Rishi Taparia - Issue #17
This week brought Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales, Amazon with some amazing offers for HQ2, Chinese regulators imposing more rules on online lenders, AI spotting pneumonia better than doctors, heavyweight boxer Ed Latimore on the secret to a happy life and more. Enjoy!
Commerce
Thanksgiving online retail sales hit nearly $3 billion on the back of strong mobile growth
Thanksgiving means two things - turkey and shopping! Online shoppers in the U.S. spent $2.9 billion this Thanksgiving, an 18 percent increase over the 2016 holiday total, as more retailers pushed Black Friday deals out early and consumers continued getting more comfortable making purchases on their phones. Now, Black Friday was only 11% of the Singles Day spending in China but it’s a start!
Nike, Macy’s Suffer Technical Snafus on Black Friday
Black Friday, certainly not the day to have systems go down. Customers shopping at Nike and Macy’s complained about problems trying to buy goods on Black Friday, as the companies scrambled to remedy technical complications on the critical shopping day.
Grand Buildings Help Keep Macy’s Afloat
Battered by e-commerce competition, Macy’s real estate is now worth more than its market value. And the company has been selling off parts or all of its most distinctive buildings. Amazon is really rubbing it in - in Seattle, Macy’s first office tenant will be…Amazon.
This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon
Amazon is in search of it’s HQ2 - a new location for second headquarters that will house 50,000 employees. 238 cities have submitted bids and are offering some amazing incentives.
Chicago, IL: Amazon can pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers.
Chula Vista, CA: 85 acres of land for free, valued at $100 million
Fresno, CA: Amazon gets special authority over how the company’s taxes are spent.
It certainly pays to be Amazon.
FinTech
China clamps down on online micro lending; U.S.-listed shares plunge
In the Chinese government’s latest move to rein in the rapidly growing and lightly regulated market for online micro-lenders, newly implemented rules sent shares of U.S.-listed Chinese financial firms into a tailspin. Newly public Quidian (QD) saw shares tumble by 20% with other businesses who previously applied for licenses withdrawing their applications.
Evolving the Customer Experience in Banking
An in-depth report by Bain on banks and the digital experience. Net net, banks that accelerate development of their digital channels and mobilize around individual customer episodes, not products, stand the best chance of earning greater loyalty. Not surprising, but some good data in here.
Will Cash Disappear?
While some would have you believe that digital is here and now, coins and paper currency remain the most popular ways to pay in most countries. An interesting graphic from the NYT on payment types around the world.
Technology
Can A.I. Be Taught to Explain Itself?
As machine learning becomes more powerful, the field’s researchers increasingly find themselves unable to account for what their algorithms know — or how they know it. A great long read.
A New Algorithm Can Spot Pneumonia Better Than a Radiologist
Add diagnosing dangerous lung diseases to the growing list of things artificial intelligence can do better than humans. CheXNet was trained on a publicly available data set of more than 100,000 chest x-rays that were annotated with information on 14 different diseases that turn up in the images. Not only did CheXNet beat radiologists at spotting pneumonia, but once the algorithm was expanded, it proved better at identifying the other 13 diseases as well.
Random Tidbits
Ed Latimore on The Secret to a Happy Life
Shane Parrish from Farnam Street has a great podcast, The Knowledge Project. A recent episode features Ed Latimore, a heavyweight boxer, physicist and philosopher. Worth a listen!