JEH's Profile

Very interesting read. I am a strong believer in applying machine learning more extensively in health care to both improve the working conditions of physicians and health care professionals, but also support them in decision making for even better health outcomes. According to a report released by McKinsey, AI clinical support reduces the number of wrong diagnoses. The reality is, that AI can spot patterns based on patient medical data, enabling doctors to make their decisions based on a more comprehensive analysis. Another interesting application is that of personalized clinical pathways. By using algorithms and pattern recognition on data of previous patients as well as your individual patient data, AI can enable personalized clinical programs for patients to improve health outcomes. I.e. based on your symptoms and your demographics, treatment B is the preferential treatment based on previous patients as it offers the highest expected success rate. [1]

However, for application of AI to be efficient you need access to all the patient medical data. In Sweden a main issue is that due to different IT systems of different health care providers there is no one place with the full data set. This severely limits the ability of AI.

As you mention there are questions related to efficiency and accuracy of the methods. I believe it should be used as a supporting tool for doctors to ensure that it is safe and accurate, as well as ensuring patients feel comfortable with it. Moreover, AI must be incorporated in the curriculum of medical schools around the world to build awareness and understanding of the technology. Lastly, I believe it is crucial for Microsoft as well as hospitals incorporating the technology to work closely with and collaborate with regulators and medical associations to develop standards for the use of AI in clinical applications.

[1] “Digitizing healthcare in Sweden”, McKinsey & Company, June, 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/digitizing-healthcare-in-sweden, accessed November 2018.

Very interesting article. I find is fascinating how Amazon has taken over the US retail industry, and made retailers like Macy’s lose large amounts of revenues in a short amount of time. Retailers in Sweden are now fearing the entrance of Amazon later this year, as the move is expected to shake up the retail space in Sweden significantly. Still, despite the large number of consumers visiting amazon for their daily purchases, fashion brands have been resistant to enter the Amazon space due to risks of losing control of brand.

While Amazon’s move to creating private label brands in fashion is an interesting response to the inertia of fashion brands, I have my doubts. In my opinion, fashion is very different from daily usage products. Just yesterday I was happy buy a yoga mattress from Amazon, but I would never even entertain the idea of buying a blazer from Amazon. Success in fashion is as tightly linked to the brand, especially the emotional connection to the brand, as the actual designs of the fashion pieces. I doubt that Amazon will be able to create a strong brand in fashion, especially as you sell cleaning products next to it.

Another concern of mine, is the design process where an artificially intelligent designer replaces the traditional creative designer. As you mention it is reactionary, i.e. not creating trends but simply following them. Could Amazon risk being too late, and simply being seen as a copy-cat? However, I do believe that both science and art are necessary to create successful fashion pieces in the future. Social media has enabled companies to get an instant temperature check of what people believe is “in style” at the moment. By leveraging that coupled with fast lead times as well as a bit of art from the designer, I believe Amazon could create very successful designs. However, the question remains whether Amazon can create the necessary credibility as a brand to support the designs.

Loved your piece – it really changed the way I viewed the product development process of automobile manufacturers. I think Local Motors are brave in completely transforming the development process of automobiles by using crowdsourcing. Moreover, they seem to be doing an excellent job given the design of Olli, which delivers low-cost and creative designs.

Given the enormous pressure the automotive manufacturing industry is facing, driven by strict CO2 emission regulations, shifts toward hybrid/electric vehicles and faster model cycles, automobile manufacturers must innovative to remain in the game. The industry hence must reinvent itself, and I think getting insights from outside parties that are not as stuck in the current way of operating, might be a great way to fuel innovation with creative and outside-the-box ideas.

Regarding the best way to organize the external innovation, my pick is the collaborative community approach. It enables participants to work together, questioning and challenging the ideas of others, and build upon the ideas of others, which I believe leads to more innovative and disruptive ideas in the end.

The more freedom you give participants, the more outside-the-box thinking and crazy ideas will be unearthed – and these ideas are key to disrupt the industry. Therefore, I would invite participants to take an active part in the process by voting on design process steps. However, I still believe it is key for Local Motors to provider a structure for the discussions, and not allow participants to sell products directly to consumers

Thanks for sharing your unique perspective on open innovation at Alibaba. I found the article very interesting, and was amazed by the many different strategies Alibaba employs and the ecosystem it has created to spur innovation, both internally and externally, in light of more intense competitiveness as well as increased customer demands.

