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Gabe, your article is well written and researched! Thinking about what might be next for Facebook is an important exercise in predicting what e-commerce might look like in the next 5 years. While there is a rich and data-generating consumer base that could be easily targeted for sales, I wonder how users might respond, and if the sale of goods would cause a reduction in platform use, thereby hurting advertising revenue and reducing the growth of data-generation in the future. When we think about Amazon, we are considering a tech firm with an e-commerce platform, and when we look at Google we think about a search engine and technology product company. Google generates the majority of its revenues from adWords and flourishes under this business model. An advertising led model may be preferable since consumers who are explicitly pushed products and made aware they are being sold something might choose to disengage or use another social network.

Even so, I think the Facebook’s capacity to implement targeted selling strategies is likely unmatched because its possession of each consumer’s social graph. A social graph is essentially a collection of a user’s activity across facebook and any of the apps/partners where users log in with their Facebook ID. This data is aggregated into the social graph, which essentially becomes a single view of the customer which can generate extremely detailed insights and lead to extremely accurate targeting behaviors for advertisers and small/medium sized businesses with relevant products to sell.

A very well-written, organized, and argued essay! Several questions come to mind when reading this case. While AR is no longer considered “new”, the technology has not yet moved into a mature phase where the technology is produced widely and at very competitive prices. While implementing these technologies seem to improve efficiencies in the short and long term, I wonder how capital intensive this efficiency improvement strategy actually is. While it is important to stay ahead of the competition, I wonder how investments in the technology and inevitable reduction in costs that will be realized in the next 1-3 years, make it more palatable to institute hand-held digital root-optimizing solution in the short term and incorporate AR into the process flow in the medium term. The trade off between technology and implementation costs with efficiency improvements is one every logistics business needs to face, and perhaps for some companies investing in AR solutions now may make the most sense.

Seo, this is a wonderfully written and thoughtful article! While reading your article I struggled with one question. Would today’s consumers, who may not understand the music quality they are foregoing, pay for higher quality music if it is not something they miss in the first place? This directly aligns with your question about how the music industry can maximize their top line. With regard to distribution strategy, I would like to see SM make a serious push into several urban cities in the US as larger scale test, in order to determine the viability of this product in a world that is dominated by compressed music files stored on phones. The notion of bandwidth and bottleneck that might arise due to the high file density is another concern which would be interesting to explore.

Syndie, lovely writing and thoughtful article! Your article thoroughly discusses the implications of climate chain on the Body Shop’s supply chain and some of the actions the company is taking to mitigate climate change risks. Something came to mind when reading your article, perhaps it makes sense for the Body Shop to use a comprehensive system which forecasts and records historical climate trends in its core sourcing areas and actively shares this data set with the CTF in order to help with future planting cycles and mitigate climate risk when possible. This could lead to a more targeted investment in more robust planting and farming technologies in geographies that look the most at risk for harvest problems due to climate change. A second-order consequence of this system might be a better management of CTF inventory and potentially a reduction in cost for the Body Shop if cost savings are realized by its supplying partner. Although this is far from the Body Shop’s core competencies it is extremely important to ensure continued availability of raw materials used in its goods.

A fascinating look at protectionism in the data space and how it increases costs for major corporates. I do find some value in these measures since in theory, they are ways to help protect the users who are generating the data. If all data sets were centralized wherever a corporate chose, the impact of hacking could be cataclysmic. Entire systems could be lost and hundreds of millions of users impacted simultaneously.

I do believe data access should be regulated in a way that promotes user safety rather than isolationist trends. For example, the notion of government accessing huge data sets of private or publicly traded firms is a matter of extreme importance. In China, we see a major consolidation in the chat and social media space with WeChat. WeChat captures a complete view of its users, from payments, location services, restaurant preference, friendship network, personal videos, user behavior, texts and voice notes, to posted images. In order to operate, WeChat is obligated to deliver this data to the Chinese government. Is this akin to destroying the notion of privacy? Should this be regulated, and if so how? If there were an international standard for data usage and access, this may safely replace data isolationism. For now, isolationist policies might be the best proxy currently available to try to protect users.

This is a fascinating concept. I think Blockchain is a very strong technology in the grading and tracking of different food goods. With increasing emphasis placed on sustainable farming practices and high quality products, the food supply chain should welcome the introduction of a new technology that facilitates these goals.

I do wonder about the issuance of digital currency to such a fragmented grow population. If farmers are using mobile devices and working in developing countries, the significance of digital currency is reduced relative to actual currency. Moreover, digital currencies tend to be extremely volatile and not always liquid due to market movements that make selling unappetizing at different times. It is likely that people in developing countries who grow coffee as their only means of income would not benefit from payment in a digital currency and would instead require payment in a universal and stable currency in order to make use of the BlockChain technology more tenable.