What makes BEMM129 more practical and attractive to me?

BEMM129 has been fascinating throughout the semester as it applies a creative way of helping me to understand the digital world. The better way of realising the digital business models is to put ourselves into the digital world by using internet, working as a netizen and talking to others.

My comments and learning to others.

MOOC is truly a useful learning approach and I have found that AI technology is an intriguing topic from a theme called ‘Building your career in tomorrow’s workplace’.  This topic motivated me to understand in what way AI is changing our daily life and it will definitely be the main tendency of future development.

Firstly, while reading Liu Tian Yi’s first blog, it was blowing my mind with the presence of big data technology and machine learning, and I was thinking that it is just about data storage. However, its functionality is more than that and could be related to AI technology and digital transformation. Basically, it intelligently simplifies the process, such as people using particular app to track the outbreak of Covid-19 in Seoul. The more complicated the business process is likely to be, the more frequent the Big data and machine learning could be used. Ysheir is my account name and I was a bit concerned about privacy issues and curious of any business fields which can use big data technology. After that, Liu Tian Yi gave me a detailed answer about my concern and curiosity. I assure that Big data technology also can be related to AI kitchen which was the topic of my first blog.

Secondly, I have learned a lot from Ye Zhang George, such as I noticed that soft skills are needed even the future will be changed by ‘IoT’ and AI will become more intelligent. He also mentioned sharing economy which is surprisingly linked to his second blog ‘Mobike’. This really motivates me to create an effective blog post. However, importantly, we have common sense of the importance of emotional interaction in spite of driverless cars will eventually appear in the future.  What I can see is that IoT has successfully changed traditional industries.

On the other hand, after reading the blog post of Mobike, I noticed that sharing economy is related to environmental aspects and well-being of mankind. Importantly, I had a better understanding of distinguishing the difference of circular economy and sharing economy with the case of Mobike. Sharing economy means people own their private assets and share it, but circular economy means assets are not privately owned,  and it is environmentally friendly and durable for long-term goal. I also can see the weakness of developing businesses relating to circular economy in different countries, in other words, the way we live is different.

Thirdly, I have a better knowledge of free-freemium business model, and realized that we are not considering only the digital business models itself, but it is decided and affected by external factors, such as political and cultural factors.

Consequently, I summarized five things which are prone to be important to my learning and what I would like to consider for my future career. Those are Big data, AI (machine learning), IoT, Circular and sharing economy, and external factors. By considering those factors, it helps me to build an appropriate digital business model in terms of my digital businesses.

References:

1st comment link

The Huge impact of technology innovation on credit approval

2nd comment link

Blogpost 1

3rd comment link

Blogpost 2

4th comment link

https://markdigitalbusiness888.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/tencent-and-its-successful-business-model/

• An Epic change of traditional gaming industry

Niantic is the leading company that uses real-world AR technology on mobile games, and it successfully launched Pokémon Go, Ingress and Harry Potter Wizards United. The mission is to use emerging technology (Machine learning and computer vision) to enrich player’s experiences as human beings in the physical world. (Niantic, 2020) To my understanding, the core value is about creating non-profitable benefits and financial benefits. Importantly, non-profitable benefits are the key reason to shift the ways people play games from indoor gaming platforms to outdoor AR mobile games. This refers to digital transformation as it enables new ways of conducting businesses that replace the established models.

Five reasons of why Niantic has been working on AR mobile games.

There are five reasons which can explain why Niantic is confident of releasing its AR mobile games into the market. Firstly, mobile users have been growing rapidly due to popularisation of smartphones. Secondly, practicability of the internet allows mobile games more accessible. Thirdly, AR technology has become more sophisticated. Fourthly, AR mobile games are still not becoming the main segment in the gaming industry. Finally, Niantic is creating new ways of making AR mobile games stand out.

This blog is going to address the launch of Pokémon Go as the key definition regarding how Niantic has changed traditional gaming industry with its digital business model.  This is because Pokémon Go has become the most popular AR mobile game and has remained its first position for three years. According to data collected from Niantic, the app downloads has reached to more than 1 billion. (Niantic, 2020)

You can click this link (https://nianticlabs.com/business/) to access more information about Niantic’s success with AR mobile games.

