Crimson_Ranger's Profile

Great article; thank you for sharing. In reading this, I continue to reflect on what the most impactful use case of this technology is. I have had siri on my phone for days and only use it at night to set my alarm for the next day. Because I imagine that I am pretty unique in my lack of use, I agree with Amazon’s approach which says that it makes more sense to allow people to build the “skills” that are most impactful to them rather than build that functionality itself.

With regards to auto integration, I wonder whether we have thought about the impact more car functionality will have on safe driving statistics?

This was a well-written essay. A main underlying premise of the piece is that rapid prototyping is inherently a good thing. One question I had was whether there was some incremental gain from having friction costs associated with prototyping? Does the incremental gains from speedy prototyping outweigh the likely incremental waste created from poorly thought-out prototypes being created? I imagine that it might, but I imagine that some of these materials may not be able to easily recycled.

This was an awesome read; thank you for sharing. Your piece touches on a critical topic that we haven’t really discussed at length in class, but I think is actually more reflective of the economy at large. In a utility driven-fields, do legacy companies have the runway to turnaround their fundamental approach to product ideation and development before consumers deem them obsolete? And, how bone deep do corporate changes need to be for a company to thrive in a digital world?

As you rightly point out that turnaround process starts not with introducing new processes or staff, but rather with an extensive paradigm shift on how ideas are born and vetted. I don’t agree with the CEOs assertion that its simply a matter of getting back to Company values. For me the situation requires a level of rigorous analytical thinking that may not be M.O. of the organization today.

Moreover, I disagree with ksimmons that there isn’t a time element here. It is really hard to come back from being seen by consumers as obsolete/irrelevant. Particularly when you consider that H&Ms former position has not created a vacuum but rather has led to the rise of challenger players that consumers actually like.

This was an awesome read; thanks for pulling it together! Reflecting on this, I am still working through whether additive manufacturing has branding/marketing power in excess of the core manufacturing efficiency benefits. For example, can a company use marketing around a “3-D printed customized product” to command a higher price for its products? If so, the added margin of such products may justify the incremental development costs associated with bringing such products/services to market.

This was an awesome read; I really appreciate you writing it. For me, this scenario serves as a perfect opportunity for government and the private sector to build a more collaborative relationship. To me, the government should limit itself to only servicing (likely at a loss) only areas that the private sector is unwilling to service (at a reasonable profit). To fund that subsidized service, it can either charge private firms a fee or source money from the general funds account.

This was an awesome read so thank you for pulling it together. As I reflected on this, I couldn’t help but wonder about the two-pronged impact of OI in this case (issue awareness and innovation driving). To me regardless of whether a viable toilet is designed coming out of this process, it is valuable as it raises awareness for a critical issue. That being said, I am all in favor of toilet innovation and like ksimmons, I agree that the Gates Foundation need not relegate the entire ideation process to a for-profit.

This was a very good essay. Very much appreciated the opportunity to learn more about how AirBnB is using machine learning to improve search. The one topic that I continue to think through coming out of reading this (and reflecting on the broader questions circling AirBnB) is the impact regulation will have on the business model. For many high-tourist cities, AirBnB has actually been a cause for concern as the influx of tourists enabled by the platform strains public services. Looking forward, I wonder if AirBnBs search algorithms can actually pick-up on customer vacation preferences to the extent that they can suggest less-trafficked destinations that fit the same archetype. In doing so, could AirBnB actually be on the leading edge of helping to better distribute tourist flows across many destinations and thus reduce tourist-local conflict?