Kat's Profile

Wow, I was simply impressed by fact that a company with the history of 170years has greatly adapted operation’s model to today’s digital world. I agree with your idea of human capital strategy, and to add to it, another possible use of technology at Siemens is human capital management. As Siemens employs as many as more than 300,000 people, how to recruit, evaluate, retain and optimize human allocation would be really important. We have seen some hints of technology utilization in human resource management through cases like Accenture or Egon Zehnder. The gigantic international conglomerate can take advantage such the technology to develop constantly.

This post is very interesting! As Robo-advisors can provide us easy and affordable was to reach globally diversified investments, many people will shift their money not only from existing funds to robo-advisors but also from saving accounts to investments. We saw in LEAD that Bridgewater was trying to eliminate bias by thorough discussion to find truth, robo-advisors are perfect to pursue unbiased decision as long as its program is not unbiased, so with the capability to deal with tremendous historical data and financial theories, robo-advisors would flourish in future. Though asset managers would try to acquire/develop own robo-advisors, I think other technology company like Google or IBM can possibly join in this market. I wonder who would develop the best robo-advisor. Is that who know finance best, or who know technology best?

Thank you very much for the very practical post! While I totally agree with what Ariana mentioned about privacies, these SNSs are now playing very important roles in case of emergency. In addition to flu, for example in Japan, it helped many people when earthquakes occur. In 2011’s East Japan earthquake, as this telegraph’s article(link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8379101/Japan-earthquake-how-Twitter-and-Facebook-helped.html) says, many of mobile phone was not working at all, but people could communicate or know the situation of people real time. In this year’s Kumamoto earthquake, Facebook developed a service with which users in disasters area can declare their situations and their friends can see their situations real time. Though there are incremental anxieties about privacies, facebook is now becoming a lifeline tool.

This is really interesting! I used to play with LEGO when I was a child, and I, of course, bought the most popular toy in the world for my son and daughter so that they can foster their creativity and they really love the bricks. I even visited LEGO LAND in Malaysia with my son and was impressed how people can be creative by stacking the same shape small pieces of bricks. Yet I really did not notice about the digitalization of the physical bricks which got a history of more than 80 years. Especially, “LEGO ideas” fascinates me. While it is similar to the product development of Threadless, as LEGO is universal and as both adults and children love it, it can be a broader community and reflect the taste of everybody. Indeed I could enjoy seeing it with my son. Though I think LEGO will be sustainably successful, it can attract more people if it could communicate its digital presence to the world more dynamically.

This is so interesting. While I am familiar with S&P or other rating firms, I have never thought of the responsibilities of those firms on the climate change. However, if S&P, MDYS, FITCH and others start to take those problems into account while they decide a rating, it can be serious motivations for the companies who seek to get better ratings. While many companies boast their activities for the sustainability, there are no objective views to tell if those CSR activities are meaningful or not. If rating companies could play the role of evaluating those as a third-party, it may be one path to motivate companies to more care and get serious about environmental problems.

Interesting post! As Kiernan says, people sometimes try to avoid farm raised fish and go for wild fish. But it was shocking that Atlantic bluefin tuna was included in IUCN red list categorized as “endangered” (http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/21860/0). Regarding the sustainability, the notion of aquaculture is important. Nissui, or Kindai University are leading the related technologies, so developing the practices to the level of that we do not have to care about the health risks is really important.

Very interesting topic! As I grew up on my family farm, I totally agree that farmers are the most labor-intensive. Yet it totally makes sense that agricultural practice can be improved by fully utilizing the data so that they can keep their practices consistent. This is also nice as younger generation can start farming if they could more easily reach the data without having special skills developed through many years of experiences. In terms of collecting data, there are some companies which use drones to scan the status of crops and soils. The technologies related to agriculture are now rapidly developed and I feel those are hot now.

Interesting post! I have heard that the market size of green bonds is expanding. But I think to make the market “sustainable” so that the green bonds can sustainably lead the sustainability is important. The return and the liquidity would be keys. Though the balancing the return to convince investors to invest in and the purpose of green bonds may be challenging for the issuer, the impact it can offer is significant. I hope this kind of market grows sustainably and become popular investments among investors.

Very interesting! There are many opportunities to optimize operations of agricultural practices by introducing technologies, I think the speed of implementing those technologies are often slower than other industries. Especially in Japan, as farmers are aging and an average age of them is reaching almost 70, the IT literacy maybe one hurdle besides the cost of implementation.
However, as IoT would significantly increase the efficiency of agricultural practices, I would love to learn more about this and promote the implementation in Japan in the future, really.