Walter

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Great post! It’ll be very interesting to watch the trajectory of the space over time. I know we ran into this on the technology side primarily through regulatory and security constraints. Once the doors open more fully there’s so much room for growth in AI and big data.

On May 1, 2018, Walter commented on How Can the U.S. Military Win in the Digital Age? :

Great post. I see a lot of opportunities in partnerships with the private sector as well, or potentially something similar to a joint venture or even rotational programs. These would help bring fresh eyes and ideas in through potentially lower cost solutions than outsourcing huge chunks of the work.

On May 1, 2018, Walter commented on Wayfair – A Zillion Things Home :

Great post. It’s interesting to learn about the company’s history and evolution overtime. I particularly appreciate the juxtaposition they’ve had with places like Amazon, opting to focus on larger home goods as their competitive focus. I’m curious to see if there will be much clearer crossover in their target markets in the future.

On March 26, 2018, Walter commented on Crowdsourcing the U.S. Military’s Next Combat Vehicle :

Great post! It’s an amazingly innovative concept for finding innovative solutions in an industry and market that has historically been slow and extremely inefficient when it comes to innovation. The security issues for a public approach to this might be mitigated by solutions like what TopCoder has implemented where in order to participate and contribute certain levels of clearance must be approved and verified. It will be interesting to see how they balance security and the benefits of a larger crowd of contributors when it comes to innovation as things move forward.

Great post! I particularly like the need for the curation of content as a complete necessity. Crowdsourcing can be a great option for generating ideas and finding creative content, however it also opens the door for potentially offensive or dangerous content as well if it is not curated and monitored. I’ve seen in many cases like this, specifically highly public and visible issues, that have implemented a curation and review step before content goes live for additional voting or moves forward in the selection process. While crowdsourcing is a powerful tool, it can also be quite risky to employ.

On March 26, 2018, Walter commented on Wikipedia: The Ultimate Crowdsourced Knowledge Tool :

Thank you for the post! Wikipedia as a core source of information bolstered by crowd sourced content and reviews. It’s a significant shift from the now days of Encarta and Encyclopedia Brittanica as business models. I agree that they may need to take a more active role in guiding and encouraging the community’s engagement and contribution levels beyond the calls to action. Given how important it is as an initial source of information it will be interesting to see how their engagement model changes over time.

On March 7, 2018, Walter commented on 2U: The Education Platform That Got It Right :

Great post. Very interesting example of a multi-sided platform benefiting from both cross-side and same side network effects. For users it seems like multihoming won’t necessarily be a problem for 2U given the time commitment required to complete a certification, but I wonder how this will work for Harvard and other universities, who already work with EdX and other platforms.

Thanks for the post. It’s been interesting seeing how the company has grown over time, in particular how it has pivoted its business model to better meet customers needs. I’m curious if some of these recent changes will compete with their core business in a way that might impact their core customer community or detract from their core model. The ClassPass Live example in particular seems like it would potentially be pretty disruptive to their business.

On March 7, 2018, Walter commented on The “Harvard” of Dating Apps: The League :

It’s an interesting model that they chose to go with. While targeting a niche market bears with it some limitations, the aspirational aspect of it coupled with the exclusivity might end up drawing more users and attention. It’s interesting to see how a curated platform like this will grow over time.

On February 1, 2018, Walter commented on Netflix’s Growth Alongside Digital Transformation :

Interesting post. It’s been very interesting watching how Netflix has remained nimble and responsive to its users over time. They’ve readily adapted their business model, embracing change and new technology paradigms as they’ve come along. It seems this is largely guided by their data-driven analyses and focus on customer behaviors and experience. It will be further interesting to see how this plays out compared to Amazon Instant Video and other streaming offerings.

On February 1, 2018, Walter commented on Losing Eyeballs: Theatrical Distribution in a Digital World :

It’s interesting to see how the gradual decline of theatre going attendance hasn’t more drastically inspired radical change with theatres. It seems there is more opportunity to test out something truly new and unique in order to gauge what might draw viewers back. During the Field Global class in RC year, my team worked with PVR, a similar company to AMC, in India and they were trying a number of different tiered experiences to draw viewers. Theatres went from having sushi chefs trained overseas and fully catered meals at your seat to massive stadium style seating for a few thousand people. They were also exploring AR/VR and other interesting concepts using technology as well.

On February 1, 2018, Walter commented on Amazon | To Go Or Not To Go :

Amazon is notorious for testing out concepts and incorporating the learnings from these experiments back into their existing ecosystems or rolling them out at a larger scale if they see promise. It seems like Amazon Go may be another such experiment to observe user behavior patterns and how their buying patterns change given a new paradigm for purchasing physical goods IRL. Should be interesting to see how they learn from this coupled with the additional data they’ll gain from the Whole Foods acquisition.