The video above is really good to watch, but if any of you cannot open it for some reasons, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Y0JmZj54M

Pokémon Go

“Pokémon Go” is an ‘Planet Scale AR-featured mobile game’ in which its AR technology is much more advanced with occlusion technology. Although it is free to download, if players want to do raids, hatching eggs or buying trainer clothing and other items in the game, then they need to purchase Poke coins by using real money. This is how the company eventually generated an estimated $894 million in gross player spending in 2019. (Steinberg,2020) The idea of this is associated with freemium model because players need to pay for extras in order to get rare or special Pokemon. Significantly, this game has interactive features between Pokemon and trainers, such as Buddy adventure, AR Snapshot mode, and online Battle. AR snapshot allows players taking pics of pokemon and sharing it with the company and other players on Instagram. It encourages people to have more engagement on social media platforms.  Accordingly, it fits in the concept of SMAC. For example, it allows people using Facebook and Gmail to be Pokémon Go account, so that the company can interact with targeted customers and collect valuable information from feedback on facebook easily. Also, it was also leveraging the Google Cloud Platform. The way it works is to help employees focusing on customers rather than sink time into managing and securing servers and infrastructure. (Niantic, 2020) Moreover, the firm also can interact with customers on Twitter for news and events update, it is beneficial of maintaining customer’s loyalty. Before the company decide game features, there is always a trial commencing in certain period of time. For instance, ‘Spotlight Hour’ activity on the game happens every week in order to see how players reflect this new feature. By doing that, customers helps us to make feasible decisions for the sake of long-term sustainability. The company also can use customer’s data to seek for potential opportunities, then the decision will motivate strategic changes positively. Therefore, this is how Niantic uses its digital business model.

By the way, Players can transfer Pokemon from Pokemon Go to other relevant games, such as Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee on Switch platform. This can make Pokemon Go even more competitive and compatible.

My Story with Pokemon Go and relevant figures

In my experience, I have been playing it since it was launched in 2016, and this game was completely blowing my mind when I saw huge crowds of people playing outside at its first debut. 70% of players feel motivated to walk more. (Niantic 2020) At that time, I made lots of friends and shared my stories. 47% of players feel motivated to connect with others in 2019. (Niantic, 2020) The nature of this game is to gather people together and build local communities for the sake of social interaction, as well as, inspiring people to do exercise and explore new places. There are 91% players have visited a location because of Pokemon go partnerships. (Niantic, 2020) When playing this game outside, it encourages people to learn things from a new place where they visited. For instance, museums, libraries and historical architectures. According to Niantic, 98% players learned about a location because it served as a PokeStop. (Niantic, 2020) Those factors are belonging to non-profitable benefits and can be defined as the core value of Niantic’s digital business model. (exercise, exploration and social interaction) 

Since Niantic applied its digital business model into its products and services, it basically contributes tourism development and local economy, this is because the company will be holding events in different countries every year. There is an interesting point is that the company also has engaged with environmental protection, it encourages 17,000 players across 41 countries to pick up 145 tons of trash while playing the game. (Niantic, 2020)

On the other hand, Pokemon Go also stimulates people to be Youtuber. For instance, Mystic7 channel has 1.9 million subscribers and Trainer Tips has almost 1 million subscribers. The company has been working with them on advertising.

Challenges

Even Niantic has been successful, but there are still some challengers they need to face, such as Anti-cheating (Hacking apps like iSpoofer as players can teleport anywhere to catch Pokemon without walking) Another challenge is that Players need to pay for lots of money on getting rare and special Pokemon, this is not friendly for those with low monthly salaries. Furthermore, except Pokemon Go, Niantic somehow has failed on exploiting other AR games. Finally, there is a limitation of playing Niantic’s mobile games due to bad weather conditions. 

