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Thanks Chris, this is a very interesting article. It is very interesting to read about your mentioning of the perceived skills gap in American workers. Based on my experience working and studying in Asia, I know that the Chinese government is heavily funding the training of Chinese engineers and other technical professions at the university level. Chinese universities graduates many multiples of engineers or STEM trained graduates as compared to U.S. universities. Therefore, it is not surprising to me at all that there is a perception that Asia has a much higher available pool of technical talent. If the United States seeks to remain competitive in the technology / manufacturing space, it is vital that the U.S. government similarly invests behind technical training as the Chinese government does.

Great article Angela!
This topic has been something that I have been thinking for a long time.
Should company spend money on lobbying on import tax and barrier or on innovation and advancement.
Both of the above can help company to gain competitive advantage. The former might be faster and less riskier, and the later might be slower and risker.
From my own perspective, I would rather to have companies to spend money on technology than on government lobbying. The downside is obvious in the short term. But the advantage is more solid and the impact is much bigger to the company and even the entire society in the future.

Great analysis Remi. I was working on a similar company before, and think there is a huge potential to reduce the energy consumption and be environment friendly even before we heavily invest in renewable energy or other forms.

What we did was to improve the energy conversion efficiency the hydrocarbon. We did it in two ways,
1. improve the efficiency of the machines that convert the hydrocarbons into power
2. improve the waste generated during the power generation process.

In the end, we manage to reduce 20% of the energy consumption in the end.

What I meant that in the short term, even by improving the operation efficiency, we can reduce the hydrocarbons by a lot.

Hi Emily – thanks a lot for writing this article!
I think this is a very interesting topic, how to ensure sustainability of our food supply. This is a topic that need to involve countries from all over the world to work together.
Personally, I think there is a way to make this sustainable. But it is not easy.
1. Promote alternative food other than fish, e.g., generic transformed grains or rice that can grow faster and produce more. This has been promoted in China for many years and the impact is big.
2. Set up regulations that regulate the fishing activities in the water. For example, divide the fishing area into multiple field, and only fish in each field every couple of year or season.

I am sure there will be more ways to do this. The world population has be growing exponentially in the past decade, and many countries are able to not only grow its population, but also its living standard. But again, to make this happen on a world level, we need the corporation of countries in the world and work together.

Nice analysis, Andrew! This is something many company are facing now. Since digitization is inevitable, how much can they leverage digitization to become their competitive advantage. What companies need to do to become a leader in digitization?
My own perspective, technology itself is not enough.
Companies need to build an entire organization around new technology and new way of working. Toyota way of working is a great example.
Technology will always become outdated, but the culture will never be. If the company can re-organize in such a way that innovations and new technologies are constantly embraced and experimented. They will become the industry leader in the end.

Minghao, it is a very interesting company doing great things in China.
One of the challenge that most people face in this industry is the profitability. Fresh fruit are normally heavy and less costly, and this make the e-commerce industry very hard to make profit. I could not find the income statement of Yiguo, but I guess it might be still losing money.
There are a couple of ways for them to turn profitable in the long run, but none of them is easy.
1. Achieve economy of scale, so that one last-mile point-to-point delivery can deliver multiple order, and the cost/order can be reduced.
2. Use big data to predict order, but since the fruits are perishable, and thus will impose a great challenge to the forecasting capability
3. Limit service level, and give more days between order dropping and order delivery. This can help them to aggregate orders and achieve economy of scales

But there are huge business opportunities if they can address the profitability qand other challenges

Hi chloeho, you made a great analysis of the GPU industry and how the big plays like Intel and Google and competing in this industry. I feel in the future, there will be two major forms, one is the integrated player like Intel （or potentially Google) who can integrate industry both up and down and take a large portion of market share. But there will still be small and smart player in the market, developing one small part of the product, but with exceptional quality and sophistication.
In general, I feel the semi-conductor industry is one of the most innovative and also competitive industry, faster and smaller chips are coming out every single year. All the players are under a lot of pressure to continue innovation. It will be very interesting to see what will happen to this industry in the end.

It is really fascinating to see what Amazon has been doing with its supply chain by leveraging its technology capabilities. I have heard about anticipatory shipping, which is a technology that combines big data and machine learning. But the Amazon key is something completed new to me, and I do agree with you that regulatory factors need to be considered for those type of disrupted services.

Supply chain innovation is a never ending game, there are always faster and cheaper ways to deliver items from locations to locations. Being the industry leader, Amazon should take the lead in developing more disruptive technology, and work with government to mitigate the risk associated with the social impact of those technology.

I am a supporter of new and disruptive technology. In the short run, it might be create social impact such as people losing jobs; but in the long run, with proper training and development, people can learn to operate and work with new technology and make more money.