Tasnia Huque's Profile

The use of this technology in helping with disaster relief is truly inspiring – thank you for sharing! I wonder if Field Ready can leverage learnings from one disaster relief occasion to implement into other regions that are newly impacted. This may help foster a faster relief system, although I am certain there will always be unique local product needs. I also like the training aspect of the platform as disaster prone areas typically see recurrence of severe events (bangladesh lands eroding away via flooding for example). Via training, the company can ensure the methodology scales over time quicker, although I am not sure if the costs associated with training is a sustainable one for the business.

I would focus on football safety only in the short-term, only because the game is unique in its potential for severity of impact.I worry that without an extremely narrow focus, the research and development time will take much longer than we would like to solve for this important issue. Alongside providing funding, the NFL should be open and receptive to helping entrepreneurs test out new helmet technology on the actual field, and share learnings with the entrepreneurial community. This can be particularly helpful to address shortcomings, and to ensure others can avoid common mistakes to get to faster development.

Ford’s utilization of 3D printing for prototyping, as you mentioned, is not new, and has existed in the overall automotive industry (especially in Japanese factories) for decades, although costs of employing such a technology has certainly dramatically decreased. I found your comment on the possibility of using this technology to make something in the actual physical car (beyond the prototyping phase) quite interesting. Not sure if feasible from a scaled production process perspective, but perhaps Ford can capitalize on consumers’ obsession with “personalization” today and add touches that are unique to a particular consumer (initials on the car)?

Interesting read after the Alibaba case! I don’t believe e-commerce will totally eliminate the offline channel. There will always be the desire to inspect certain products before a purchase, especially with higher ticket items. Retail stores do need to invest in a better and augmented in-person experiential experience. How Amazon is doing so with their technology-enabled human free checking system in Seattle is a great example.

From a competitive perspective, I do think Carrefour needs to create a better “ordering experience” (one of the advantages Alibaba gained in the Chinese market), for the local community. Amazon is too well-funded and because of the acquisition of a local player, less likely to make errors similar to eBay when they entered a foreign economy. Building trust as one of the local companies can perhaps help in the overall MENA region.

I really like how you raise the balance between quantity and quality of ideas for OpenIDEO. I do think if they truly want to impact social change through the power of open innovation, and are marketing OpenIDEO as such, they need to take a stronger role on helping execute on the idea. This can be by simple approaches even – i) if and when funding received, the recipient needs to work on project for at least a year (or more, depending on scale) ii) IDEO will help with resources that are low-hanging fruit to help the recipient achieve her project goals (perhaps office space in international locations). iii) recipient will revert back on project outcome after a certain period of time. These actions may also help limit submissions from people who are not truly committed on executing the idea. If successful, IDEO can also look to partner with government agencies and non-profits to help with funding.

Great read! It does seem Spotify’s natural extension would be to start providing label or publisher services, but if one is to learn from Netflix’s approach, it is not without it’s risks. Labels with music catalogues who are sharing rights with Spotify to stream the content will feel alienated if Spotify, as their distributor, starts wanting to eat their lunch. Making content can be extremely expensive (as we saw during the Netflix case!), although music certainly less so than film/TV content. There are other areas Spotify can however expand to that would not alienate their suppliers – providing a cloud platform for artists to create music online (Splice as the current market leader) or enabling easier dialogue between artists and the consumer through live collaborative radio (Stationhead for example). I also think they might even have a shot on becoming the go-to-platform for podcasts (6% current market share), even though Apple with its current ~65% market share will be a domineering hindrance en route.

Thanks for commenting, Mike! 100% agree that a lot of this will depend on brand and how consumers identify with it (full loop with 4Ps from Marketing)! It is interesting because the “innovators” also end up helping market the product (thus helping Volition decrease it’s overall CAC) by sharing with friends and family to increase the up-votes, and so embodies aspects of the Kickstarter model too.