Uorfrou

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On November 15, 2018, Uorfrou commented on Are Algorithms the Hiring Managers of the Future? :

Thanks for the interesting piece, Catherine. I believe that it is a very interesting technology, but my main concern is that given the level of specialization required for most positions, even at an entry level, the company must develop a solution that takes into account parameters like education, past work experience and potentially extracurriculars. By doing that, their value proposition toward HR departments across industries, functions, and geographies will be much more compelling. The challenge that may arise, though, is how will the company go about getting recruiters to adopt this bold new model of hiring and overcome their fears of eventually being made obsolete.

Thank you for the insightful read and the interesting questions, Justin. To your first point, I am confident that AM can disrupt the industry by massively lowering construction costs. Illustratively, according to press releases, there is a Chinese company, WinSun, that completed 10 homes in one day with 3D printing at a fraction of the cost of traditional construction. In light of this, I would even argue that AM could be an answer to housing affordability and homelessness problems in countries around the globe. In closing, another interesting question worth considering is, as machines replace humans for assembly work, how will the labor force be impacted? My hypothesis is that people skilled in technology, programming, and engineering will remain in demand, but the potential detriment to blue-collar factory workers could be severe.

On November 15, 2018, Uorfrou commented on Chanel’s Foray Into 3D Printing :

Thank you for the interesting read, Arting. An interesting question/ concern with additive manufacturing in the fashion industry is the vast amount of energy it takes to keep plastic heated and malleable at high temperatures. I guess there must be certain types of materials that if used, power usage can be drastically decreased potentially making this type of printing greener than any other type of manufacturing. Regarding your point on counterfeits, one of the most promising design houses, XYZ Workshop, was able to make a 100% desktop printed dress using flexible PLA for around $100 in materials. That’s a price tag most people can handle and the dress looks totally wearable. What’s more striking, though, is the fact that they also released detailed step by step instructions so people can make their own.

Thank you for the interesting read, Tatiana. I totally echo your concern that confidentiality and protection of intellectual property are major issues that are going to dominate the agendas of many organizations around the globe over the coming years. However, given the value that such schemes generate for the end consumers, I fundamentally believe that there will be a way to make access to such sensitive datasets secure without compromising integrity or personal data. Europe already took a decisive step with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation which regulates without killing such information sharing. To your point about the potential reduction in the need for labor, I do believe that this won’t scale by orders of magnitude as companies will still require specialized employees that are familiar with companies systems and way of conducting business and will want to retain this talent. That said, I see a great opportunity in remotely engaging people across geographies in your company’s innovation process, something that might prove extremely useful given the shortage of talent in specific areas of expertise (e.g., S/W developers) in certain geographic regions (e.g., USA).

Thanks for the interesting read, Ali. For me, SoundCloud’s best bet for long-term viability is to get in good enough shape, in profitability and cash flow terms, for Spotify to come knocking again, as they did two to three years ago. Open innovation might be a way to achieve that, but the management team will certainly need to create operational efficiencies and better monetize their services if they want to achieve such a transformation in a meaningful time horizon. To that end, even though consumers may not know what they really want, open innovation could certainly help in identifying incremental (rather than transformational) improvements they could introduce to create brand loyalty to a certain extent and gain a small part of the market share they have lost over the past few years.

Thanks for the interesting and insightful read! I fundamentally believe that AI is the next big thing in the CRM space, and there are several high-potential companies, other than Salesforce, that work in this direction like Chorus, Cogito and Conversica. From my perspective, another interesting question would be whether customers are ready for this change and the touted impact that these technologies are introducing to their business. To your question, I am confident that the solution needs to come from the software developer, Salesforce in this particular instance, by, first, building diversity into the datasets used to train the algorithm and, second, assembling an inclusive tech team that is more likely to take such parameters into account and produce algorithm that are more likely to be fit for a more diverse world.