We re-examine Tesla with some new data, to see how improved Operational process at scale is saving Tesla.
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Paris to the Moon is a love letter, exquisite and heartfelt. It is not one that a pining star-crossed lover writes, but one a soldier writes to family back home. The Paris of lovers is well-trodden. Paris to the Moon describes the Paris of a writer with a young family. Gopnik’s penchant for adorning unremarkable happenings with remarkable witticism makes the book lovely. In the midst of absurdities and abstractions, swimming pools and schools, gyms and dinner plates (mellow and varnished like an old violin), never-ending dossiers, parks and pregnancy, politics and futbol, Adam Gopnik, all the while failing miserably to prevent his son from learning about Barney, reflects on our forlorn life away from home, even as we are having…
Leave a CommentHere are some films and podcast episodes that I liked in 2018. Sights (Film, TV, etc.) Bladerunner 2049 was a thought provoking movie and a well-deserved sequel to Bladerunner. Love per Square Foot was a cheerful and peppy urban love story set in Bombay. NetFlix has made a movie that Bollywood has forgotten how to make. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell made by BBC boasts high production and some great acting by all the principal characters. The TV series is less-nuanced than Susannah Clarke’s book by the same name, i.e., the TV series is darker and misses the whimsical funny elements in the book, that are understandably harder to translate to screen. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 1) is great…
Leave a CommentDuring the holiday travels, one of the vexing things that you might have come across is people in a hurry, those who hurtle by at excessive speed on airport escalators, as you stand. Conversely, you might be the one trying to get back to your boarding area but blocked by a slow traveler carrying an unmanageable volume of luggage bags, more than what one ought to carry on enjoyable trips. In this article, I return to one of my favorite Operations topics in social behavior. Should people stand left (or right, depending on the country) in moving escalators, so that people in a hurry can walk by? Is that efficient? It turns out not. It is better for everyone if we do…
Leave a CommentI write a lot about internet operations on this blog. In the Wharton core Operations class, we teach a catalog business case, where I make the point that catalog business is a good way to understand the advantages and disadvantages of Amazon’s internet retail model. So, it is an amazing reaffirmation to hear that Amazon has released a print catalog — their first one! — in 2018 December. See the picture on the right. It is interesting to note that Internet shipping Operations have come a full circle. Of course, there are new tweaks. Like all things that Amazon does, it is based on data. Depending on your purchases, you may or may not have received it. It is as…
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Leave a CommentHighlighting some books that I loved reading in 2018. These are not necessarily books that were published in 2018. (Before I get into the list, I loved three wonderful books by my colleagues this year: The Customer Centricity Playbook by Peter Fader and Sarah Toms, Never Stop Learning by Brad Staats, and The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust by Kevin Werbach. I am finishing the last one now). Business and Society: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most unputdownable book of the year. Here is my Review. The Great A&P and Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson is an excellent way to understand Amazon and its challenges. Automation and Artificial…
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