I particularly found the investment in innovation centers, with the aim of building close relationships and partnerships with leaders in the tech space and top academia fascinating. There are lots of ideas out there, and by creating this platform Alibaba can take advantage of them. Moreover, I believe the innovation centers enable parties to challenge views and build further on ideas to help Alibaba succeed in the future.

Moreover, I am a strong believer in using contests to stir up the start-up world. Contests is a great way of creating interest and attention from entrepreneurs and thinkers globally. I think broadening the contest outside the frontier technologies you mentioned is a good idea to get even more ideas to base strategic decision upon.

One aspect you didn’t mention, is the role of the consumer. In the HBS case “Alibaba goes public”, one of the key success factors of Alibaba mentioned was their focus on the consumer. By listening to what the Chinese consumers wanted in terms of the service and features they were lacking, Alibaba managed to win the Chinese market and force out both Yahoo and Ebay. I believe it is instrumental for Alibaba to maintain that sensitivity to customer needs, and open up for innovation from the consumers, the actual users of ther services, in a more sophisticated way.

Very interesting and thought-provoking piece. I found it very interesting that Vojd focuses on the elite fashion houses, e.g. Louis Vuitton, as targets for partnership projects. Given the positioning of the elite fashion houses of offering exclusivity and a hand-made feel, I would originally have imagined that they would be reluctant to incorporate additive manufacturing in their design processes.

However, at McKinsey I co-authored a report, State of Fashion 2018, and one of the key trends we found was that personalization and curation is becoming even more important to the customer[1]. Hence, one could argue that additive manufacturing could enable fashion houses to create truly personalized jewelry of intricate design.

A concern of mine, would be whether additive manufacturing would make it easier for others, e.g. mass and discount brands, to copy the designs. On one hand, if you have the blueprint it is easy to copy, but on the other hand, it requires the technology which will be expensive especially in large volumes.

Lastly, I wanted to touch upon the concept of sustainability and fast-fashion. The fast-fashion brands H&M and Zara have become world leaders in fashion, due to their fast lead times from first draft design to placement of items in store. Additive manufacturing offer fashion companies the ability to manufacture items on demand and in store which would decrease lead times. Moreover, by reducing carbon footprint and reducing waste in the process, additive manufacturing can make the industry more sustainable. This is another key trend we uncovered in the McKinsey report State of Fashion 2018.

[1]“The State of Fashion 2018: Renewed optimism for the fashion industry”, McKinsey & Company, November 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/renewed-optimism-for-the-fashion-industry, accessed November 2018.

I found your piece very interesting, and fully agree that bioprinting is the future of modern health care. As you mention in the article bioprinting can be used in a number of applications, one of which is regenerative medicine. Due to an aging population and lifestyle choices adding to the burden of illness, the demand for tissue and organ transplants is increasing fast, however, due to all the advancements in medicine and car safety the supply of suitable donors is decreasing. In the US only one third of patients on the national transplant waiting list received an organ last year, leading to the death of 20 waiting individuals according to the US Government Organ Donation Statistics[1]. By successfully implementing bioprinting in clinical applications, the lives of thousands of patients could potentially be saved.

However, your article also raises a number of critical questions related to the risks of bioprinting. First of all, there is a question about the cost of potential treatments utilizing bioprinting technology. A high price could deny some patients access, and further increase patient disparity in health care. Additionally, there are concerns regarding the safety of bioprinting in clinical applications. I firmly believe that we need regulatory standards to ensure that the procedure is safe and has no bi-effects, given the limited knowledge of the effect of bioprinted tissues and organs in the human body.

In the end, the benefits of improving health care with bioprinting outweighs the risks, however, the risks can be mitigated by regulatory standards and policies governing the use of the technology.

[1] U.S. Government Information on Organ Donation and Transplantation, “Organ Donation Statistics”, https://www.organdonor.gov/statistics-stories/statistics.html, accessed November 2018