Lili's Profile

Very interesting topic to read.
As an international student, I think isolationist is definitely hurting the long-term success of US firms, especially big tech firms which leverage a lot of talents coming from all around the world. Some firm has decided to expand their office in Canada to accommodate the challenges with H1B visa insurance, but I feel this is not solving the problem fundamentally.
Isolationist is deeply impacting foreign talents confidence in whether US is still an immigrate friendly place for them to settle down, does it now makes sense for them to return to home country for long-term career growth.
One lesson I learned from Singapore Government is that work Visa is not based on lottery like H1B, but rather based on merit, this will help high tech firms like Facebook to retain their top talents. I think big tech firms should work together to push the government towards this direction.

Absolutely love the topic. I do agree that HBS should influence students to work abroad more.
I think another hurdle is not only for HBS to improve its curriculum to be more international, but also influence companies outside the US to appreciate the value of an MBA students and letting them know how to best position a MBA student in an organization. Coming from Asia, and planning to go back to Asia in the long term, this is the biggest concern I have.
I personally find it is very difficult for me to leverage my degree to recruit for a non-Finance or Consulting firm outside US. US employers are better trained in how to best utilize the value of an MBA students, there are structured programs and standardized pay. However, many employers from Emerging market like big tech firm in China seeing MBA students just like many other master degree student and only value their pre-MBA experience in their hiring criteria.
One thing the school could do better is leveraging on HBS student’s network to establish a relationship with big firms outside US on either research topic or collaborative projects.

Love the topic and the title of the essay!
To answer the first question, I think it is not easy to set such criteria. The demand is dynamic and will change based on the supply. With a decrease in Cocoa supply, it is very likely to cause an increase in chocolate price and in turn a drop in demand. Thus I think this should not be feasible to set such criteria for its sustainability project.

I do agree with the brand identity part. I think it is not only a tool to educate different stakeholders to buy in the idea but potentially also a source of fund to support its sustainability projects. Mars could conduct a price sensitivity analysis on its various product line, from high end to low end and determine if there’s a product, that the consumer cares more about the climate change and is less sensitive to the price. they could potentially make this a marketing campaign to encourage the consumer to spend 10 more cents on a product and have that revenue goes into supporting its sustainable project.

Interesting topic and I liked your question about “Is Mayo Clinic organization set up in a way that enables them to test and implement new digital supply chain technologies better than their competitors”.
When I am reading the essay, I thought about what we learned on leading changes in an organization. Some concerns the hospital staff have might be a temporal decrease in efficiency of adapting new system, lack of training, overly fear about the security concern. What we learned in lead course on leading changes definitely applies here on how Mayo clinic could roll out the change effectively.
However, apart from the hospital itself and its supplier, I am thinking that government could also play a positive role here. Healthcare as a basic needs for every single person in the country and it is to the society’s benefits to reduce healthcare cost. I am wondering if Government could provide subsidy or tax back if hospital implements supply chain digitization.
One more party involved here I think is the government’s role in technology adaption.

Very interesting perspective on Zara’s supply chain! My first instinct about Zara has always been supply-chain effectiveness in making Zara a competitive advantage against its supplier but I have never thought about the climate impact behind their efficient supply chain model. Regarding the current action Zara is taking, I have a few thoughts:
1) The actions from Zara are not addressing the root cause of its climate damage, but rather a repairing action from doing A (eco-store) to compensate B (supply chain issue). However, it would be interesting to quantify its impact with eco-store.
2) From the essay, I do think it makes sense to chose some suppliers in Asia. Not very sure about the cost impact, but this seems to address the root cause of the supply chain’s impact on climate. The risk might be this does not align with the cooperate strategy or potentially damaging their existing supplier relationship.

Interesting topic to read and questions asked! I personally believe that IOT is going to change all aspect of our life and logistic is definitely one that will benefit from IOT.
Aside from the cybersecurity risk mentioned in the essay, there are 2 other areas of interest I would like to explore:
1) How soon the wireless communication infrastructure – which is invisible – could support the increasing needs of data generated by IOT. 5G is aimed to connect the world and one of its most important advancement is to support IOT and could potentially solve the infrastructure issue, but I am doubtful how quickly it could be adapted in the market and especially in the IOT space.
2) Are companies ready to implement IOT? The essay mentioned about collaboration with Cisco and Huawei, I think that is definitely a smart move. For logistic companies to implement IOT, it is crucial for them to work with companies with communication expertise on protocal development etc to gain the competitive technological advantage. However, I don’t see such advantage would last long for one single company and I see it will eventually roll out to the whole industry, especially the major players.