Pavithra's Profile

This technology sounds neat! I would be in favor of this as a customer because it would ensure that I get more productivity out of my day by wasting less time in lines or arriving too early for a flight. The big value add here is increasing two way information flow to improve the operations of the airport while improving the customer experience

Great article. Another strategy bright cellars could use to enhance its offering is to create a feedback loop for customers to tell the company whether they liked or disliked the wine and why. With this information, BC could function even more like a pandora and improve the hit rate of the wine discovery process with each bottle tasted

Interesting! I think the challenge with this kind of business model is that is reliant on an extremely cheap / accessible workforce in order to keep prices low enough to remain attractive to consumers. This business would be difficult to scale en masse in more developed and more heavily regulated economies like the US and Europe due higher labor costs, lower unemployment / higher opportunity cost, and laws on contract vs employed labor. Taskrabbit is probably the closest comparison in the US and it has also suffered from spotty service quality due to variance in the performance of individuals taking on each task. Ensuring quality control will be key to the long term success of the business

Very interesting! I think technology is going to force all service companies to step up their game in terms of communication with customers. In your example, the app provides pictures and live tracking which gives customers more peace of mind and improves service accountability. We already see the important and expectation of this in other businesses like doggie day care where the service provider allows the customer a much higher level of oversight/monitoring than previously possible in the pre-smartphone era

Interesting. It is very common for pharma companies to least active ingredients, stages of pipeline product development, and benefits. However I agree that their approach to open sourcing R&D is relatively rare in the biopharma space. I think AbbVie should also focus on using technology via remote monitoring/wearables to provide evidence that their drugs actually deliver on their value proposition. Drug companies generally can use the gains in 24/7 monitoring to improve R&D processes, streamline the process for identifying patients for clinical trials, and better identify which patients can benefit from a drug

Interesting attempt to solve a major infrastructure problem by leapfrogging the usual steps in development! I think the drone strategy will be difficult to scale. More importantly, how will drones perform during times of rapid climate change where weather patterns are getting more unpredictable? To me, the climate change variable would suggest that the government should continue to experiment with new delivery mechanisms but at the same time invest in traditional infrastructure that is less disrupted by weather.

Interesting, I had no idea 70% of cocoa came from West Africa. If I were mars I would also look at how I could diversify my supplier base away from west africa to other regions that may be less impacted by climate change. I also wonder if they could find suppliers who grow the beans in climate controlled (i.e. greenhouse conditions). Mars should also diversify away from chocolate products to reduce their exposure to the availability and price of cocoa raw materials

Wow, I had no idea Waikiki was affected by tropical storms so frequently. I usually associate hurricane-related flooding with the atlantic or gulf coast. The state government has a real problem due to the uncertainty of the impact of climate change on water levels. On one hand, they cannot risk doing nothing and some degree of investment in a flood mitigation strategy is necessary. The question is how much given the wide range of potential sea level outcomes (1-6ft increase). At the lower end of the range (e.g. 1 ft), an investment in flood mitigation makes economic sense. However, at the high end of the range Waikiki would basically be entirely underwater which would negate the value of any flood mitigation investment

Who knew that manufacturing jeans was such an intensely water consuming activity. I am impressed that Levi’s was able to reduce water consumption by 96% – wonder why they didn’t look into this sooner! I also liked the idea of recycling / reusing the water used in jean production. Of all your suggestions on what more they could do I think changing consumer behavior will be the hardest.

Thanks for the post. I wonder if pursuing more global M&A is the most cost effective / high ROI strategy for addressing climate change. Large acquisitions of other resort areas certainly help from a geographic diversification perspective but are expensive. Additionally, climate change is somewhat unpredictable in terms of how it will impact each area over time. In the long run I think investing in off-season programming and technology efficiencies with snowmaking could offer a better ROIC