MC2018's Profile

I completely agree with your suggestion that Days of Wonder should add to the social aspect of their digital version of Ticket to Ride. My concern with the current digital version is whether it actually directly conflicts with the mission of the company. As you stated, Days of Wonder’s mission is, “to help avid game hobbyists and casual game players rediscover the sense of wonder and excitement they had as children when opening a new game.” Isn’t creating a digital version of a game in direct conflict with the nostalgic aspect of their mission statement? I would argue that the ability to play a game “solo” as the Days of Wonder website describes, detracts from the excitement and the learning that is involved in playing a board game. Part of the value of playing a game, as opposed to going to the movies, is interacting with other people. People add variability to game play and interaction teaches us valuable lessons. Interaction is imperative in game play, so I don’t think that Days of Wonder should even offer the option of playing a solo game online because it seems to conflict with the company’s values.

Although I agree that with the concept of paying for insurance based on mileage, I am a little confused about why you would need to use Metromile’s device to reach that goal. If mileage is the only thing that Metromile is measuring, couldn’t that be accomplished using an odometer reading? This would reduce the the concerns about privacy that have been expressed by Progressive’s customers. The data that Metromile is gathering might lead them to change their model in the future to incorporate other factors. Collecting location data, for example, appears to be completely irrelevant to Metromile’s current model if users’ payments are based solely on number of miles driven. Although some of the additional features such as alerts and warnings might be convenient it seems that this type of tracking is what is causing most of the privacy concerns within the industry now.

Drone delivery is a fascinating innovation and I’m sure that it will save amazon a lot of money if they can actually get it implemented in the U.S. I would be interested to know how this new delivery method would effect Amazon’s current delivery model. There would probably be some limit to the size and weight of packages that drones would be able to deliver. Assuming this is the case, Amazon would probably need to maintain some level of traditional distribution. Would the reduction of volume flowing through the traditional distribution methods adversely effect the delivery time for some items? I would be interested to know if Amazon ever considered acquiring any of the smaller companies working on drone technology instead of creating and internal team to focus on this technology. How did this decision effect their speed to market and operating model?

As the NY Times moves away from printed news and toward digital content, they will certainly need to adjust their physical footprint around the country. I would be interested to know how many printing plants the NY Times has taken out of service recently and how these closures are effecting their bottom line. Cost cutting through plant closures might be a big part of making the switch to digital work for the times. The reduction in print will also effect the NY Time distribution network. Distribution networks generally benefit from economies of scale, so is the NY Times moving toward a point where distribution of any print product will become to costly to continue? When they reach this point will the times completely stop distribution, or can they adapt their current distribution network to deal with the changes in demand?

I think that it is very impressive that John Deere is driving so much innovation in the agriculture space. I know that they are a very big name in agriculture and hold a very high market share in agricultural machinery. I was wondering if you found anything about competitors responses or how digital advances are changing the landscape that John Deere operates in. Although John Deere is a major player in agricultural machinery, as this machinery comes closer and closer to robotics, it seems like they might face threats from companies that specialize in robotics, but had not previously entered the agriculture market. One example is a company called Harvest Automation, that is innovating in the greenhouse agriculture space. It seems like as the market moves towards robotics, John Deere might not hold the same competitive advantage as they have in the past.

It was very interesting to see how a food giant like Tyson is responding to the threat of climate change. Based on what you’e found, it seems like they’re not doing nearly as much as they could be to improve the sustainability of their operations. If the food industry in particular, it does seem like there are some disruptive emerging technologies that will pose a threat to Tyson in the near future. For example, generically engineered substitutes are becoming increasing sophisticated. Tyson must be aware of this technology and I would be very interested to hear whether they have considered what they will to do fight off competition from these types of competitors. It seems that the threat of global climate change has not been enough to radically change Tyson’s operating policies, so maybe competition will be more successful in driving change within these large companies.

I was also surprised to discover that 21st Century FOX had such extensive climate change initiatives. It seems like this would be a huge opportunity for FOX to change public perception of bias in the news industry. Regardless of whether or not you believe that climate change is happening, becoming more sustainable still seems like it would play well with the public in general. I don’t know what other industry leaders have done to make their operations more sustainable, but I’m sure that FOX knows. If they are truly an industry leader in this area, then why would they not make more of an effort to publicize this fact, particularly in their movie business?

I had no idea that climate change effected the baseball bat making industry so significantly. Unfortunately for Mizuno, it seems that they are kind of at the mercy of other companies throughout Japan, and particularly near the forests where they are planting and harvesting trees. Given this fact, do you think they should be pressing the government to regulate industry throughout Japan in a more stringent way? It seems that after setting a good example in terms of sustainability, trying to lobby for strict regulations is their only other option.

I really appreciated the way you connected innovation in aerospace industry to flaws in Boeing’s product development process. It would be nice to know what Boeing’s current system for product development consists of. I assume that they have some type of stage gate design process with pretty rigorous gates, but it would be interesting to see if they are actually following whatever process they have. Also, does Boeing ever attempt to innovate through partnerships with its upstream suppliers? It seems like the aerospace industry as a whole could benefit from increased partnerships between OEM’s and suppliers considering the there are so many players in more supply chains and each has very specific expertise. While I was working in the industry I didn’t see very much effective collaboration, but I wonder if this could be a solution to more cost effective and time sensitive innovation.

This analysis of the environmental impact of ski resorts was very interesting. There is clearly an incentive for ski resorts to advocate for a more environmentally conscious world as global warming directly effects their bottom line. It would be interesting to know how Aspen’s efforts thus far have effected their financials. For instance, are Aspen’s alternative energy solutions and sustainable ski resorts saving them money in addition to the environmental benefits. It seems like if a ski resort could show that investment in sustainability positively affected their bottom line, more resorts might be willing to take on that investment.