ZYXWV's Profile

Before reading this I had no idea that LEGO was struggling so much to innovate, but now I understand how disruptive the digital economy has been to companies like LEGO. As I read through this I am curious if you came across any information (my hypothesis is that you probably did not) about how much “momentum” an idea must receive for LEGO to consider it worth pursuing. In other words, what is their open innovation evaluation framework. Additionally, perhaps I have a pessimistic view on this, but even with the open innovation work that they have been executing, their sales are still suffering. This makes me wonder to what extent LEGOs as a toy are going to be around for much longer. Technology for Generation Z has become so widespread that I am wondering if LEGO is going to be able to tap into that market enough in this growing age of technology to be successful in the long term. To one of the comments above, I wonder how LEGO can transform their product offerings to be more digitally focused.

Enjoyed reading this! I echo the points above that I feel as though BMW will have to continue exploring ways in which additive manufacturing will reduce costs for them and allow them to retain a competitive advantage. I saw that Audi, one of BMWs main competitors, recently announced a partnership with a 3D printing company called Stratasys to accelerate their design and innovation process for taillights (reference below). This partnership will allow Audi to reduce the time it takes to design tail lights and will allow them to seek feedback from potential customers in a much more accelerated fashion. BMW is going to have to continue to find ways that additive manufacturing can help it stand out against its competitors such as Audi and Mercedes. Additionally, to one of the questions you posed, I too wonder how 3D printing will affect BMW’s brand. Given customers today pay a premium for the hand crafted nature and quality of a BMW vehicle, I tend to think that 3D printing may tarnish that brand if it goes too far in replacing some of the hand production that is done today.

http://additivemanufacturing.com/2018/06/07/audi-adopts-stratasys-full-color-multi-material-3d-printing-to-innovate-and-accelerate/

For someone like myself who really enjoys cooking, I am very curious as to how well the 3D printing food is actually able to recreate meals that I enjoy. To the point above, I do not think that this concept is going to catch on in the high-end dining market where the art of cooking and the esteem of chefs is so highly valued. Additionally, to the point about 3D printing being impactful from a sustainability perspective given the rise in demand for food as the global population grows, I do not think that 3D printing of food is going to have a substantial impact in this area. It will certainly augment the problem slightly, but people in developing nations that will need food the most will not have access to it, whereas those in more developed nations may be able to supplement their food intake with 3D printed food. In my view I think the connection of Fitbits with the 3D printer and the ability for the 3D printer to make foods easier to consume for those with difficulty swallowing or the elderly will make the technology more desirable in the future.

To echo the point above, I do believe as well that RTR must continue to rely on outputs from the data to influence human decisions on what outfits should be recommended to people. Humans at RTR should take the data from the supervised learning outputs and determine what to recommend people, but also to your point, they need humans leading creative work as well to continually find new pieces from designers that can be added to their options.

How do you think RTR will continue to ensure that the recommendations they provide to consumers are unique enough? I have heard anectotally about Stich Fix recommending the same outfits to people who show up to work on the same day wearing the same thing. I know that RTR is different than Stich Fix, but what can they do to ensure that their algorithm provides people unique enough options so that this does not happen?

The point you raise about being able to discriminate against consumers based the machine learning output on predicting abuse is super interesting. At the end of the day RTR will not make money if they lose expensive products on a regular basis, so I feel as though they are very smart to use data in this manner to discriminate among which products they will offer to their consumers.

To echo the two comments above, I too am worried about what will happen to the patient-physician relationship when machine learning is used to provide recommendations to patients. I am not a physician, but from experience as a patient there is only so much that our vitals and other data points that can be collected by a “machine” tell a doctor about our condition. We must make sure that doctors are only using this information generated from machine learning to influence the treatment plan for patients, and I think that this will cut down on the amount of time doctors must spend behind the computer. However, my view is that we must continue to have doctors collect the more qualitative information that influences the treatment plan one way or another. To the data privacy issues, I think the use of de-identified data (PHI) is becoming more and more common in the medical field, but I do think that technology is advancing well enough to continue to figure out ways in which to protect this data in the cloud.

I am curious as to what role the US FDA plays in this space given the impact that these new antibiotics could have on saving lives. The FDA already provides accelerated approvals for drugs that treat rare diseases, along with drugs that they deem will be able to fulfill and unmet need very quickly. Once the compounds are identified by CO-ADD perhaps they could work with the FDA to accelerate production in the US, however I do believe that CO-ADD could perhaps work with other countries (perhaps in Europe) to determine if they can develop the drug in a faster manner.

I would be very curious to see if CO-ADD is able to bring drugs across the finish line. Given the way the pharmaceutical industry works, my view is that CO-ADD would not succeed in trying to go to market with this drug without a partnership with one of the major pharmaceutical companies. They need the scale and brand recognition to be able to do so. The proof is in the pudding that no major antibiotic has been brought to market in two decades, thus pharmaceutical companies need to believe that they are going to earn substantial revenue from the drug if they’re going to invest in a partnership with CO-ADD.