Sam Painter

I am currently enrolled in a corporate sustainability class where we often talk about the challenges of global warming and how they affect business, but we also discuss heavily the issues that come with the modern neo-liberal society we live in today. Capitalism is dependent on constant growth and we live in a world of finite resources with an economic system that has infinite demands. So, I believe that regardless of global warming, we would need to find creative ways to create well made and sustainable products regardless because at some point we would run into resource issues. Obviously, this would affect industries far different than global warming and maybe postpone the needs for change, but regardless of global warming our oil is drying up and we would eventually need to find ourselves moving away from gas power and onto something more sustainable.

Very interesting.
In my view, Tesla’s rise is not triggered by Environment Changing. It helps, but it is not the main reason.
If there is no pressure from Environment and from laws/regulations, the car manufactories would make models with most appealing features.
For energy plan, they would choose the most economical and the most powerful engine, either powered by gas, hydrogen, or battery.

This is a really interesting point about climate change being the disruptor instead of the EV’s. I do agree if climate change wasn’t a key focus of people in many countries, I don’t know that EV’s would be as heavily invested in as they are now. Although, if we are following Christensen’s definition of Disruptive Innovation, EV’s are not quite there yet because they aren’t easily accessible and affordable and have not wiped out the majority yet. Although, it is possible we could get to that point in the future.

Good insights, Sam! I was very impressed with the applications that Adidas, Walmart, and IKEA have created to leverage AR and VR. In Adidas case, being able to view the exclusive shoe through AR, adds to the shoe’s exclusivity. High end customers are going to be impressed by the AR presentation of the shoe and I think it will make them more likely to pay more for these exclusive shoes. Walmart’s application to simulate Black Friday is also very practical. While it is probably impossible to actually simulate the Black Friday rush, it is much more feasible to do it through VR than doing drill in-store. Finally IKEA’s application, like so many other VR and AR apps, seems like such an obvious use for the technology. Furniture is a product that you cannot test and arrange in your home before you buy. Being able to see how chairs, couches, beds, etc. look in your home before buying is an incredibly valuable thing for customers and I believe this will give IKEA a big competitive advantage. I think smaller companies can find ways to improve efficiency as well as bring some novelty to their business with VR and AR and I can’t wait to see what they come up with!

Great post! AR & VR will definitely create a huge opportunity for e-commerce, employee training, marketing, etc. for businesses that know how to use these technologies to their advantage and it’s great to see that some well-known brands are riding on this wave to create more value for customers. As you have pointed out, AR & VR give remote customers a chance to visualize the product or service before they buy it. Like IKEA and Flexential, I think e-commerce sites like Amazon, or any e-commerce divisions of businesses (maybe target.com, walmart.com, etc.) can also benefit from this technology as the consumer can have a better visual idea of the product they are buying, which reduces return costs and customer dissatisfaction.

I really enjoyed reading your post on how to measure metrics within IT. I know the company I worked for, we measured the value of our team by the projects we worked on, the amount of tickets that were closed/resolved and the amount of risk we reduced. It is important that we recorded our work for our metrics so that our boss presented the information to the E-board. I believe that technology within a business has a great return on investment. Also, if we can provide stakeholders with metrics about why it is important to continue investing in technology, we can continue to innovate the business.

I think the main issue with trying to create a definitive measure of IT is that IT departments touch so many different aspects of the business and some of these aspects are not profit driven but rather supportive. When we look at accounting metrics we have different measurements for different areas such as liquidity, solvency, efficiency, and profitability. I think if we want to measure IT we need to examine the department in a similar light. We should inspect how IT affects different areas of the business individually. By looking at what is valuable to different departments, and examine the goals of the country we can better understand what is truly important to measure and try to derive the aspects needed to correctly measure IT’s value to the company as a whole.