Kyle Emory's Profile

What I found interesting about Ivan’s article was the parallel drawn between a major CPG company trying to compete with smaller, rising food companies with the shift of many firms to the Blockchain system for increased transparency. Since customers are demanding greater transparency in understanding the ingredients that are put into their food, both means provide a way to demonstrate such, but at very different angles. Campbell’s has potential to attack the issue from both sides: it can leverage its stake in Habit which offers a personalized service that ‘pulls’ information from the customer and explore the idea of blockchain which ‘pushes’ information to customers about food. In theory, this approach would clearly address consumers concerns on not only what they are eating, but also what they specifically should be eating.

What I worry about though is consumers’ willingness to use Habit if they knew it was a Campbell’s company–I do not see Campbell’s being able to separate itself from its legacy brand and products, regardless of if it having ties to a ‘hot’ new start-up that might be able to compete in the new foods / start-up realm. In addition to this, this feels as if Campbell’s is moving away from its core operating model to focus on a concept that is loosely related to their existing product assortment–unless they changed many of the ingredients in their own products, it is unlikely that they would be able to offer customers their own products. I would favor them focusing their attention more on the blockchain route with the other major players as a first start to establish themselves as a leader before working on shifting their operating model.

Great read, thanks for sharing.

I really enjoyed reading Ninad’s article and thinking about the opportunities for the media industry as well as the heightened ability to extend the realm in which many of these companies traditionally compete. Overall, I fully agree that consolidation will greatly impact Netflix’s and other stream services’ business models especially when the organizations are pulling their original content from these platforms. However, I do not think that this alone will lead to a replacement of firms like Netflix and Amazon Video because both organizations have shifted their focuses away from pure distribution and on toward creation of original content. As such, I don’t see this market as a winner take all model, but more of a consumer pick and choose model, similar to our discussions on Uber-Lyft-Fasten in our TOM course. Consumers will likely continue to spend money on multiple offerings and my thought is that this will likely do more harm to the traditional distributors offering cable packages than these video on demand services which are continuing to produce more and more valuable content.

With regards to consolidation, I think that we will soon see a new type of bundling model, especially assuming that the Disney – Fox merger goes through, where customers can have an a la carte selection of what services they would like to purchase (similar to how cable companies offer different channels based on how much the customer is willing to spend) rather than being forced to participate in an expensive, all encompassing package. I would challenge Ninad in that the companies will have to decide whether to focus on either movies or live TV and sports, as I think there is an operating model that will fulfill the customer promise that does not currently exist today.

Interesting article, Dave–I enjoyed reading it.

While I recognize the value of streamlining the IP distribution process for collegiate institutions, I worry about the university’s desire to promote this patented information with companies / entrepreneurs that are not affiliated with the university. In both examples of Gatorade and Google, the individuals who approached the institution had a tie to the university–Gatorade through the football coaches and Google through the students. Because universities gain credibility and respect from the outside community through their research and alumni, I think that the idea of streamlining the OTD could be extremely beneficial for the internal university network (including students, faculty and alumni). Creating a similar type of marketplace or library of all the IP information for those affiliated with the university would not only greater expose the IP to more people in an organized way, but also allow the university to benefit twice–once from it’s research and again from it’s successful alumni.

While Stitchfix helps refine consumers’ taste profile by having customers try out new items that they may have not otherwise been exposed to, I wonder if the product-centric fashion model will suffice for customers who oftentimes buy products for more emotionally charged reasons (i.e., the story and messaging behind a collection of products rather than the product itself). This ‘push’ model shifts how consumers approach fashion (which is obviously working based on the company’s success), but if I were working with the organization, I would attempt to evaluate if this diagnostic model will be sustainable to the customers’ needs and expectations when shopping. By selling products on a one-off basis, the company may miss additional sales that other firms capture by instead focusing on selling products as a collection or outfit set. Stitchfix may be able to create a similar ‘collection-based’ experience by leveraging their data and AI algorithms to identify the optimal way to bundle outfits / build collection and instead, mailing these groupings of products to consumers in addition to a story tied to these products.

Thank you, Yuwa, I really enjoyed learning about the food crisis in Malwali and am troubled by the bind in which the country finds itself when determining whether to focus on short or long term. There doesn’t seem to be a situation that would allow the government to ignore the current state situation and is evident that ADMARC is making an effort to encourage Maize production from domestic farmers. However, it feels that ADMARC is taking on the bulk of the burden to solve this issue without the same degree of urgency from the government to establish an actionable, sustainable solution that can eliminate this ‘fire-drill’ mentality of solving the food crisis year over year. Although “ADMARC urged commercial maize growers with irrigation capacity to grow maize in the dry season,” they do not have the same power / authority as the government does to incentivize these farmers to do such. The government should intervene in a bigger capacity to more fully support ADMARC to enable them to more quickly identify a solution in the short and medium term so that they can collectively begin taking action on the long-term mitigation strategy.

The move toward a more digitized tracking and monitoring system appears to be necessary to properly track the legitimacy of various touch points throughout the supply chain. However, the jump to blockchain concerns me because of the requisite buy-in and use of the system required by all the various stakeholders along the supply chain. Because Pfizer ultimately bears the responsibility to ensure the drugs are not counterfeit, ensuring that its partners are also successfully rolled out onto the blockchain technology adds a degree of project management that seems beyond the scope that Pfizer should be taking for all of its partners. A possible alternative to phasing this across the supply chain over 6 – 7 years would be to identify the major partners at each of the various stages along the supply chain and roll this out to them rather than rolling out one step at a time down the supply chain. Then, once best practices are established and kinks are worked out, the remaining partners could be moved over onto the newly established digital supply chain.