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Mike
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Terrific post! 3D printing brings a whole new dimension to retail. Given the ability to mass customize, I wonder if Nike should first experiment with using their 3D-printed products on the mass general population rather than using their typical R&D process of utilizing elite athletes. This may be more effective because more time and experience integrating 3D printing into the process will be required to draw any conclusions.
This is a fantastic concept and I think this is how broader retail will be shaped in the future and the impact on store inventory cannot be understated. It eliminates waste almost entirely. Those who adapt last will be losers in the retail game; in-store 3D printing virtually eliminates out-of-stock issues. Retailers will also have less trouble predicting the upcoming trends and will be able to adjust the purchase of goods accordingly.
To answer the question “can standard and open innovation processes coexist in the same organization?” I would argue that NASA is probably one of the best examples of doing so over the last 100 years. Early space flight required intense abidance by physics-driven rules all while innovating new technology that would do so (and become a huge part of the recent technological revolution). I think NASA should looks to its past to understand that they were once the masters of open innovation, whether they know it or not.
I liked your article, but disagree with the continued push for “over-innovation” — I fear that Lego may be over-thinking what made it great in the first place. As the world has gone almost completely online, I think Lego’s value proposition to parents is that it is totally offline; it builds skills that “screen” toys cannot. I think Lego should keep their products physical and incorporate ways to use innovation to source their product ideas.
Awesome post! I agree that far and away, Salesforce’s biggest advantage is it’s unique access to the best pool of sales data from which to generate predictions — but the skeptic in me doesn’t see the translation into “democratizing” artificial intelligence; rather, I simply see Salesforce as running intense data analytics (already its core business) and packaging the “artificial intelligence” buzzword as a new product. It seems like there’s a long way to go towards making AI truly available for all.