Jayant Walia's Profile

Fascinating article Bernie! Great job at simplifying such complex issues.

Organovo has a great potential and offers real benefits. When deciding on issues of R&D one also has to ascertain the maket potential and regulatory aspects. Like you mentioned despite Organovo helping in pharmalogic studies the tradtional testing requirements still apply to get FDA approval. I wonder how far along when that wont be required from a regulatory perspective. There is a huge demand for organ donation as well and again dependig on different government’s position i suspect Organovo can tap into huge markets outside the US as well. For example, in India there is research going on theruaputic platforms. My strategy on R&D would significantly be calibrated basis these considerations.

As far as the moral question goes, i believe this new technology is still offering a chance to people specially in developing markets where getting traditional treatments and organ donation can be way more convulted than in the US.

Great Job Carlos!

Additive manufacturing seems to really make sense for all the great benefits that you have mentioned. However given the cost differential presently, when do you see this type of manufacturing actually making sense for GE financially? Also, is GE leveraging these technologies in its other businesses or only restricted to Aerospace and if so, why? Lastly, I wanted to understand the regulatory impact on tis manufacturing standard given the industry we are talking about. A lot of the other comments do highlight safety, so I am wondering what else does GE need to comply with and whetehr any regulation has financial/operational impact that would prevent it to leverage the full value of AM.

Great Article!

I do believe that blockchain can have a great use case beyond fintech and supply chain seems to be one such area. However, I do question the need for a blockchain solution for Walmart. Blockchain at its essence is a distributed ledger, where no central party should have the power to change data or have sole access to it. In this particular situation, very few people appear to control the chain, which could still open up for manipulation and it seems that a pure IOT solution integrated with a central tracking software would serve the exact same purpose. This is one of the drawbacks of a private blockchain solution. However, there is some merit in arguing that a consortium implementing a private blockchain solution can work where no member of the consortium is incentivised to ‘game’ the system which can be a soluton to ensure greater privacy.

Thanks Masato!

I think partnering with a VC will work for both parties. The VC would absolutely be ready to co-invest in a project that has Mitsubishi’s buy in. However, there may be misalignment of goals in partnering with an external VC, hence I personally would vote for setting up Mitsubishi’s internal VC arm. That would help with more strategic decision making that is in line with the company’s overall objectives. I believe, open innovation is ideal for a large conglomerate since the already diverse portfolio can benefit from newer and wider ideas. While I do believe that Japanese style of business may be hierarchical, we have seen a lot of innovation and institutional interest in newer technologies that tells me this model would work even if it calibrated according to Japanese sensibilities.

Crowd sourcing ideas by the government is a great idea that allows people to actually be a part of the process. Similar to New York, there are initiatives in India that enable citizens to reach out to the government and give ideas to resolve the burning issues the country faces. I do agree with you that civic duty may not be an incentive in the long term, simply because even great ideas need to be implemented and implementation often gets blocked due to bureaucratic reasons. For this to truly work and keep the network effect going, I believe the government should involve private companies through a revenue sharing model that would help with monetization of the project and will continue to grow the network.

This is great!

I think Square’s strategy is brilliant and it is natural for the company to leverage the data that it is has. Your point on Square’s ability to improve its operations is actually quite pertinent and could definitely help companies in better forecasting and pricing strategies. It could also help companies to make more targetted offers to customers at specific times of the day, months, seasons etc. On the banking model, i am not sure how Square will be equipped to manage the regulatory compliances and treasury management so soon. There will be a lot of credit analysis that will have to be done beyond payments data. I am wondering whether it will be better to partner with banks and help them with disrburse loans rather than taking on the risk yourself.

Very interesting article! Blackrock is heavily investing in new technology including machine learning for the various reasons described above and Blockchain to streamline many manual and error prone processes. Its very interesting to imagine how the differences between fundamental investing vs scientific investing will be resolved once the use case becomes more widespread. I like your point on how company’s may end up looking at the same data or same patterns which could potentially mean that it will be fundamental investing decisions may end up being deciding factor all over again.

Thanks for the post! It is no surprise that credit card companies including American express are focussing on how to upsell to customer and make more ‘smart products’. On the credit card fraud issue, I am interested to understand how far along is American express in predictive analysis of fraud detection and how far behind are it’s competitors. In terms of upselling products through data there is huge potential of strategic tie ups with 3rd parties that give more targeted incentives to the customer than the normal points system. That way, customers can actually get a true customized version of their of cards rather than having to chose from a selected few options. However, how that can be achieved from an operations and regulatory perspective remains to be seen.