Alexander Vidiborskiy's Profile

Thank you, Solomon!
You outlined a great set of benefits that Prizer might get by digitizing their supply chain. I would also add, that by doing so it would be able to solve, at least partially, another important problem – drug counterfeit that is $75bn–$200bn [1] in lost revenue and leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths [2]. By having more transparency on how the product moves along the supply chain it’s possible to detect and mitigate swindlers, drive revenue up and greatly increase safety. I believe that this should be the primary target for pharma’s digitalization and is totally possible with the current tech solutions such as a combination of blockchain and IoT, e.g. startup Mediledger [3].

[1] https://www.worldfinance.com/special-reports/trade-in-illegal-medicine-hits-pharmaceutical-sector
[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37470667
[3] http://blocktribune.com/blockchain-joint-venture-aims-stop-counterfeit-drugs/

I believe that if companies are truly concerned with the recent development of the immigration policies that should take aggressive actions to change the trend. From my point of view, it’s not enough to make claims and calls to action. Facebook, Google, and other tech giants are one of the main taxpayers in the US so they might use their influence to not only correct the social injustice but also to protect their businesses. As the essay mentions, immigrants became an important part of the qualified workforce for enterprises. By tightening immigration policies, the government might be forcing companies to make suboptimal recruiting decisions and hire people that are either lower in qualification or demand a higher salary or even both. This is not beneficial for local and international companies and therefore requires not only their attention but a set of economic “sanctions” imposed on the government to make a bold claim and change the trend.

Thank you for the essay. I would like to add the following – when one discusses questions related to electric vehicles (EV) there is a lot of debate whether EVs are actually good for the environment considering the carbon emission footprint associated with producing the battery. In reality, there are a number of assumptions that one has to make to estimate when such footprint is zeroed – the range on average is 2.5 – 5 years [1], which is more than enough to consider replacing cars with EVs as a positive move. I think that environmental impact is one aspect of the future of EVs, the other being – EVs are simply more efficient in converting energy into movement. Efficiency for EV engines is ~60% in comparison to the efficiency of internal combustions engines of ~20% [2], so at the end of the day – considering depleting oil reserves, EVs might a good solution for the future transportation problems.

[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/news/a27039/tesla-battery-emissions-study-fake-news/
[2] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml

I enjoyed the reading very much, thank you!
Answering the second question I would like to notice that even though Patagonia with its $600M in revenue might be a leader in the outdoor clothing space, within the whole $3 trillion apparel market it might not have enough weight to lobby the policy. In contrast to IKEA case, in which the company has been one the largest consumers of wood and could’ve influenced its supplier by the virtue of the financial pressure, Patagonia doesn’t have enough scale to set the trend. I agree that companies in the clothing space should definitely be the force that changes the current situation with waste and environmental change and some of them already do that successfully – IKEA mentioned earlier, Nike and Adidas that are using recyclable plastic for its boots [1,2] and are imposing rigid standard for their suppliers, and many others. My view is that the larger the public company is the more its investors should demand careful consideration of opportunities for positive environmental changes. As we saw in IKEA case it might not only bring positive appearance to the company but also might be a source of operational improvements, for instance, cost reduction.

[1] https://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/innovation/grind
[2] http://www.adidas.com/us/parley

Thank you for the article!
I would mention that even though LinkedIn is officially blocked in Russia, many users still use it through VPN services that are extremely widespread (at least as of now) – 60% of Russian users are retained. [1] Microsoft refused to move its data center to Russia due to political and economic reasons (prices for utilities, services, etc). At the same time, those users that had premium accounts and used LinkedIn extensively are continuing to use it. In my opinion, LinkedIn and Microsoft made a great choice – haven’t lost much revenue and avoided additional costs.

[1] https://www.similarweb.com/website/linkedin.com#overview

One additional questions that I asked myself after reading the article is – Who should benefit from the cost reduction? Should it be the customer that has to be treated by an effectively run organization or the hospital? As Phil mentions hospitals are experiencing a decline in volumes and tougher competitions, therefore one way to gain a competitive advantage it to have an operating excellence and to pass its monetary value to the customer by reducing the prices.
I also think that RFID system should be implemented by the push from the drug manufacturers and not by the pull from hospitals, e.g. an RFID might be put in a mandatory fashion on each of drug packages that are delivered to the hospital. Namely drug companies are interested in 1) providing the better service 2) have an access to the usage data 3) reducing counterfeit that is a $200B loss [1], so they are already incentivized in doing so considering their scale and access to different players.

[1] https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/reports/counterfeit-pharmaceuticals