References:

Accenture Strategy. (2018) Operate like a disruptor . Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://www.accenture.com/t00010101T000000Z__w__/gb-en/_acnmedia/PDF-72/Accenture-Strategy-Operate-Like-Disruptor-Executive-Summary.pdf#zoom=50

Favis, E. (2019) 17,000 Pokemon go players collect 145 tons of trash for earth day. Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://www.gameinformer.com/2019/05/05/17000-pokemon-go-players-collect-145-tons-of-trash-for-earth-day

Niantic. (2020) Leveraging the Google Cloud Platform. Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://nianticlabs.com/blog/googlecloud/

Pokemon Go. (2020) Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://www.pokemongo.com/en-gb/

Steinberg, N. (2020) Pokemon go set profit record in 2019 that trounced its launch in 2016. Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://screenrant.com/pokemon-go-profit-record-2019/

Niantic. (2020) Real world impact. Retrieved March 06, 2020 fromhttps://nianticlabs.com/social-impact/

Niantic. (2020) Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://nianticlabs.com

Statt, N. (2019) Pokemon go is getting a live AR Multiplayer feature called buddy adventure. Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950615/niantic-pokemon-go-live-multiplayer-ar-augmented-reality-buddy-adventure

Frank, A. (2019) Pokemon go AR snapshot: how to take pics of Pokemon (and find Smeargle). Retrieved March 06, 2020 from https://www.polygon.com/guides/2019/3/4/18241355/pokemon-go-ar-snapshot-how-to-take-pictures

WMware. (2019, May 6) 20 Questions with Niantic CEO John Hanke [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7fZ14YB08

IGN. (2018, Nov 16) How to transfer Pokemon from Go on iPhone to Let’s Go on Nintendo Switch (Pikachu And Eevee) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOuGTic_4nA

Niantic. (2018, Jun 28) Codename: Niantic Occlusion-Real World AR Occlusion featuring Pikachu and Eevee [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZrmPTPgY3I

AP Archive. (2016, Nov 16) Pokemon Go’s Success attributed to social interaction [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Y0JmZj54M

-The replacement of traditional way on making the food-

Before this blog kick off the statement, a few questions are raised for readers. Are you willing to eat the food which is made by robots or the food is made by manual chefs? Will chefs or cooks be replaced by AI in the future?

Nowadays, working with AI in a restaurant is no longer a dream and it has successfully penetrated into the market. The involvement of robots is beneficial regarding food preparation, detect food safety issues, food production, and help with developing new flavours and recipes.(Matthews, 2019) This brings about a term “Robotic kitchen”, and the concept of that is briefly about 3 steps. Ordering the food on smart devices like iPad, then pay electrically and the order information will be transferred to AI, finally robots will prepare and deliver the food to customers.

Basically, it is feasible to apply “cobot” as AI assistant in terms of proceeding simple culinary tasks automatically, such as deliver food ingredients, and cooking patties or even keep consistency of flavour. Infosys claimed that “businesses begin using AI to automate and routine or inefficient processes”. (Futurelearn, 2020) So that, it becomes more efficient and accurate than cooks for the sake of eliminating expenditures on salaries and using time effectively. Moreover, the robot is also much more accurate or we can say “ease the burden of chefs” in relation to providing personalised meals. What can manual chefs do is focusing on valuable and delicate tasks which is supported by Noel Sharkey’s statement, at least for now this role is in charge of by manual chefs. For instance, a secret recipe, or food innovation. No matter what, the global market size of the cobot is expected to reach to 850,000 million Japanese yen in 2024, and it has been continuously growing since 2015. (Yano research institute ltd, 2018)

With all of these benefits by using robotics, the traditional way has combined with digitalization based on machine learning algorithm. A good example is “Miso Robotics” whose robots are taking the role of the grill and fryer. 

There are many of successful companies running their business with robots, such as Spyce and Haidilao Hot Pot. The AI (robots) even can In 2018, Haidilao had gained tremendous amount of profits with 19.97 billion Chinese yuan. (Statista, 2020) The question is that how did they manage to operate businesses with robots successfully? Especially for a company like Haidilao Hot Pot, it has been identified as the largest restaurant operator by market value listed in Asia. (Bloomberg, 2018) Some of the reasons for that could be a huge population size in China, brilliant customer services and its own expansion plan. There is assumption that could be a meaningful reason as some of customers are more enjoyable on watching robotic processes instead of the food itself. In my experience, the flavour at Hadilao restaurant is quit same as other hotpot restaurants.

It seems to be a challenge in which customers needs more time to get used to it and some of customers are more sensible of flavour and have established emotional engagement with manual cooks. It is an obvious phenomenon that more young customers are not resistant on eating at a robotic restaurant and literally have more adaption and familiarity of engaging with AI. Hence, it has become a new trend of eating food. Despite that, some of old customers are much more acceptable on the food which was made by manual chefs due to their subjective ideology is  more important than objective one.

