Machine Learning: Innovate Your Way to an Unproductive Majority

Back of House USA was founded on November 22, 2017. Rodney McLeod Jr. of the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles tapped Sir Kevin James, designer and owner of ShopCore (4 locations in DC Metropolitan Area) and his best friend Jonathan Mason, a Wall Streeter and hedge fund founder, to create a progressive men’s streetwear store that provides high-fashion to an area skipped over by brands for places like LA and NYC. BOH struggles with inventory management and digital sales. BOH is located in Pentagon City Mall, a Simon Mall next to the Pentagon, but the founders know that Brick-and-Mortar retail stores are failing generally. The founders want to explore the options of machine learning to assuage inventory concerns and promote digital sales. Exploring the journey of CEO Katrina Lake (MBA ’11), one can see how BOH must work hard to obtain the scale necessary to support this endeavor.

Risk management on the path to the machine learning prize at Workday

While machine learning creates a large opportunity for cloud software-as-a-service provider Workday to build solutions beyond their core enterprise human capital management and financial forecasting software, the prospect of designing and implementing complex algorithms presents significant risks that must be managed before an unsupervised implementation. This paper digs into the opportunity and risk mitigation tactics that Workday management should take over the next 3-5 years as they launch and scale these products.

How Alibaba leverage machine learning to disrupt retail and create pathway to reimagine online-to-offline shopping experiences

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 shifts its gear towards Omnichannel strategy. In 2017, Alibaba opened futuristic groceries stores, Hema, offering 30-minute deliveries and facial-recognition payment. In the same year, T-mall pop-up stores are introduced in collaboration with over 100 domestic and international brands, promoting inventive "Retailtainment” shopping experiences [2]. While offline stores around the world are suffering, the giant e-commerce leveraged AI and made a brave move to enter the physical world in an innovative means. Or this will be another significant retail disruption, reinventing offline shopping experiences…