements, will have a global toll on the beer market. Working with policy makers, as EN pointed out, will be an extremely efficient way of dealing with these changes and to understand how better to prepare.

This is a really interesting take on the threats that Toyota will feel, and no amount of pulling on the Andon cord will help us predict the future. Moving production of Toyota goods from Japan versus paying the tariffs may be a zero sum game – as so much of the cost is already burdened probably through shipping charges, and labour is probably pretty disparate. However, the place where I see the greatest hope is that all cars face this struggle. According to http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/cars-made-in-america/, even Ford, the stereotypically most American car is not even that American. I think, therefore, the changes in NAFTA agreements would cause all prices to increase in the US, and as cars have shifted to becoming necessities in many households, the market itself will simply become more expensive. This could then lead to an increasingly booming second-hand/used car market, as well as a lower turnover in cars for many – especially as prices will keep increasing with both labour and material costs. The risks, therefore, are not individual to Toyota, and therefore probably do not have to be reported to investors. In addition, many companies will consider shifting to NAFTA countries leading to a worry that those resources will become increasingly scarce and demand will overtake supply.

The effects of climate chain on wine makers are drastic – as you lay out really clearly in this article. Similarly to Graham above me, the mitigation efforts need to be added to the accommodation efforts. Although I think the product mix idea is likely to be effective, I think the struggle is to estimate when weather patterns will happen and therefore proactively respond. Although the use of natural pesticides could be effective, the core problem of controlling temperature would not be mitigated. I disagree, however, with Graham positing that greenhouses would not be effective. Fancy, old-fashioned wines generally come from Europe, and it could be an effective way to use something man-made to create a trend in the wine-industry, a disruption of sorts, leading to much more consistent blends.

The issue that I foresaw with this is the effect on the quality of wine. Without the varying of temperature, the quality of the grape may be forsaken – although you will have a consistent grape, you may not be able to exceed the quality of your wine year to year. This may be an interesting way to infuse A-B testing into finding the perfect weather variation pattern leading to the best grape. It could be interesting, with the rise of digitization, to use technology to better the quality of wine and be able to avoid the detrimental effects of climate change.

In reading your paper, one of the terrifying factors is that climate change and malnutrition seem to be caught in a vicious cycle – as climate gets worse, malnutrition also becomes exacerbated. It seems that the struggle in trying to make a solution is that there is truly no way to decrease the costs of the current RUTFs without changing the core ingredients as climate change increases. Additional short term moves could be an investment in research to further develop natural antimicrobial technologies that may be able to counter some of the effects of prices, as well as temperature. I agree with the posit that a long term solution is required for this long term of a problem. Technology, in the long term, could create these effective warning systems that you allude to, as well as the usage of drones. In addition, collection of data may enable the UN to be able to effectively estimate patterns of change that lead to conflict enabling better understanding of when food shortages may occur. The private sector can better be utilized in that these problems that UNICEF is facing will also be felt by the rest of the Agro-industry. Therefore, technology that is developed can be applied to UNICEF and investments can be made to better tackle the climate change problem.