Lauren McNamer's Profile

Interesting – I had no idea the interest in chicken feet as a snack, but my sense tells me this is a part of the bird I’m willing to part with, especially if its for the good of the poultry industry. I also find it fascinating to see an example of how a U.S. state is stepping up to fill a gap in what should be the nation’s relationship. Considering that Georgia’s electoral votes have gone to a Republican candidate the last 6 elections, including the most recent for Trump, I have to wonder if this is a good opportunity to show how trade isolationism actually harms a material contingent of the state – its 104K poultry workers – and bring better context to issues that may seem an abstraction to many Georgia voters.

As both an Airbnb user and an avid traveler who still has Cuba on the bucket list, this article gives me a lot of hope. I speculate that there are more Americans who are currently comfortable with using Airbnb than there are those who feel they could adequately navigate the complexities of travel/tourism to Cuba, though they may want to. I further believe that the positive effects of global travel experiences will elevate that 59% in the Gallup poll. I wonder what options Airbnb has to communicate the ‘travel-from-Canada’ approach to U.S. citizens during the traveler’s trip planning – for example, presenting the idea to Americans looking at properties in Toronto?

In agreement with your view that Nestle faces many angles of possible sources of reputational risk. At the risk of piling on, I believe another climate change driven source of reputational risk for Nestle would be their approach to water utilization and the sustainability gaps they’ve needed to close. If I recall correctly, they were one of the first companies to come under fire for their water practices during California water droughts. A holistic, comprehensive strategy for their green supply chain, as well as an approach to communicate it effectively to consumers, would greatly benefit Nestle against these multi-pronged PR challenges.

MIT Sloan Management Review recently posited that water prices must necessarily rise in order to better align intensity of water use with actual availability (http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/does-your-supply-chain-risk-management-strategy-hold-water/). I think when/if this happens, the impact will be felt ubiquitously, but the companies that made early investments into water efficiency will fare relatively better. As a result, my thoughts on the first question you pose (rising price impact to market share) is that Campbell’s may actually benefit in that eventual future when their price inflation is mitigated relative to that of other soup/food producers.

Kaiser is an interesting choice for this analysis, as they are at the very far end on the spectrum of healthcare integration – in addition to the medical group / provider business, they also act as payer for over 11M people, mostly based on the west coast. So, in addition to driving change with other payers as you point out, they also have the opportunity to look internally to drive such change. To your point, they may currently be doing quite a bit to advocate for value-based healthcare on their provider side (downstream), but perhaps could do more to advocate for value-based pricing with manufacturers (upstream) given that they have a strong negotiating position both as a purchaser (physical goods) and as a payer (reimbursement and population-based decision making).

Definitely a thought-provoking new idea for an established problem – counterfeit drugs have the gravest impact on the consumers themselves. But it is because consumers respond to emails that market them that the counterfeiters have any market to operate in at all. So I think another question would be, even if you could meet the technology and investment hurdles of implementing such a system for supply chain tracking, how do we get end consumers bought in to its credibility and importance? For example, elderly consumers who may more easily fall prey to counterfeiters may be suspicious or simply not understand the relevance of such a sophisticated tracking system, thus blunting the impact of such protection.