Nirav's Profile

This topic is really interesting and a huge concern for many companies with operations in the U.S. In my opinion, GE has 2 options. Either they should continue to manufacture outside the U.S. but within the Americas. This gives them logistic, cost and labour benefits but doesn’t go along with President Trump’s plan. Keeping isolation in mind, I believe the President is planning to levy some import taxes on products and hence companies that are manufacturing outside the U.S. and selling within, would be subject to this tax and hence leveling the playing field. This could also make the argument for producing within the U.S. as there may be additional labour costs for GE but they would benefit from being exempt of this import tax and could still be competitive. In either case, GE would need to preempt an increase in costs and hence would need to work out a long term strategy of price increases, which they should start doing gradually even before they make the decision on where to manufacture their products.

This topic is extremely interesting and a problem that will soon grow in magnitude as countries try to compete with each other. In the long term it is difficult to maintain a profitable and sustainable production when there are so many political issues for producing and selling products. Samsung should test the viability of moving production out of the U.S. and to a smaller country that requires the investment. Currently the U.S. being such a superpower, they have the upper hand in the negotiation and Samsung will find it difficult to win that conversation. Instead, if production is moved to a smaller country, the government will be supportive as Samsung is providing employment, income, investment and growth to the economy. Also, production prices will be lower so even if the U.S. levies import taxes, the price to consumer may still be approximately the same. Though keeping shipping costs in mind, it may be convenient to stay in the Americas, something like Alex’s suggestion of Mexico or their neighboring countries.

I find this topic really interesting and it is an extremely relevant conversation at this stage. Logistics are on the rise and so are emissions. On saying this, I’ve always wondered whether electric vehicles, along their supply chain truly are greener than diesel engines. For passenger vehicles, possibly i would still agree but for high capacity usage such as trucks, my worry is the vast quantity of electricity that will need to be produced to power these vehicles. The electricity being produced would usually be through non-renewable resources and hence, is it impacting the environment less or more? On saying this, a recommendation could be a diesel – electric hybrid which would give the truck range as well as low average emissions. Considering the O-Zone hole is the smallest it has been in the past few decades, we are moving in the right direction and it is critical to make decisions such as this, to ensure we are able to improve the impact we are having on the environment. To answer you’re question of using internal technology, acquisition or partnership, in my opinion it would be interesting to see the progress they have with Brammo. If they are making good headway then they could leverage those resources, otherwise start with partnerships to test the pace of R&D in the industry before making another acquisition.

Your topic is really interesting and using recycled material could impact the sporting goods retail industry in a big way. In my opinion there would be initial hesitation by consumers to accept recycled products. This could possibly be due to the fact that recycling is a “feel good” when done but maybe not when worn (as it’s usually correlated with waste product). But if Adidas is able to market the product in an effective way making the consumers feel that they are part of a bigger objective. This could be done by potentially showing customers the impact their contribution of discarded clothing has towards the environment (each t-shirt you give will reduce carbon emissions by 1unit). If customers are fully on board with the idea, then they may be more willing to buy recycled products resulting in Adidas being able to convert 100% (or as close to it as possible) of their product range to recycled goods.

This is a very interesting topic and one which is in an extremely competitive space. In the US, it’s a fairly organized and mature market and i’m unclear about it being the same in China. Though, in light of that, in my opinion, it is critical for 7-Eleven to use their own internal resources to grow technologically. The benefit with internal R&D is that the risk is much lower. The process could be slower but it would be deliberate and calculated. When acquiring a company to do this, there is less flexibility as the acquired company will have a core competence and 7-Eleven would be acquiring them for that capability. But if the R&D is done internally, 7-Eleven can steer the process in the desired direction and would be able to adapt to rapidly changing technology.

This is an extremely interesting topic. Maersk being the largest shipping company definitely gives them the upper hand and puts them in the driver’s seat to spearhead change. The cyber security risk you’ve spoken off is definitely a huge concern especially as the world depends more on digitization and the increased scale of damage that could be caused. The larger the ship, the larger the target. To overcome this issue through technology could be by using higher levels of encryption, maybe even using a more closed loop system to prevent data leakage over the air. A consideration could also be going back to a more analog way of communicating with the ships and then converting that into digital when communicating with the customers. This way customers receive the information they desire and the information stays safe while within the system