Brandon R.'s Profile

Great article! I must quickly say that I do not believe that J&J can avoid the short-term losses; however, I do believe that the opportunity is there to create long-term impacts and gains. There are companies, within Unilever brands, that are actively investing in growing out sustainable infrastructure for manufacturing on the African continent. I think that J&J can take a similar approach in providing the necessary infrastructure and support for sustainable manufacturing process. The require training can be daunting in these areas; however, I think across the supply chain their must be required sacrifices and even more education to make this work. I do hope that J&J can keep this up!

Thanks for sharing this post! While I was reading through the article, I was trying to think through what technological advances are out there to be able to curb climate change’s impact and protect the grapes. Do you know of any? Climate adaptation and mitigation, until we are able to combat in big ways the root causes of climate change, are key to survival for both winery and agricultural industries. Thus, to answer your first questions, blending, in this sense, is a necessary step to continue to survive within this industry. I am not sure if they necessarily have a choice.

The opportunities in the drone farmland space is tremendous. As you mentioned at the end of your article, this space has the opportunity to become crowded quickly, and I think it is upon Farm Friend to scale up in order to benefit from the potential network effects. I just see the barrier to entry for competitors being low in this arena, especially with major players such as DJI at the table. The company either must find its segment in the market or build drone and labor efficiencies/technology that suggests its innovation and relationships with suppliers are strong and competitive.

What a great post! My first reaction is based on Disney’s long history in the television/movie space. I often think that massive, well-known companies have remained successful overtime because these companies have continued to find ways to innovate. Disney is much more unique. Disney captures an audience from their adolescence – their segment and target of the market are different in many ways. The amount of work they have done in this “magical” adventure space as it pertains to young people, I believe, will be tough to challenge by Netflix/HBO, etc. To answer the second question you posed, Disney should not acquire Netflix. Netflix is a great platform to stream its music; however, I am not sure that’s where Disney wins or build efficiency. It wins in continuing to create great content. It wins by growing and educating young children to fall in love with its platform. This is a long-term battle that I believe Disney can win.

Thank you for this post! I recall all of the press around Ford’s jobs moving from Mexico to the U.S. It was a great PR piece at a damn good time in American Politics. Unfortunately, I have heard little to no mention of Ford’s move to China. This is concerning because the public is being told one-side of a complex story. Your articulation on how easing the global trade agreements will make U.S. firms more competitive runs antithetical to the beliefs of the average workforce, I believe. Yet, I do agree. In this sense, Ford has an obligation, for the sake of its own company, to educate and bring to light the true impacts of isolationism.

Thanks for this post Judy! Your last two questions stuck out to me in particular as I was hoping to understand, is the isolationism policies a matter of this U.S. government administration or does one have the ability to wait production out until a more favorable administration rolls back policies? I would assume with Lobbying efforts by Boeing (a major player in U.S. aerospace) that there ability to reverse policy in the future will be difficult to do, but I do think there is an opportunity for Bombardier to expand outside U.S., as it has, and wait on Alabama production. I do understand that this doesn’t curb the 4500 employees it will need to manage in this arena; however, I think to remain viable, Bombardier simply needs to be patient and strategic.

Thanks for this post! I have enjoyed Kickstarter, and I have used it for many items in my teaching profession. The seamless ability to build a backing of supporters and the ease of receiving funds from the platform are admirable. I have a few concerns: What you find is that people with existing strong networks and relationships are the ones who benefit from the platform most? Unfortunately, there are ideas and low-income spaces that do not move very fast on this platform because of limited exposure. In building on your first action item, I believe that it is essential for Kickstarter to have dedicated personel or local community leaders who can connect these low-income students/families/people/innovators onto the platform better. Without solid relationship (or good luck/network effects), good projects are going unnoticed.

Thank you for this post! I had gone into this article thinking that it would be simple for Wal-mart to address its sustainability goals, given that it is such a large company and that it has control over it supply chain in ways that other business do not. However, I have come to understand the difficulty in trying to address these issues and how this titanic company has much to consider when thinking through sustainability.

I do think that Wal-Mart benefits from the increase in its sophistication of technology and supply chain: water salination, technologies to improve crop yield, and automation. I believe as Wal-Mart better understands how to implement tech solutions into its day-to-day operations, there will be exponential improvements in sustainable metrics.

Great post, Laura. This article reminds me of a conversation that I had with my mentor regarding the IoT – specially personal home connections. One issue that he continued to bring up, and one that I think should be explored in more detail, is with cybersecurity. He mentioned that we have to begin thinking what happens if “bad” people were to take advantage of this technology. For example, would we be able to control a hacker who intercepts the system and causes a fire in someone’s home by engaging with the toaster or stove? There are major questions about safety and security that we have to address.

Operator sounds great! The ability to strengthen customer engagement of products can work to increase visibility/knowledge of new products and access to new products, as Chinese consumers will have the ability to connect with relevant operators in the U.S. to help make purchasing decisions.

My questions stems from inherit biases that may exist on the platform. How do you ensure that the operators of are knowledgeable of the product, as it seems as though many Asian operators will need to know a vast amount about several different products. What are the cost on training these U.S. Asian operators? I would love to better understand how the workforce model currently works in more detail.

Thank you for bringing this digital experience at Panera to life for us, WRE. First, as I have worked in workforce development for the past three years, I thoroughly understand the challenges that one faces in workforce development training and the amount of money it takes to make this happen (with some workers having to go through extensive training for lack of computer literacy, especially in low-income areas). Companies usually do not estimate properly the amount of time/money required to make the shift to digitization, and the broader impacts these changes have on the community and “first” job opportunities. Beyond the cost, I remember in New Orleans the conversations around Panera 2.0. People (and myself) had many questions: how would this new digital system actually work? Who would I ask for basic services? Did I have a choice to talk with a cashier if needed? Overall, I do not think Panera 2.0 hurts from these digital adjustments; however, I do think that as a leader in this space, Panera must do the heavy lifting of educating community.