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Brooks Running: Personalized Running Shoes for the Mass Market?
astudent
Posted on November 13, 2018 at 6:26 pm
Beginning in 2019, Brooks Running will offer a personalized running shoe made using 3-D Printing technology.

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On November 15, 2018, astudent commented on Open Innovation at General Assembly :

Great read! I would be curious to think about how GA should balance taking ideas from the market vs. predicting what skills its graduates will need in the future. I think a big competitive advantage for any educational institution is predicting what the world needs from its graduates before the world realizes it. I think at a traditional school both admissions and course development decisions strive to serve the world of tomorrow rather than the world of today. I guess the core idea is just that people aren’t always good predictors of what they are going to want or need tomorrow, and it is GA’s job to figure that out.

On November 15, 2018, astudent commented on Volition: Crowdsourcing Innovation in the Beauty Industry :

Thank you Tasnia! Just learned so much. To Amanda’s point, I’d be curious how Volition thinks about the chemical formula for the products it ultimately creates. If all the decision-making is left to consumers, is the actual manufacturing and the IP of the formula the only thing left that makes the company valuable?

Great read, thank you. I’m just curious about why a doctor should want to use a 3D-printed model rather than continuing to read the image. Does the 3D model really provide that much more information to a well-trained physician than the image? Does the model better tap into the physician’s intuition about how to proceed, resulting in better outcomes? Does not having to know how to translate an image into a diagnosis free up the physician to focus on higher-value-add tasks? Intuitively it seems straightforward that a 3-D model would be easier and faster for a physician to understand, but I’m just trying to figure out what the exact value proposition is over the status quo.

On November 15, 2018, astudent commented on Invisalign: A Pioneer of Mass Customization through 3-D Printing :

Interesting point about an AM company not having the advantage of economies of scale as a barrier to new entrants. I think in that case then Invisalign needs to decide whether it wants to compete on service or compete on innovative technology. If competing on service, they need to focus on making their product so entrenched in their distribution channels that switching costs are too high for new entrants to bear. If competing on innovation, then it seems they probably should invest in AM innovation – the technology is still developing rapidly, and I don’t think Invisalign should give up too quickly. If we think about the “Change Adoption Lags Effort” chart from LEAD, perhaps Invisalign right now is at the bottom of the curve, where a bit more time & effort can lead to an exponential increase in the extent of the change. They shouldn’t admit defeat too quickly.

On November 15, 2018, astudent commented on I, Robot Meets Wall Street: The Age of the Robo-Advisor :

Interesting read, thank you. I like this approach from Schwab better than some of the start-up robos – Wealthfront, Betterment, etc. I think the questions you pose are of course the right questions to ask – fortunately for Schwab, they have the business model and infrastructure to deliver both the robo product as well as human intervention as needed. Wealthfront et. al. don’t really have that built into their business model. Given the amount of VC money pouring into these pure robos, it seems that at least some people are taking a bet that a pure robo advisor can survive through a recession. It will be interesting to see how this whole trend plays out.

This was an amazing read, thank you! It’s a bit of a sad state of affairs that competition from private space companies and the lack of funding resulting from public apathy is contributing to the backlog of data. I often think of the innovations of companies like SpaceX as an unmitigated good since they improve our capabilities to explore space when no one else is doing that work. But the competition for talent and resources that these companies are creating may actually be impeding true scientific progress in the field of astronomy, and I think it’s that science that really serves as the spark for our imaginations and dreams about space exploration in the first place. On ML – thank you for the very clear presentation of the two horns of the dilemma. I agree with you that adopting an open innovation mindset and letting amateur astronomers help build the dataset is the better choice. Perhaps this might be one small way to rekindle our imaginations and our fascination with space and lead to some real progress.