Thomas Alexandre's Profile

I love that you brought up the Ship of Theseus! The curveball in this case is that all of the replacements are derived from the host’s DNA so, arguably, they are just as much “them” as the originals.

To your other point, the brain is a mystery. All the more reason to study neuroscience!

Great article! For me, where the analogy breaks down is that self-driving cars are still produced like cars but plant-based and clean meat are largely not produced like traditional animal protein. For this reason, I think today’s traditional auto OEM’s would provide much more value in a future self-driving world than today’s Tyson would provide in a future alternative protein world. Sticking to a core business that is declining isn’t a viable option, in my mind. Therefore, I believe that Tyson has no choice but to start learning how to develop and produce plant-based and clean meat.

I think that 3D printing has a place in the future of home building but I do not think that it will be revolutionary. The walls of the first house were printed in about 48 hours. Setting up wood molds and pouring concrete walls would take less than 48 hours for a house that size. You would definitely save on labour costs with 3D printing but you wouldn’t have the ability to “man-up” the project to reduce timelines. Finally, 3D printing does not allow for a lot of flexibility in making changes after construction. Pre-fabricated wood homes are much better suited to flexibility.

Self-driving cars will never eliminate all fatalities but will reduce the number by orders of magnitude. There will come a time when humans will be comfortable ceding decision-making power to the machine but we aren’t there yet.

One potential answer to the question “What does digital LEGO look like?” is Mixed Reality (MR). MR will play a big role in LEGO’s products in the future and I see huge potential to extend digital open innovation initiatives into the MR experience. Somewhat in the vein of a “coding kit” users could be given the tools to create MR experiences associated with LEGO sets and submit them to LEGO for review and potential inclusion into the main product.

There are lots of people that would love to work on a problem for NASA in their leisure time. The successful ones are likely good hires. Why don’t more organizations with high social influence – that can attract people to open innovation challenges – use this model as both a problem solving and hiring practice?

We have already passed “peak car”. More than 50% of the world’s population currently lives in cities. That number is projected to increase to 70% by 2030. In the future, passenger vehicles will largely be used for ride-sharing, not personal use. As a result, I don’t believe that personalization is an attractive medium-long term benefit of additive manufacturing to automotive OEMs. The more valuable benefits of the technology, in my opinion, are the reduction in capital expenditures and lead times associated with component design changes.