J B's Profile

It’s clear: to survive, GME will have to change their business model.
An alternative can be subscription based gaming company. Their core business after all is to sell rights to reproduce games. A subscription based model will be similar to Netflix’s transformation to their current model.
I have difficulty believing that GME will keep all of their brick and mortar stores. Possible the best performing ones can be transformed to testing places for their game offering. New technologies such as more immersive games, augmented reality, virtual reality and wearable games include a hardware aspect that can be explioted by GME.

This articles summarizes one of the most cricial points of the TOM Challenge excercise: from a social standpoint, how will we have a more equal world when there will be less and less jobs available?
The main point is that there probably won’t be enough jobs for everyone. If as a society we intend to improve equality, we will have to re-invent the labor structure. Regulations should keep in mind the effects that automation will have on our society. It’s difficult to think of companies as the drivers of change in society, so I think it’s the role of the government to shape the future ef employement.

When I came to HBS, one of my biggest surprises was not having internet access during classes. I must honestly say that I didn’t know the details of how the case method worked, so I thought of the system as really old fashioned and traditional.
Even though I’ve come to understand the main point of this: to have students engaged at maximum capacity, I still think that an intermediate solution can be found. There are times where this is most evident: having a printout from an excel spreadsheet is completely different fom having the real excel open. I see the future of education as a balanced mix of technology and paper. Technology would have to be a closed system (probably proprietary). I honestly don’t think that our current paper only system can last for much longer

Interesting post! I trully feel that driverless cars will be the norm and we just have to decide how to get there. What I would recommend as an alternative is to test the system in other countries as well (a European country can be a good benchmark for US standards). This will provide additional reference points to decide how to proceed. I agree that Google has taken a difficult approach, that is paying professional drivers to test their system. Uber could create an incentive to have their drivers use their system, but it seems that there may be conflict of interest there. So Tesla’s approach seems the most effective to building the necessary data to break the chicken-egg problem
My biggest concern is that drivers in their Teslas will be careless when driving. This situation emerged with Google: originally Google launched a Beta that could be tested by regular Googlers (not professional drivers). The problem was that people didn’t act as backup, but were actually overconfident of the system’s performance. In Tesla’s case this can turn out to be the Aquile’s heel. Just to be mindful.

Very interesting perspective on the subject. My opinion differs a bit: the role of MOOCs will be a mayor one in the reinvention of education going forward.
I’ve taken up some courses and they’ve been excellent tools to develop specific areas of expertise I intended to go deeper. Going forward, I see MOOCs as a way to introduce University courses to new students. The experience of learning in the classroom is difficult to replicate, so I expect the quality Universities to keep their place in the future. What I think will happen is that we’ll see less low quality Universities. Validation by intermediate degrees of low tiered Universities will compete further with MOOCs, and I think this is great. As always, competition and variety creates value. High priced Universities will need to continously improve on their content to stay competitive.

Loved the article Zita, it introduced the question of how will sports appareal companies add value going forward. Introducing the power of information will give a competitive advantage over the traditional brands, Nike and Adidas. I wanted to know more about how other devices and technologies could be integrated into the ecosystem. I was surprised not to see more innovation coming from smart textiles.
I recommend the following Forbes article, which discusses additional innovations in this area:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstylefile/2014/05/07/what-is-the-future-of-fabric-these-smart-textiles-will-blow-your-mind/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/

Hey Anton!
Just to balance the score from another Xoogler 🙂
I also wanted to add the efforts Google puts with its Googlers Give arm, the organization that coordinates actions with NGOs and matches Googler’s donations to charities with the same amount. In moments of disaster, many of them related to global warming, Google has stepped up and deployed their human and monetary resources to be of help. In many cases this isn’t communicated externally: the efforts are many times generated from lower levels (not from above) and don’t come with an agenda.
In all, I think it’s valid to talk about the role for-profits will have in global warming. We do need the joint effort of government, companies and society to tackle this issue

I would build on this article and comment about the presence of other disruptive players in the market offering similar products. There are actually several articles written this year:
Example on Impossible Foods
https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/impossible-foods-the-intricacies-of-farts-and-burps/

I’m really exited about this new trend. It seems that Beyond Meat’s value proposition vs the other alternatives is in it’s distribution.
Threat: will the rest move in the same direction?

I agree on many points discussed in this article. However, my hopes is still that the grid will become less and less relevant. New combinations of renewable energies + storage capabilities will avoid the problem of the inefficient altogether. As we increase efficiencies in the renewables and lower their prices, energy will be generated at or near consumption.

I recommend a White House study on the subject
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160616_cea_renewables_electricgrid.pdf

On a final note, it would have been great to include the sources of this post!

Interesting article…
However I don’t think the first option (increasing volatility) will help, but instead fuel the incentives to go green
The third option (increasing CO2 efficiencies) is the best alternative for Aramco right now. If we didn’t take into account the negative externalities of oil production, Aramco is the most profitable company in the world right now and theystill have room for growth. So, finding a way to have cero CO2 footprint could lead them to ultimately increasing their market share. Going public will give Aramco further incentives to go after this strategy.

Thanks for writing this post! It really caught my attention when browsing throught the rest. It seems that Starbucks still has a long way to go. It’s interesting how the company is thinking about they way to tackle the supply difficulties that will arise in the following years. The ressemblance with the IKEA case is amazing, in the sense that they have decided to integrate vertically and lease land to grow their own trees and keep a supply of wood. I was intriged to know more about the specific actions that can be taken in more tropical countries. There’s still a lot of room for discussion in that area!