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How Alibaba leverage machine learning to disrupt retail and create pathway to reimagine online-to-offline shopping experiences
Station18
Last modified on November 13, 2018 at 11:10 pm
Alibaba has leveraged Artificial Intelligence (AI) to disrupt China Retail Industry for the past 19 years. Nevertheless, 81% of retail consumption in China still comes from the offline channel [1]. Realizing the importance of offline presence, the giant online e-commerce [...]

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On November 15, 2018, Station18 commented on Chanel’s Foray Into 3D Printing :

Arting, I think you had a very valid point that 3D printing for Channel will raise the issue of counterfeit goods. I think that will definitely worsen the situation in the counterfeit goods market.

On another note, I also agree with SkyDecktecitive. Another issue I can foresee from this technology advancement is that having 3D printing might devalue Chanel’s luxury brand value. While 3D printing lowers the cost of production, it might eliminate the careful hand-made process, which is the signature of the luxury brand and eventually reduce the brand value. To avoid this risk, I think Channel should strategically select when to use 3D printer on the production. At the same time, the need to balance how they would communicate the use of 3D printing technology or marketing the products without devaluing its luxury brand.

On November 15, 2018, Station18 commented on How Additive Manufacturing Can Improve Access to Adequate Housing :

It’s fascinating to see how technology nowadays evolves to be able to create a house within 4000$ reach. I like that you bring up the social impact from the additive manufacturing in home construction. However, I do not completely agree that this will help solve the homeless issue as I believe that the homeless could not afford the houses anyway. The proper solutions to homeless issues would be to get them jobs, not to provide housing. The best way to teach people how to survive is to teach them how to fish not giving a fish to them.

In any case, I think the additive manufacturing in home construction can create huge environmental/social life impact. Imagine a typical construction process that not only took a long time to build but also create very noisy sound, dirty dust, lowering quality of life for people in general. If the 3D printing house can speed up the construction process and construct in the closed system environment, the quality of life for us will be much better off.

On November 15, 2018, Station18 commented on TaskRabbit is using open innovation to tap an unrealized labor market, but can it sustain its growth? :

This is a very interesting article. I think TaskRabbit is very smart by leveraging open innovation/crowdsourcing to solve the pain point in the market. I also think that the acquisition by IKEA is the right move for both IKEA and TaskRabbit. Both businesses clearly have a strong synergy. For example, TaskRabbit is very famous for finding a handyman for home services. Therefore, both companies share customers. IKEA can definitely help TaskRabbit expand their home services customer base, creating a scale effect that TaskRabbit can hardly create on their own. While IKEA might indirectly limit TaskRabbit services into home category, if we compare the value of customer expansion from IKEA versus the impact that TaskRabbit can create by broadening their scope of services on their own, I think the value that IKEA can provide is much higher. TaskRabbit is ,therefore, better off having IKEA as partners. Also, on a positive note, TaskRabbit still have an option to expand their services to other categories, and that could be seen as option to diversify business for IKEA as well.

On November 15, 2018, Station18 commented on Alibaba turns to Open Innovation to harness the power of millions of tech developers around the world :

It is very powerful to see how Alibaba not only create a platform to match seller and buyer but to also create a community of alike people where they can share their thoughts and build on each other’s idea.

I agree with your comment regarding the benefit of open innovation, reducing labor force. However, I think we should not worried that open innovation will encourage people to be freelancers and big tech firm will not be able to attract talents. Working in a big firm provides benefits that freelancers cannot obtain; for example, the sense of working in a team, mentoring process and the learnings you can get from peers. Working as freelancers despite being flexible, you do not get to interact with or learn from others. There is definitely a trade-off between two options. Therefore, the questions now become what do labor force value more – Flexibility or Learnings from big corp.

On November 15, 2018, Station18 commented on Spotify: Can machine learning drive content generation? :

It is very interesting to see how Spotify play with their huge datasets. I totally agree that there’s a lot of untapped value to be extracted from these datasets. I also agree that Spotify should make a fast move at acquiring talents. However, I do think that there’s a big gap between the required and the current capability of the AI technology today. I have come across earlier the AI-generated poems that are based on Shakespeare’s poems. The sample is shown below:

“With joyous gambols gay and still array,
no longer when he ‘twas, while in his day
at first to pass in all delightful ways
around him, charming, and of all his days.”

(source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/ai-generates-shakespearean-sonnets/)

I would argue not many people notice that this poem isn’t computer-generated and thus the AI can be said to have done quite a good job. However, music creation is much more complex than writing a poem. I’m not sure HOW and WHEN the AI capability would reach that point, the point that they can write lyrics, produce the background music, and direct the tempo.

Therefore, giving different possible initiatives and limited resources, Spotify should prioritize initiatives to be executed. I would suggest using 2×2 metric of impact to company and ability to win. In this case, AI might have high impact on company, yet low ability to win given current state of technology. Thus, if there are other inititives with high impact and ability to win such as moving towards video content. Spotify should probably pursue those initiatives before AI investment on content creation.

On November 14, 2018, Station18 commented on Who Defines Beauty: Humans or Meitu? :

This is a very eye-opening article. I used to use the photo-editing app quite often, yet I didn’t know how much they can make use of our data to this level. Nevertheless, the fact that Meitu is going to become China’s Instagram is really making me feel worried. While Meitu offers a very good photo editing function, it implicitly dictates how society view “Beauty” by encouraging people to edit their photos, especially with the automatic feature. In fact, each person has their own beauty that could not be automated. I would encourage Meitu to become beyond just photo-editing, but to stand for something in the society.

On November 14, 2018, Station18 commented on Machine Learning – In Theatres Now :

As a movie fan, this article is fascinating to me. It’s smart to use machine learning to predict potential movie hits. However, I believe it will only be useful to a certain extent because the factors that drive each movie to be hits does not only depend on titles or contents but also depend on abilities to tell stories (production), which machine learning might not be able to help that much. In order for Fox studio to succeed in the long run, I would recommend them to continue to leverage machine learning but still focus on bringing out creativities from a human being as well as develop skills for the production team to create high-quality movies to attract audiences.