Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
How E-Commerce Is Transforming Rural China The New Yorker
I know we’ve covered ecommerce in China in recent newsletters but the story is endlessly fascinating to me. Understanding how an entire ecosystem can be built and the strategy behind it is remarkable. This is the story of JD.com, one of the world’s largest tech companies in terms of revenue and how its founder has managed to bring the entire country closer together.
How Amy Hood Won Back Wall Street and Helped Reboot Microsoft Bloomberg
Amy Hood is the longest tenured Microsoft at CFO since the 90s. Since she’s taken over the role, the company’s share price has grown to new heights. She helped diversify revenue streams and is a close business partner to the CEO. An interesting insight of her bio in Bloomberg is the use of machine learning to generate financial forecasts and models.
The Rise of the Last-Mile Exchange strategy+business
As ecommerce continues to grow, so does the need for last mile delivery. The challenge for last mile delivery remains profitability. It is predicated on the transportation provider’s route density — how many packages can be delivered on a given delivery run, and the drop size — how many packages or items are delivered at each stop. The article proposes a last mile exchange to help solve the issue across the multiple players in the value chain.
‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI alarmingly wrong The Guardian
The media’s take on AI research is absurdly wrong. Case in point on an experiment at Facebook that created sensationalist headlines that had nothing to do with the actual result of the test. The author of this article argues that these types of claims hinder progress in the field but more importantly distracts from the real issues.
Agile Makes No Sense Hacker Noon
I like articles that go against my confirmation bias. We’re fans of employing agile at the strategy and management level and we’re trying to constantly improve our method. The author argues that blind devotion to the principles doesn’t make sense. What is required is to contextualize an agile implementation and starting with small incremental steps.
