Masato Nakamura's Profile

Thank you very much for the interesting report! The concept of 3D printing car is very interesting and if it works well it must be an entirely new production flow having a potential to beat any other car manufacturer in terms of production cost. No Kaizen is necessary anymore? In my understanding, current 3D printing technology is good at producing a new type of product such as new model or test production, but if it comes to a normal production, mass-production by belt conveyor still has cost benefit comparing to 3D printing, so it would be a challenge for GM to apply 3D printing to make the line truly efficient.
To your quetions, “GM will need to develop its own core competency in additive manufacturing and other techniques. To do so, it must actively learn from the cultural practices of the companies it acquires and imbue them throughout GM as a whole.” I believe that open innovation can play a significant role. I wrote a report about how a traditional conglomerate where most people don’t have lean startup experience and where the organization has rigid vertical structure, open innovation with other companies which has a totally different DNA is necessary to bring innovation. Therefore, open innovation with autonomous car startup could be one solution for it..?

Thank you very much for the interesting report! I have never come up with the idea that Barbie can be transformed with machine learning! This report reminds me of the case of GAP where the company started utilizing machine learning to decide the design and the type of cloth they produce. To your question, will digital technology and deep consumer research be sufficient to revive the company?, I would think they can capture a certain preference and market trend of the type of Barbie. But at the same time, I feel the reason customers(kids) buy Barbie is that the experience provided by having the Barbie doll, from such perspective, I would think it is a good idea to organize events for kids or expand Barbie shop where kids can play together with their Barbie would be more effective than chasing the trend of the style of Barbie!

Thank you very much for your insightful report. The way you address the problem, how Spotify can beat other tech giants, are very interesting. Your report is well equiped with data and also diagram which made me easy to understand your report. While learning your report, I came up with some answers to your question, how Spotify can utilize their data and machine learning to beat other competitors? I think Spotify has a large enough data about the preference of music. When Spotify share the data with Yelp or Google Map, they can understand what kind of person like what kind of music, food, and place to visit, so that they can create an preference recommendation service. For example, by analyzing Spotify data and Yelp data, and analyzing it through machine learning, they can find out the correlation between music preference and food preference, so that they can send a food recommendation and voucher for restaurant, which will enhance the user experience of customers. While there may be a legal issue of sharing individual data, but I believe utilizing preference big data could be one way for Spotify to differentiate from other competitors.

Thank you very much for your insightful report! It was interesting to know that the large spare parts maker started trying to adopt 3D printing. Your report is well equipped by data and numbers collected from many sources which enhance the credibility of the report. I think that one of the pros of 3D printing today is that its readily available production at the site where the parts is necessary, while one of the cons of 3D printing is higher cost of production comparing to a normal mass-production process. From such point of view, I would believe that there is a possibility that Siemens cannot leverage enough their resource and its size to compete in the market when they uses 3D printing. One suggestion I came up with is that they could send an employee and one 3D printing machine to each important customer’s office, so that whenever the customer has a problem and sudden request of a spare part, Siemens can react and produce the part right away.

Thank you very much for the insightful article! I also wrote about open innovation for a big company,but is interesting to know that there is still an open innovation space for a startup like Ripple and also for an industry like cross-border remittances where I believe security could be a key issue for its operation. I agree with you that block chain technology could be the next generation of international remittance considering its technology durability and trait. I generally think mega players in banking industry would surely move in the same direction, so wonder what kind of differentiation could be provided by doing this open innovation.

Thank you very much for the insightful note Tatiana! I also wrote about open innovation in a traditional conglomerate, but after reading your report, I found Alibaba’s open innovation has tremendous opportunity and potential to grow themselves and industry as a whole. The most interesting thing for me is that Alibaba can share seller data in a secure manner with millions of freelance developers around the world. By doing this there is a clear benefit for companies who work open innovation with Alibaba, so that I can imagine many companies would like to join the open innovation community with Alibaba. Such that, the open innovation can bring the maximum benefit for Alibaba.
Another interesting thing is that Alibaba is involving local entrepreneurs building their own delivery companies. I agree that it is the fastest way to expand their territory, but at the same time I feel it has a potential risk of logistics mishandling. I wonder is it viable to do open innovation for Alibaba’s core existing business.
Lastly, I would like to listen more about the cooperation with Eficode Oy about what benefit they can bring to Alibaba. Let’s talk about it in another day!