beautywithbrains's Profile

Thank you for an interesting read! Overall, I’m skeptical that crowd sourcing can be effective in drug development. However, time will tell! It’s worth exploring if the process truly provides cost and time savings. You’ve done a great job highlighting risks and offering potential mitigation strategies. However, one additional risk a positive confirmation bias that could result in the testing of the drugs sourced through open innovation. Said differently, Pfizer should be careful to not assume that the drugs developed through open innovation always work and only work for the specific disease because that could lead to some short cuts in the testing process, which ultimately could expose the company and consumers to major risk if not properly tested.

Thank you for an interesting read! While I understand that AI driven diagnosis approach many help some of the cost issues and inaccuracies in healthcare, one of my biggest concerns is that an algorithm is likely going to give me the most common answer to a person’s symptoms. However, human doctors are often able to catch some of the cases in the marginal fringes of the normal distribution for diagnosis of a person. Will the number of negative outcomes or deaths increase because the AI recommendation would be based on the most common diagnosis?

Thank you Tyler for the interesting read! A couple of questions that come to mind:
2. If customized shoes become widely available at a reasonable price, then could that make customized shoes less desirable than a limited edition shoes that are prized possessions owned by a small group of people or is this a fashion category where the performance benefit delivered with customization protects Adidas from this risk?

2. How would customized shoes with varying levels of performance and composition impact the Adidas brand consistency?

Thank you the interesting read! A coupe of questions to consider:

1. Given AWS is Amazon’s biggest profit driver, should Amazon be using this technology to build new stores or innovate the technology such that they can sell the technology as a service and collect the data to then leverage for analytics and insights sales?

2. While the current sales per square foot are impressive, how much of that is due to the novelty of the stores vs sustainable, category growth? Said differently, if this technology was widely available like credit card readers, then would the stores see the same sort of sales per square feet results?

Great use of crowd sourcing to make a Pepsi relevant for consumers! I have a few questions for you and/or Pepsi to consider:
1. How will Pepsi manage SKU proliferation with these consumer driven innovation? Shelf space at retailers is often limited, so in order to get new flavors into stores, another SKU may be cannibalized; is Pepsi willing to make that financial trade off for an untested flavor (consumers voting online may not necessarily translate into sales)?

2. From my understanding of this category, much of the move towards smaller brands is driven by consumers seeking healthier options (i.e. baked, veggie chips, etc.) and locally made brand options. This crowd sourced solution does not necessarily address either of these major drivers of share loss. Do you really think this addresses the issue the company is facing?

3. Having worked at a company similar to Pepsi, often times the issue at major CPG companies is not a lack of ideas, but rather an inability to act on those ideas quickly enough or the unwillingness to disrupt current processes for an idea that has significant uncertainty around results and to displace another SKU who’s sales will be lost. Will crowd sourcing really address the true challenges for growth the company is facing? Would the company or it’s employees never think of the flavors suggested in the competition? Is the crowd sourcing worth simply for the consumer engagement of loyal consumers (i.e. not for the idea itself, but rather only for the “consumer research”)?

Thank you for the article. Interesting read!

Your questions at the end of the article are spot on for other considerations for the firm. Given my previous experience working for a large manufacturing company, in order for 3D printing to become the primary manufacturing method, the speed needs to be increased even more. While Desktop Metal has improved the speed versus competitors, it is still no where near the speeds required for large manufacturers to fulfill their demand. In the current environment however, it is actually very time and cost intensive to get metal molds for various production processes. Therefore, even the ability to get a metal mold at a reasonable unit cost would be a huge enabler and value add for companies. Therefore, while the company is working on improving the speed, they can use their technology to drive unit cost down such that 3D printed models are more cost and time efficient for companies to use to work within their existing production systems. This is also a great way to build a relationship with major manufacturers and then the company can build upon that relationship to win additional business in the future.