Nicole's Profile

As a patient I’ve definitely noticed the increasing levels of note taking. I think that Nelly-Ange’s point about finding a way to automate inputting data would be a huge step forward, but I’m curious whether privacy laws would allow conversations with patients to be listened to/recorded by a computer? There are so many rules out there.

I also think that setting up a standardized EHR would be helpful from a patient perspective. It can be challenging, particularly for those who move a lot, to keep on top of transferring medical records. I think it would create huge efficiencies if all records could be accessible on one portal that is visible to the patient and doctors that the patient has selected.

Hi Avatar – thanks for your post. I agree that the bra industry definitely could improve in terms of helping women find the bra that’s right for them, but I am worried that using a human consultant is too expensive. It seems like a series of videos/blog posts could walk a woman through taking and inputting her measurements with the same ease and effectiveness as a human and potentially without the awkwardness. This could be a really interesting opportunity for them to develop an interactive system to address cost and scale concerns.

I remember when Lesley Stahl did a 60 Minutes segment on M-Pesa – this is a super interesting topic and it’s great to know more about their business model. One thing I wonder about is how M-Pesa will adapt as banking systems become more sophisticated and people become richer in emerging market countries. M-Pesa is improving the economic situation of so many, but as regulation emerges and citizens become richer/able to afford newer technology, will M-Pesa survive?

As a former resident of Southern California, Waze is like a close friend to me. The one point I would question in this post is that Waze creates value for customers via accident prevention. Car crashes in LA (and across the country) are on the rise, and while increased driving due to an improving economy and lower gas prices certainly shares some responsibility, distracted driving is also a major player.

I think Waze absolutely has good intentions, but even voice commands take driver attention away from the road. Additional steps like reporting accidents and police cars distract even further. Although Waze is intended to only be manually operated by the passenger, in reality plenty of drivers find themselves playing this role. I wonder as cars get smarter if Waze can somehow come up with solutions like connecting to the car to know if a passenger is present in order to promote safety?

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-car-crash-spike-20150910-story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/tech-distractions-blamed-for-rise-in-traffic-fatalities.html

This was a really fun post! One thing I wonder about as I read this is how insulated Kylie’s brand is from those of her sisters? Both Kim and Kendall are currently taking a break from social media, and I’m interested to see how Kylie will react. Continue as usual? Increase her activity to satiate demand for the Jenner/Kardashian brand? Also decide to take a break? I think this could represent an interesting turning point for her as she balances not only representing herself and building her brand but also on doing the same for her entire family.

Thanks for the interesting post! I did some work with coffee farmers in South America about a year ago and a main topic of conversation among the farmers was how they were able to grow coffee at higher and higher altitudes thanks to rising temperatures. Unfortunately this meant that lower altitude plants were not a productive, and coffee plants typically take about 3-5 years to start producing so it’s not easy for farmers to adapt. On top of this, it’s not very easy for some of these farmers to buy and sell land because of inconsistent land rights documentation. Given this, I think that it’s great that Starbucks is working to develop coffee plants that can thrive in higher temperatures.

However, I would like to see Starbucks take action a little closer to home. I just tried to do some research on paper cup production, and it definitely seems like a complicated chemical process. I would be interested to know if Starbucks is taking advantage of all options to go green in this space. For example, currently Starbucks cups are neither compostable nor recyclable, and that seems like low-hanging fruit for them. I have used plenty of compostable coffee cups from the HBS dining hall that don’t sacrifice on functionality, I wonder why they aren’t doing this?

This is super interesting, thanks for the post! My first thought and concern though is about industry resistance. I did a quick search and came up with three seemingly powerful meat trade and lobbying organizations: the American Meat Institute, the National Meat Association, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. I wonder how far these organizations will allow Memphis Meats to advance without throwing their political influence and lobbying dollars in the way? I will definitely be interested to see how Memphis Meats navigates this environment.

Thanks for the post! As a Vail lover I really hope the resort is able to figure out a solution to combat the declining levels of snow!

Vail offers numerous terrain types and various levels of difficulty, but generally I think it’s known as a resort that serves more advanced than beginner skiers. I think that these more advanced skiers prefer ungroomed runs and challenging runs that are located farther away from the lodge. Given that so much of Vail’s business is advanced, ungroomed runs, I wonder whether investing in snow machines will be able to save the ski business in the long run. Even if Vail could afford to buy and operate enough machines to cover the resort, man-made snow needs to be spread out using machines and therefore skiers won’t have the ungroomed experience some of them look for.

Thanks Rebecca for the interesting post. I think it’s easy to forget the environmental impact of air travel so it’s great to have a reminder.

I agree that actions like building more environmentally friendly aircraft are a great first step and I hope that other airlines adopt these policies as well. I wonder if it would be possible for the government of Iceland to impose a small tax on each ticket that would go toward pro-environment activities without raising ticket prices enough to effect demand? It would be interesting to do a price sensitivity analysis to determine if this is feasible. I’m not sure what Iceland currently charges, but given some of the countries I’ve traveled to tack on hefty taxes and visa fees I would be interested to know if Iceland is taking full advantage of these revenue sources to handle challenges like climate change.

It’s great to hear that Big Cat Green Island Cruises is doing its part to mitigate its environmental impact in such a sensitive area. In addition to data collection for the scientific community as Shpiro20 mentioned, I wonder if this presents a good opportunity for Big Cat Green to influence the general public to do their part as well. I imagine that using social media to circulate before and after photos would be an incredibly powerful tool to raise awareness and inspire action. To the general public, I think that temperature and species loss data can seem abstract, and Big Cat Green is in a fairly unique position to provide visuals that they can better connect with.