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Very interesting post! This topic made me think of LEGO’s try of building up LEGO.COM and providing “digital designer” service for children to design their own LEGO toy online, virtually. Also, I just saw a Japanese game developer just created an AR VR cooking game for children. This inspired me that both LEGO and Barbie could do the same thing – use AR VR technology to develop games for children to create their own LEGO model or Barbie’s outfit. We could even create online communities for children to post their works online and share with kids from other parts of the world. However, safety and privacy should be an important issue. It’ll be essential to involve parents and schools at the early stage of this business model research and avoid what happened to Hello Barbie as you mentioned in the post.

Oh my god this is what I want!! We just bought an apartment and are confused about picking up appropriate furnitures. What’s even worse is that both my partner and I are both out of our home city for a while. We can definitely discuss and order things online. But we’re so afraid of receiving the expensive furnitures but they turn out to be not fitting with our room. So we decided to stop thinking about furnitures until we’re back in town – but with the help of AR VR technology, we can feel more safe and confident again!! The only concern is that Wayfair still needs consumers to sit inside their apartment while picking up furnitures – could people take pictures of their rooms and then also enjoy the AR VR scene by themselves? Also, AR VR facilities are still not very common in people’s daily lives. Would it be better if Wayfair has offline stores for people to experience the service?

Great article! I’m just curious about one question: is there any fundamental difference between Bonobos and other male apparel brand in terms of business model? I actually didn’t see much difference, except Bonobos only sells online. Yes online one-stop shopping for clothes / pants / everything for a whole season does save time for male consumers, but there’s still a good chance that the size / style / color of online products are different from your expectation and you still need to deal with returns and exchanges. That also takes time and would be even annoying. A lot of male consumers that I know would rather stick to several offline stores of their favorite brand and visit every 3 months. Also, many of the traditional male apparel brands also have their own online stores – also free shipping and free return. So what’s the key competitive edge of Bonobos?

This is a really interesting post, outstanding from all the big data / internet topics. I was really amazed by the advanced 3D printing biotechnology nowadays could achieve this great job! I once also did some analysis on 3D printing industry, and learned that its best usage would be in healthcare and industry goods, esp. auto and aviation. 3D printing an ear would be just a starting point. In the future, we could expect large bunch of 3D printed spare parts of cars, airplanes and even spacecrafts. Please allow me to return to the big data topic – once we achieve the mass production of 3D printed spare parts, can we also put chips into the parts and track the operation of each product. From analyzing the operation condition of all products, we could estimate any potential breakdown and prevent it beforehand. 3D printing provides us with huge room of imagination!

I just registered at Instacart but I haven’t used it yet. For me its business model makes a lot of senses, as you mentioned, helping consumers trade off their precious time with money, providing extra income for the buyers, and offering invaluable data for retailers. However, there’re certain group of people, like me, just don’t enjoy losing the chance of walking around and picking up goods in supermarket every week. For me it is a great leisure time once a week, getting away from the real world and just concentrating on life. Also, per your comment of selling data to retail partners, I have a concern of data privacy issue. If trading personal consumption data really respects consumers’ privacy? And, retailers won’t be happy to share with their competitors their own data. So my recommendation will be that Instacart could provide data analysis service for retailers, instead of directly selling data. By providing data analysis and consulting service, retailers would understand their consumers better through Instacart’s data without hurting consumers’ privacy

I do have noticed Starbucks partnership with sustainable coffee farms to improve their energy efficiency in supply chain. This is a very interesting and effective method that could be used widely in food and beverage industries around the world. Also, I really like your proposal of adjusting their store design, including modifying store entrances and drive-through windows to reduce heat entrance/escape, and utilizing recycled paper products etc. To build on that idea, I also think they could decrease their heating/cooling temperature 2 degree centigrades lower/higher in winter (since Starbucks stores are always overly hot/cold during winter/summer), and remind their customers to use as fewer stir sticks / napkins / coffee cup sleeves.

Really interesting article! As a consultant traveling a lot from hotel to hotel, I do think that SPG and Marriott are doing a better job in providing environmentally friendly accommodation and service compared with other competitors around the world. I especially like your idea of Marriott leverage SPG’s innovative solutions after their merge. Besides the Element brand, SPG has also developed interesting and reliable digital techniques, i.e. keyless check-in with SPG mobile APP, to improve their energy saving results. Imagine one day there won’t be a physical hotel room key made of plastics and metal chips – how much GHG emissions could we reduce!

Thanks for bringing up this interesting topic, EK. However, from my past project experience with Shell China, I believe in their strategy till 2030, fossil fuels will continue to be absolutely dominant, and their leadership management team pay less attention to their renewable energy portfolio. Although from the CSR report and news, Shell, and of course many other conglomerates, try to deliver the positive message that they’re environmentally responsible, it’s still important to change the mind of their leadership team to put full emphasize on saving energy.

I believe this is not only a dilemma for Mitsubishi, but also one for most conglomerates in the world. Fossil fuels have been accounting for major source of energy consumption in the world for so many years that it’ll take long period for us to really improve the renewable energy, decrease the fossil fuels and balance them to an environmentally friendly portfolio. I agree with your proposal that Mitsubishi should create a separate methodology to evaluate renewable business opportunity, but the question would be how do we justify this methodology and how do we setup the appropriate standard to evaluate renewable business opportunity. Would Mitsubishi be really neutral and fair when designing the methodology standards? Would it be better if we involve an independent third-party to do this?

Agree with Rob’s comment above. Saving energy and avoiding GHG emissions in civil aviation should be considered at a global network level to make sure we really achieve a solid outcome.

My question would be on the potential impact of “limiting flights to Iceland that are not full to capacity”. From an energy-saving perspective, this idea makes perfect sense to reduce average GHG emissions per capita by reducing partially-empty flights. However, financially it would directly draw down the revenue of Iceland Air, since most of any flight of any airline companies would not be accurately full to capacity. It would also cause limited flight choices for tourists, and thus decrease their desire of choosing Iceland as their destination – finally cause a slow development of Iceland tourism industry.