Aug. 2020

The new durable goods orders can signal future activity, such as future GDP growth.

From this newly released (August 26th, 2020) durable goods data by the U.S. Commerce Department, there are some interesting insights for the business managers.

Do you notice the changes between 2008 and 2009? It's not very bad if compared with the contraction in 2009. What do you think?

P.S. One thing to keep in mind that the durable goods report is very volatile and varies by different industries. The next post will show more details of durable goods orders in different industries in the U.S.

Source:

Durable Goods and What They Say About the Economy | WSJ

https://www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/adv/pdf/durgd.pdf

I knew there would be controversial about this post, matching the hierarchy of needs and Seven sins. But when you check the needs one-by-one, and when you think the needs are over-applied, it falls into the Seven.

It is no different for an individual, a company, or a country.

What do you think the match between the two concepts?

It's interesting to see an article talking about how long does it actually take to form a new habit. The average time is 66 days, based on the study mentioned in the article.

As a marketer, we can not always expect that business will come back to normal as it was in 2019 since some consumer behaviors have been totally changed over 66 days and even beyond the top threshold of 254 days, such as the case in China.

If we can not change it, then we should embrace it. What do you think?

I saw this new smart price tag at a grocery store, and it's fascinating and surprised the IoT has been deployed widely and deeply impacts our life.

It's not only a passive price tag device, eliminating paper usage to protect the environment, but it can also save huge time and cost on updating the price tag. Furthermore, it creates value through collecting information such as consumer behaviors, and analyze those data to adapt and shift buying decisions.

And what do you think the Cons of this smart tag?

I see the COVID Alert app, which developed by the Canadian government, only has 500K+ downloads from the Play Store, but considering the 80+% smartphone penetration rate, we should see more downloads to prevent the spread of the COVID-19.

Let's download and install it!

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/video/covid-alert.html

Germany is a pioneer in deploying wind turbines in the world. Besides the political issue and distance regulation on the wind farm, I do agree that windfarm is the most economical green energy solution comparing to other solutions at this stage.

This 28 minutes video introduced German predicament on wind power expansion. It also provided a very interesting solution (slowing down the turbine by "seeing" bird approach) to protect wild birds, which is one of the conundrums against wind farm expansion.

Source: https://youtu.be/Qr5PEAK1t3U

Increasing the efficiency of automation is always welcome, but when the AI reaches Singularity, should human give him/her/they the right to vote? This ultimate ethical question can not be ignored around 2045.

Source： The Robot Revolution Is Happening-Like It or Not | WSJ

An interesting video from WSJ about energy prices. Two insights found in the video:

The current low energy price was due to the low demand and glut. Energy producers usually are slow to respond to the low demand, which added to the glut. On the flip side, the price will be surge due to the slow response to the energy demand when it is back to the normal as well. We might see a surge price in the coming months.

The low-interest-rate helped fuel the shale drilling boom in the past decade, and the foreseeable further low-interest-rate will expedite the large renewable energy projects, and makes it more competitive with fossil fuels in the next decade.

Source: How Energy Got So Cheap | WSJ

The e-fuel, developed by Audi, is good for energy storage and transportation. Its inherent energy inefficiency and high cost make it difficult in the mobility market to compete with EV and FCEV. But, does it matter about energy efficiency? The end-users are more care about affordability, performance, and if it's powered by "green" energy. There is not a perfect solution, and such innovation and implementation should be encouraged, and hopefully, it could be capitalized in the near future.

Source:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/28/business/tech/japanese-automakers-efuel-ev/#.Xy4DZyjYrD5

https://theicct.org/blog/staff/e-fuels-will-not-save-ice