Economic:
Opportunity 1: Optimizing online grocery shopping
b)
Ecommerce was growing before the pandemic and
has gotten a boost from it. For one store, Sprout’s, their ecommerce sales have
increased 950% from last year up to 13% of sales. There has been an increased
demand for online grocery delivery services and for grocery pick up services.
c)
The typical customer would be the regular grocery
shopper who is wary of public spaces due to the pandemic, or who wants to save
time by shopping online
d)
I think there is a lot of room for development
in this area and it would be relatively easy to exploit, there are existing
services but with such a massive spike in demand, there is likely room for
innovation.
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Why did I see the opportunity?
o
The idea of using online grocery pickup/delivery
services is something I have considered recently, though is something I would
not be willing to pay money for. I do know that my mom has used service that Walmart
offered, but I have not heard her opinions on it.
Opportunity 2: Local Agriculture
b)
The meat industry is struggling because of the
closure of large meatpacking plants and issues with distribution. Many pig
farmers are having to kill the pigs themselves rather than send them off to meatpacking
plants, this is mostly being done by gassings or shooting them. This is not
exclusive to pigs, poultry processor Allen Harim Foods killed nearly 2 million
birds on farms in Delaware and Maryland last month, there is also dumping of milk
and destruction of fresh vegetables. From this I think it might be valuable to support
local agriculture to supply communities during crisis.
c)
The customer here is meat consuming Americans.
d)
This would probably fall under difficult to exploit,
I do not know how real this opportunity really is. I would have to look further
into it more to know if this is at all viable, or if it would even solve the problems
that I believe it would.
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Why did I see the opportunity?
o
It feels extremely contradictory to see this
kind of waste when there is a demand for the thing that is being wasted. I
think anything that can be done to reduce wasting the lives of animals would be
beneficial, and whether or not encouraging and supporting local agriculture is the
best way to go about it there must be a way of preventing similar outcomes
during the next crisis.
Policy:
Opportunity 3: Decentralized Services
b)
It seems like there is not much regard for
online privacy, when a bill to prevent warrantless surveillance is rejected by
both parties. It seems beneficial to make services that are peer to peer or
operate over a blockchain more common to prevent surveillance and censorship.
Particularly, I think there is room for peer to peer chat applications to become
more popular.
c)
US citizens interested in protecting their data.
d)
It would be relatively difficult to exploit. I do
not think the average citizen is as worried about their privacy online as the
maybe should be. I also think it might be difficult for people to switch to platforms
that sacrifice ease of use and avoids identifying information for privacy.
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Why did I see the opportunity?
o
I have an interest in and have taken an online
certification course for cyber security, so I value internet privacy more than
the average person.
Opportunity: Artificial Intelligence
b)
There will likely be an increasing amount of
regulation surrounding artificial intelligence in the coming years. I think following
the regulation for artificial Intelligence may lead to opportunities presenting
themselves.
c)
Anyone concerned with AI in the US
d)
This might be difficult to exploit, depending on
the goal it would be difficult to just create or use an AI opportunistically. Depending
on the regulation passed and how it can be exploited, an AI system would have
to be developed to cater to that interest, which is not a simple task.
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Why did I see the opportunity?
o
I am interested in what legal regulations will
be passed for Artificial Intelligence, I have done some work with machine
learning but not AI systems so I’d like to learn more about them.
