Camille's Profile

Thanks for sharing! It’s really interesting and great to see that 3D printing in manufacturing can be particularly helpful “disaster zones.”

Although the regulatory process for approval in each new locality could be slow, the technology definitely shows a lot of promise. In the mean time, I wonder how often 3D printing is being leveraged in construction for modeling purposes. Especially in non-residential development, I would expect 3D printing would be a great way to model and iterate different architectural designs.

Wow – didn’t realize 3D printing could enable prototyping to be 16x faster!

Focusing on your second question, one negative consequence of widespread 3D printing adoption that could arise is that it will be easier to manufacturer goods that are highly regulated at the moment. Particularly troubling, it could become very easy to produce weapons on your own. For example, if you had access to the design for a gun, you could potentially print one at home or illegally start printing and selling guns.

Almost wrote my paper on this – would love to talk to you about it Tom Thompson, whoever you are!

This article is really interesting as I wonder if other creative jobs in the entertainment space will be outsourced more using open innovation. When thinking of a new movie, TV show, theme park, etc., using open innovation may be just as effective, if not more effective, in sparking ideas that can be converted into content/products as they are coming form the core customer. However, this open sourcing may not reach “fringe” customers who may be less likely to propose ideas online for a product they do interact with often. For this reason, I think open innovation in this context will lead to products enjoyed by the core consumer, but may not be a viable option when looking to expand into a new customer segment.

In response to the brick and mortar vs. online debate, I don’t think that this will have a huge effect on Lego, although looking for a lighter material to build the legos with might be advisable. If Lego is able to continue licensing core IP that resonates with consumers (i.e., Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman), I think customers will continue to seek out their products online. (See themes tab of Lego website: https://shop.lego.com/en-US/New-Sets)

I think the comparison to Uber’s business model is very accurate! My lovely home state of California currently has the strictest regulations in the US surrounding gig economy labor. A recent ruling stated that to be considered and independent contractor you must pass 3 tests: “One, that the contractor provides the service free from the company’s control; two, that the service provided is outside the company’s core business, such as a janitor at a law firm; and three, that the contractor is an independent professional engaged in providing their service to companies other than the one in question.” Under these restrictions, I do think that ultimately the hacker will have to be considered an employee, but we will have to see if other state/federal laws follow in California’s suit. I do not believe that the hackers are being taken advantage of in this situations, as it appears HackerOne has given them a great way to legally monetize their skills, so I would hope that the current business model is allowed to continue.

source: https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/01/news/economy/california-gig-employer-ruling/index.html

This is awesome! I definitely see how access to daily transaction data could give Square an edge over other lenders in assessing credit-worthiness. I wonder if Square also monitors the companies transactions in real time as a detection mechanism to flag potential defaults much earlier than other lenders can. The loan repayment structure also strikes me as a great way to differentiate from competitors by making it easier for the businesses to pay when they have the cash. With all of the transaction data Square gathers, I wonder if they could offer services where they aggregate and display patterns in the data to the small businesses to aid in decision making. If they were able to get buy-in from customers, they could even show businesses how they are performing against similar businesses to help managers understand the strengths and weaknesses of their business. (For example, your lunch transaction volume is 20% industry average.)

To give my opinion on the question you pose at the end, I do think Facebook should try to detect and eliminate fake news. From a business perspective, Facebook will lose the trust of its users if it builds a reputation for promoting fake news, being divisive, and only showing extreme points of view. In addition, advertisers (where Facebook makes money) may not want to be associated with a platform that promotes extreme points of view and is seen as a detriment to society. While Facebook hasn’t experienced these consequences yet, as Facebook competes with other websites (i.e., Google Search, Amazon) and social media companies, the risk will increase. I do think machine learning will play an important role in policing content on Facebook because of its advantages over humans in pattern recognition.

Very interesting! I’m also interested to learn about the controls Netflix puts in place to guard against merely repeating the same types of content over and over. In other words, if Netflix uses customer information to see what types of shows a certain person likes, how to they think about introducing new types of content rather than just showing the same type of content? Similarly, I wonder how they control for this same issue when green-lighting new shows.