Brian Sykes's Profile

Very interesting article! To answer your last question, I absolutely do think it’s possible for UNICEF to sustain its moral imperative. In fact, I think it’s critical that the organization do so. It’s great to see open innovation bring revolutionary and innovative products to the market, but because UNICEF is such a high-profile organization, it needs to make sure it has mechanisms in place to prevent abuse. Any negative will have immense consequences on the organization going forward, and might endanger it’s funding and ongoing existence, something which would negatively affect populations around the world that rely on UNICEF for support.

Great article. I really enjoyed learning about some of the tradeoffs between open and closed innovation. The Cambridge Analytica scandal really showed the tremendous downsides of companies being cavalier about their data management. I really believe that user experience can be improved in an open innovation environment, but for social media companies, it seems that there is almost unlimited downside towards products such as Facebook’s “Open Graph” when left unchecked. I’m curious if anyone has answer to Ian/Kub’s question above, how can we move towards more open systems in the future?

Thanks for the article Liz! This is a really fascinating topic. After considering your questions, I tend I agree with Sgt. Piggy. I really feel like the best path forward here is vertical integration, at least for certain low-volume units. Additive manufacturing really seems like the perfect tool to replace (or at least reduce dependence on) your external suppliers!

Thanks for the write up! It really is an interesting an thought-provoking dive into the ethics of healthcare. This truly makes me wonder, why has it taken Organovo so long to bring their products to market? The technology seems very promising, but this reminds me of other situations that startups have faced, where the company with the “best” technology hasn’t been the winner. Oftentimes, execution and implementation trumps innovation.

Thanks for the write up on GE! I agree with Dom above that outsourcing machine learning would be a terrible mistake for the company. Given the amount of disruption and restructuring the company is going through, it is more important than ever that GE focus on growth opportunities that can help right the ship. I believe GE should make a few big bets in machine learning and double down on devoting resources towards these new initiatives.

Great article! With respect to your last question (With the amount of data Pinterest collects should users be concerned about personal privacy and how can the company make sure they do not cross the line?), I agree with MB’s comment above that the best/most likely revenue opportunity will be in selling user data to third parties. However, Pinterest needs to very carefully going down this right. They need to carefully manage their user data and create a system of checks and balances in order to avoid going through a fallout similar to the one Facebook just experienced with the Cambridge Analytica scandal.