John Doe's Profile

Regarding the potential benefit of 3D printing in space towards the overall space exploration mission, I am actually a little bit skeptical. First thing that pops up in my mind is the first law of thermodynamics – namely the principle of energy conservation that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. I think the main obstacle of this idea is not the absence of gravity – it is still the logistics of how to bring the raw material required by the 3D printer as an input. While the ability to send a small 3D printer into outer space and not sending bulky manufactured equipment from earth sounds attractive, unless the 3D printer can use material readily available in space or Mars as an input, the same logistical problem still persists.

Furthermore, while it is an interesting exercise to guess who will win the space race to claim ownership of Mars, I believe that past performance is not indicative of future result and it is too early to even make any educated guess at this time. What is more important though, is the positive effect of private company entering the industry to break down monopoly in the industry, create healthy competitive landscape, and spur the rapid growth of innovation that has been stagnant over the past decades.

I agreed with ModiFace above that the future existence of LEGO will depend on its ability to transform their downstream distribution network model from 3rd party brick-and-mortar retailers (e.g. Toys ‘R Us) to Direct-to-consumer (DTC) approach via e-commerce. The open innovation initiatives LEGO currently pursue is actually very aligned with the DTC approach: LEGO will be in better position to predict the future demand of its new product sets (through the votes/responses of the public) as it will reduce FG inventory holding cost from poor stock selection and write-off from obsolete products. Furthermore, it will require less marketing expense to promote the products as the buzz from the open competition already generates word-of-mouth effect within the community.

I agreed with both posts above – I am very skeptical with the commercial value of this product based on its functionality.

Even if machine learning technology enables Muse headband to correctly identify each user’s state of focused attention or distraction based on his/her individual brainwaves pattern, one big question remains unresolved: just the mere fact of being in the state of focused attention, does that mean the person perform meditation correctly and gain all the benefits associated with it? One can argue that when a HBS student puts focused attention in classroom to understand difficult TOM concept, it is certainly not the same state as “the higher state of consciousness” that well-performed meditation can generate.

This is a very interesting article to highlight the first foray of 3D printing into the well-established & labor-intensive automotive manufacturing industry. At the moment, due to its current limitation in large scale production, it appears that 3D printing technology actually helps to improve the human work quality, rather than displacing them. I think even once the technological advancement enables large-scale production, it will replace the requirement of lower-skilled assembly worker to higher-skilled engineers to operate the 3D printing machine. It will require certain re-skilling for the current workers, but not directly causing massive layoff to the entire organization.

Regarding your open question about the supplier-consumer supply chain, interesting application of this 3D printing technology will be the ability to create customized car design based on individual customer preference – just like what Nike and other footwear companies are able to do in manufacturing custom-made shoes [1]

[1] Davide Sher, “Closing the 3D printed shoe circle with mass customized uppers”, 3D Printing Media Network, October 22, 2018, https://www.3dprintingmedia.network/closing-the-3d-printed-shoe-circle-with-mass-customized-uppers/, accessed November 2018

I think the budget and resource limitation on open innovation initiative that the Argentinian government push can be resolved with the right level of partnership between the public and private sector. One way to nurture the meaningful relationship as posed in the open question would be to guarantee the private sector the right to profit from the future economic benefits/cash flow stream of the projects they invest in. Successful example of this is an airport modernization project in Cebu, Philippines [1]. By giving assurance for the GMR-Megawide private sector consortium to reap the future commercial benefit, in return, the government is able to foster great degree of architectural & efficient facilities innovation and built the “most modern airport” in the country.

[1] Cebu Daily News, November 11, 2018. “https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/203146/poe-public-private-partnership-vital-in-airport-modernization”, accessed on November 2018

I agreed that machine learning has huge potential to revolutionize oil & gas industry. Due to the vast amount of data generated by company operation in this industry, there are many beneficial applications of machine learning to reduce the reliance on expensive human resource and potential human error associated with it. In addition to underground oil reservoir exploration and preventive maintenance program mentioned in this essay, another potential application area is in refinery operation – increasing the number of variables that can be managed in the operation by 10 times [1]

However, in transitioning from human-centered operation to a fully-automated machine learning, it is very imperative to do so very carefully. One option could be to trial the automated system under human purview, so that intervention can be made in case of system failure.

[1] Robert Brelsford, “Repsol launches Big Data, AI project at Tarragona refinery”. Oil & Gas Journal, June 6, 2018, https://www.ogj.com/articles/2018/06/repsol-launches-big-data-ai-project-at-tarragona-refinery.html, accessed on November 2018