Mandy Z's Profile

I wonder what the sources of data for PredPol are. PredPol’s algorithm requires a large number of high-quality data to be accurate and if a lot of the data are from public security cameras, then I wonder if there will a push to have more of these cameras to collect more data. And will more security cameras and more data collected by PredPol infringe on more people’s privacy and cause concerns? Also, in order to scale up quickly, PredPol’s algorithm needs to be able to integrate with the current police department IT system easily. I am curious if there is any challenge related to such integrations.

Thanks for an insightful post! I wonder if Spotify would work with artists and provides them information what characters of music would be popular will be popular among users, then it will actually compromise the artists’ own creativity and originality and lead to music styles converge to a mainstream standard just so to gain popularity. On your question about new frontier of music consumption, I wonder if the music consumption experience can be more immersive in the future. For example, combine AR/VR technology with music consumption to feel that the musician is performing in front of the users.

My concern for the Lego open innovation platform is that it is still a fairly closed ecosystem in the sense that the idea contributors are probably mostly are Lego enthusiasts already. Admittedly, such platforms can build greater stickiness with Lego’s existing fans. However, there is also a fairly barrier of entry to participate, i.e. platform members need to come up with innovative new ideas. The children, teens, and adults who are less interested in Lego are probably not willing to make so much efforts and will not participate in activities on these platforms. Such selective bias will not achieve what Lego’s purpose of using the platforms to attract new customers. Therefore, I suggest it might be helpful for Lego to launch campaigns that require lower efforts to participate and yet eye-catching in order to pique new customer interests.

Thanks a lot for the insightful posts. I wonder how the big publishers are reacting to the surge of crowdsourcing materials. In addition, does TPT have any mechanism to make sure there is no IP infringement issue for the materials that are sold on their platform?

I wonder why Nike decided to pilot 3D printed shoes in soccer boots first instead of other sports shoes or casual wear shoes. Also, it is very consistent with Nike’s past strategy to test out new products with extreme users, i.e. the pro athletes. However, if Nike’s goal is to use 3D printing technology in mass production, and there are many hurdles to such scaling up process at the moment, I wonder if it makes more sense to test the products on ordinary people, the majority consumers, to figure out how to change the products to overcome the scalability challenges.

I wonder how Nike and the other competitors react to this innovation at Adidas. How is Adidas positioned differently than its competitors in terms of using 3D printing to produce shoes? Also, on the manufacturing side, I wondering if the 3D printing technology can significantly reduce costs in the long run. If so, then I see a big potential to scale up the number of 3D printed shoes. However, if such scaling efficiency cannot be achieved in the near term, then those shoes are likely remain a fad for die-hard sneaker fans.

On a separate note, if eventually 3D printing technology replaces a large portion of Adidas’ manufacturing, given that shoe manufacturing is still quite labor intensive, how will the company appropriately work with the manufacturing plant workers who will likely lose their jobs?