Khaled Mouasher's Profile

After reading this article, I thought it was informative, and also indicative of some of the short-sightedness of large successful companies. I would think that the fact that the ULA is still dependent on Russian rockets after more than a decade is a major mistake. It seems the ULA’s primary strategy to ease the political isolationism related to Russia is to keep banking on import exceptions. How can the U.S. military allow itself to be dependent on Russian rockets until 2019, at the earliest? Also, such projects may experience significant delays. It seems an intentional lack of planning on the part of ULA and the DoD where they are now in a situation where they are in a race against time to domestically develop another rocket engine before the sanctions are kept in place for Russian rockets. Can’t we work with the other countries in the mean time?

Regarding its corporate social responsibility, I find it hard to believe that Nike considers itself responsible for the well-being of its workers or the communities that it operates in. Large, multinational corporations are driven to earn as much profit as possible. It seems that Nike only cared when it thought enough of its customers. Could it be that by responding to some customer concerns about the social and environmental impact of their purchases that Nike may have opened up another avenue of future profitability? I think this could be an example of industry being behind the public. Not only does pursuing sustainability seem to lay the groundwork for reducing waste and pollution, it appears that most aspects of promoting sustainability produce a significant long-term cost savings for Nike. Reducing water consumption is also not just a resource saving initiative for Nike, but a cost saving initiative as the cost of water continues to rise as growth in demand exceeds the growth in supplies. Nike and many other companies adopting sustainability has been long overdue. This shows the occasional shortsightedness of business concerns until they finally see the big picture.

This was a very interesting article !
I think Russia is accused of attempting to influence the election rather than rigging it in favor of Donald Trump. Given the proven susceptibility of technology to tampering, regardless of what technology advocates say, it seems unwise to leave actual voting to electronic devices. Some parts of the VSC should be electronic, such as voter registration or party affiliation changes, etc., the act of voting itself may be better protected by a low tech process. Could it be that the best of both worlds – voting integrity and record-keeping could already be in use for ballot scanners, which can take a hard copy, record the votes and report them centrally as a preliminary voting record with the hard copies being kept just in case there is a problem?

I found this article is very interesting. I do believe that in the short term, it is justified to use water and energy intensive snowmaking operations to solve the problem at hand, however I would focus a lot more on conducting research to create more efficient snow guns for the medium term. With that said, I do not believe that this will be a long term solution. I do agree with the fact that “Ski-related Businesses” can also invest in summer programs and activities to address the decreasing revenue issue due to climate change, however with the issue at hand, being environmental change, I am not optimistic about the long term prospects of these businesses. Water melts at 0 decrees Celsius. How can we make water freeze at higher temperatures? And if we do manage to do so, how high can we go? I feel that this solution is also a temporary one.

I find your recommendations quite convincing and very sensible. I would however add to your point on increasing focus on ‘improving all aspects of patient care’. Digitization has allowed several hospitals to video conference with specialized doctors during complex surgeries. Through this portal, doctors with more experience in a certain procedure can help and guide other doctors performing that same procedure. This helps increase efficiency and the success rate of a hospital, as well as reduce its error rates which in turn can reduce the overall costs of health care to patients. I would consider implementing this strategy as well.

It makes sense that new entrants such as Netflix can disrupt the existing value chain of movie theaters to a significant extent. However, I believe that solving this problem through reaching customers through acquiring digital platforms, PVOD, and leveraging telecom providers only addresses part of the issue – that of new entrants. One advantage that movie theaters have is the timing in which a customer can watch a new movie. Movie theaters are the very first place in which customers can watch a movie, as such I would also recommend that WB focus on marketing this advantage that other entrants do not have. I would also use digitization to better understand customer needs focusing on how we can capitalize on our timing advantage to convince the customers to attend movie theaters as opposed to wait till a movie is available on other platforms.