William Knightly's Profile

I think it’s really interesting that Nokia in the recent past has shifted its focus to Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 and IoT has generated so much interest within the tech community that there are a lot of companies moving into IoT and Industry 4.0. I wasn’t really sure what Nokia’s strategy was in protecting the knowledge created in their open innovation environment, especially with so many players moving into IoT. With its central research center cut down to only 80 people and relying on Bell Labs which is heavily using an open innovation strategy, I am worried that Nokia will generate a lot of ideas for other companies to take to market.

This article is interesting because SIA used to be the leader in the airline industry, and it is attempting to regain the leadership position with open innovation in digital. I think SIA should be careful in what they reveal to the consumers. I do agree with you in that openly innovating with the consumer will keep SIA accountable in releasing the features, but sometimes what consumers want and what is achievable by the company do not intersect.

This was a very interesting use of 3D printing. I never would have thought 3D printing would be applied to potato chips.

I think this application is interesting because it enables Pepsico to print a potato chip in the exact shape they want. Maybe they can do a consumer study to create the “perfect potato chip shape” that maximizes the consumer delight. However, one thing that comes to mind would the perceived notion from the consumers if all of the potato chips look identical. I think the consumers would perceive identical chips as not natural and synthetic.

I thought this was a very interesting application of additive manufacturing in the B2C segment. One thing that comes to mind is the value that 3D printing brings to Adidas as a brand. From the product side, I don’t see much value in 3D printing in terms of performance. Adidas should invest more into finding materials that have better performance than rubber so that they can bring value to the product.

I also think their pricing strategy will be key in commercializing lattice-like soles in Adidas shoes. You mention that they will break even after 100,000 shoes, but I’d be interested in what else needs to be true for using 3D printing for soles to cost the same as current methods of manufacturing. If that is not possible, how will Adidas value the incremental benefit of having 3D printed soles vs. rubber soles?

This article talks about potential for using machine learning for reducing medical misdiagnosis. I think this article was interesting because it talked about the opportunity for Epic, an EHR system company, to use machine learning. I am not sure if it is in Epic’s best interest to start suggesting diagnosis to physicians through its medical records. I do agree that Epic is in a great position to do so because it has access to patients’ medical records (Epic’s leading market share helps tremendously here because it has the most access to medical records), but suggesting diagnosis might make Epic vulnerable to being responsible if the suggest diagnosis is incorrect. Epic could take a similar approach as Watson in framing its diagnosis as “suggestions” and complementary to a physicians diagnosis, but Watson is also under fire currently for the same reasons. Even if Epic is not lawfully responsible in case of a misdiagnosis, but the medical community and even the public may hold Epic accountable.

On your point about Epic getting access to data to feed their machine learning algorithms, I am not sure if this is possible with the protection of medical information through HIPAA.

This was a very insightful article outlining the potential benefits and concerns for chatbots as Facebook makes tremendous progress to use chatbots to make some of their processes much more efficient. You bring up a big tension point with the social and ethical implications that arise when chatbots are able to mimic real human behavior. Do you think people react differently when they know they are talking to chatbots vs. a real human in a customer service setting, for example? If so, do you think it is unethical for Facebook to disguise their chatbots and present them as real human customer support?
Another interesting point that came to mind was if Facebook continues with the open source strategy, people might be able to use chatbots on the customer end to negotiate against other chatbots. I think it would be interesting to see the equilibrium when two chatbots negotiate against each other.