Don’t mind the start-ups

22

September

2017

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During these university years we have seen a lot of models, a lot! Think of Porter’s five forces or a more recent one: the theory of newly-vulnerable markets (TONM).

Both these models talk about the threat of new entrants or what TONM calls, newly easy to enter. This threat entails that incumbents have to watch out for new market entrants as they might take their profit. These new entrants have learned from the mistakes that the incumbents made. In addition, if the incumbents are serving customers that are less profitable, the new entrants can solely focus on customers that have high profit margins. New entrants can also be seen as start-ups, and it seems a valid point that they pose a threat.

However, the “Financieel Dagblad” just published an article saying, don’t mind the start-ups, be scared of tech-giants. Where I was convinced that start-ups do pose a real threat, in the technology market the tech giants are the ones to watch, apparently. The three main tech giants are Amazon, Facebook and Google, of course.

Annet Aris, teacher of digital strategy at INSEAD, actually advises companies to look at these giants instead. They are posing threats rather than the start-ups. According to the article, this can be explained by the data, the algorithms the giants hold, and their money. If they enter your market, you should definitely be worried.

Partick van der Pijl states that there has been a shift of focus. Four years ago, companies were afraid for the start-ups and what they were doing. However, nowadays the focus is on the development of technologies and how companies should prepare for these upcoming changes.

What do you guys think? I think the article makes a valid point. Although some start-ups have made an impact (Uber & AirBnB), a lot of them have not. In the end, these tech incumbents still seem to rule the market.

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Technology of the Week – How IOT disrupts Agriculture

22

September

2017

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Hi there!

Having a nice day? Did you have some nice meals? You probably have, as we students love to eat! However, did you know that we need to produce 70% more food by 2050 than we had to produce in 2006. Seems impossible!

Luckily, we’re living in a time of technological advancements. Internet of Things is about sensors in all things that surrounds us. These sensors transmit data back to a common IOT platform and this platform uses common language and advanced analytics to provide you, or your products with valuable information (IBM Think Academy, 2015). What does this have to do with food? Well, you’re about to find out.

IOT is disrupting the agriculture industry, this sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually very good for us, as hungry students. IOT is making the industry a lot more efficient and has created a whole new industry segment: precision farming!

Precision farming is about managing variations in the field accurately to grow more food using fewer resources and reducing production costs whilst respecting the environment. And this is done by applying Internet of Things.

We used the theory of newly-vulnerable markets to assess the market disruption and found that all three conditions apply: the industry is newly easy to enter because of lower technology costs, it’s attractive to attack as there is a lot of money to make as we need more food in the future, and it’s hard to defend as incumbents are very old-fashion and don’t look further than current strategies.

One interesting example of the use of Internet of Things in agriculture is drones. A drone is an unmanned aircraft or machine, that is also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or automated robot (IoT Agenda, 2017). The cost of production for drones continues to fall drastically, which means that the adoption of drone usage by people and companies is rapidly increasing.

There are many ways drones can increase efficiency in agriculture. They can perform a soil and field analysis. when the field is analyzed, the drones can also do the planting instead of the farmer, which is way faster (MIT Technology Review, 2016). Furthermore, drones can monitor the crop and do a health assessment to increase the efficiency.

By drones taking over these task, the farmer is enabled to make optimal use of resources, increase the profitability and sustainability of production, and reduce environmental impact.

But what will the future of agriculture look like? As you’ve seen, after the implementations of the drone, the farmer is now still actively involved in the whole farming process. We predict that, in the future, drones will operate autonomously. Currently, drones can take-off and land, determine flying patterns and determine flying height autonomously. In the future we predict that drones will become an “unsupervised learning system”. The profession of farming, as we know it now, could possibly disappear. A farmer will need to become more like a system manager than an agriculture know-it-all.  

 

Group 14

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Remember Trump? He just made a surprising move…

16

September

2017

Trump just made a surprising move, did he change his mind about global warming?

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Did I just put use a picture of Trump to get more views? Maybe, but let’s not focus on that.

You’ll all probably heard Trump’s bold statements about global warming. Don’t know what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at one of his famous (of course) Tweets: “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” (Donald Trump 2013) .

However, he might have changed his mind about this as he just invested 62 million dollar in Concentrated Solar projects (James Temple 2017). Like me, you might not have the slightest idea what concentrated solar is about, so let’s start at the beginning.

Maybe I make a bold assumption here but I’m going to assume that you guys don’t think that global warming is just a faux invented by the Chinese. Please leave a comment if you think otherwise!

As we’re already seeing the effects of global warming it is important that we don’t aggravate it. That’s where Renewable Energy, identified by McKinsey as one of the twelve disrupting technologies, comes into place. McKinsey defines Renewable Energy as: Generation of electricity from renewable sources with reduced harmful climate impact. 

photovoltaic power plants

Well, where you might not have heard from concentrated solar, you might have heard from photovoltaic power plants. A photovoltaic power plant can be seen in the right.

However, a significant drawback of this technology is that it only works when the sun is out. Just as that windmills only work when there’s wind.

Concentrated solar solves just that problem. A concentrated solar power plant uses thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy and heat water to produce steam and generate electricity. As it is coupled with energy storage systems, such as heated molten-salt tanks, it can provide power even when the sun’s not shining (Richard Martin 2016).

To quote Trump again: “Eventually we’re going to get something done and it’s going to be really, really good.” Yes, it is out of context, but he might just have made the first step regarding global warming.

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