Although there is a gap between emotional customers and AI, the tendency of the change to robotics or automation will steadily push forward and eventually lead to a semi-automatisation or full-automation. In optimistic view, the robotic restaurant is convenient and efficient to serve the food to customers on fast food industry, but in pessimistic view, it may cause chefs or cooks losing jobs. According to the website called “Will robots take my job”, the percentage of voting cooks and restaurant will be replaced by AI and robots is 96%, surprisingly it grows up to 14% by 2024. (Will robots take my job, 2020) To my understanding, there will be a contradiction if an important recipe being taken by AI which means it actually harms the self-esteem and self-achievement of manual chefs. In other words, the AI steal their knowledge because AI (Robots) is learning fast. Likewise, human interaction with emotions is in favour of consolidating status of chefs in digital economy. This is because the current AI technology is lack of emotions.

Thereby, the role of chefs will be changed by AI but cannot be replaced as making food is the nature of human-being. best consequence is to insist on semi-automatisation for those who wants to be chefs within next few decades, but nobody knows the truth of the future.

Consequently, there is an interesting tool which is called “Gastrograph’s guiding principle“. It tells us that everyone experiences flavour a little differently. Therefore, if this feature is attached to AI technolgoy, then it would ruminate limitless sensory possibilities on a flavour, but somehow human-being could fail to notice. (Berenstein, 2018) If that is the case, the role of manual chefs will highly likely be replaced by AI (robots) in the future as AI is much more intelligent than human. This will be able to pose a situation in a dilemma from perspective of human rights.

References: 

Winterstone pictures (2018, Feb 22). Flippy “making chefs more creative” |Miso Robotics [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTfIwsH1xIs

South China Morning Post (2018, Nov 6). Inside China’s first AI hotpot restaurant [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj7B0Y___c4

Spycefoodco (2018, May 3). Spyce-Robotic restaurant by four MIT graduates in collaboration with chef Daniel Boulud [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=9LqqcDL99UA&feature=emb_title

Yano research institute Ltd. (2018) global cobot market size in 2017 Attained 65,000 million yen. Retrieved from https://www.yanoresearch.com/en/press-release/show/press_id/2044

Du, L, Maki, A. (2018) Robots are serving spicy soup at Haidilao’s hotpot restaurants. Retrieved from: https://www.bloombergquint.com/pursuits/robots-serving-spicy-soup-is-key-to-hotpot-chain-s-expansion

Tao, L. (2018) A first-hand review of Haidilao’s ‘smart’ hotpot restaurant in Beijing. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2171402/first-hand-review-haidilaos-smart-hotpot-restaurant-beijing

Naylor, T. (2019) Restaurants are now employing robots-should chefs be worried? Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/07/food-tech-the-march-of-the-robots-reaches-the-kitchen

Matthews, K. (2019) Restaurants and robots: how AI might automate your dining. Retrieved from https://datacenterfrontier.com/restaurants-test-drive-ai-and-robotics-to-automate-your-dining/

Berenstein, N. (2018) Tastemakers: can a robot really know what we’ll want to eat? Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/may/23/food-for-thought-will-an-era-of-hyper-personalized-meals-leave-a-sour-taste

Scherer, M, Robinson, J; Adler, D (2018) What risks restaurants should consider before deploying AI, robotics and automation. Retrieved from https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/what-risks-restaurants-should-consider-before-deploying-ai-robotics-and-au/539840/

Miso Robotics (2020) Cloud-connected learning platform. Retrieved from https://misorobotics.com/miso-ai/

Statista (2020) Revenue of Chinese restaurant chain Haidilao group from 2015 to 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/999071/china-revenue-of-haidilao-group/

Will robots take my job? (2020) Cooks, Restaurant. Retrieved from https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/35-2014-cooks-restaurant

Moley Robotics. (2015) Meet the robot chef that can prepare your dinner. Retrieved from: https://time.com/3819525/robot-chef-moley-robotics/

Futurelearn (2020) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Retrieved from https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/creating-your-future/4/steps/652900

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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