The COVID-19 outbreak may be ubiquitous, but its impact on global commercial activity is anything but uniform. Grocers have done well as consumers stock up on staples, for instance, but fashion and luxury (F&L) companies have felt the pinch of the pandemic acutely. As a result, they need to develop drastically different inventory and sales strategies to heal their businesses and emerge with...

The new custom-fit Poimo e-scootermercari R4D.It was just this May that we heard about Poimo, an experimental inflatable electric scooter developed at Tokyo University. Well, its designers have now unveiled a custom-fit version that would be made for each user, based on photos that they provide.First of all, why would anyone want an inflatable scooter? Well, as is the case with a lot of other i...

Details on the design and clinical tests of an open-source bionic leg are now freely available online, so that researchers can hopefully create and test safe and useful new prosthetics.Bionic knees, ankles and legs under development worldwide to help patients walk are equipped with electric motors. Getting the most from such powered prosthetics requires safe and reliable control systems that ca...

High-end of real estate market is booming on low rates. More affordable properties see smaller gains in pandemicDemand for luxury homes is soaring, underscoring how the pandemic has intensified wealth disparities in the U.S.High-end sales jumped 42% in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to a report from brokerage Redfin. That’s the largest jump dating back to 2013. Sales of mid-p...

Hydrocephalus patients have an excess of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, which needs to be drained away through a ventricular shunt. However, these shunts regularly fail, with potentially life-threatening results. At present, there isn’t an easy way to check that a shunt is still working, and clinicians typically use brain MRI/CT scans to see if a shunt is still draining correctly.Not only a...

Amazon has evolved into more than just an online store. While ecommerce makes up a significant portion of the company’s overall sales, its diverse revenue model generates billions through various business segments.This visualization provides an overview of the different parts that make up Amazon, showing each business unit’s net sales from June 2019 to 2020.A Diverse Revenue ModelWith a marke...

Three students have developed a way to change discounts based on food expiration dates, without needing to apply new labels.As groceries reach their expiration date, supermarkets often relabel them with discount stickers – 20 per cent off, 40 per cent off, etc. The closer to the expiration date, generally, the greater the discount. But this relabelling can be time-consuming for staff and often...

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, executives are finding their companies’ digital transformation more urgent than ever.In late spring 2020, we surveyed senior executives, digital transformation leaders, and BCG experts about the leading trends in digital transformation and how these trends have been affected by the pandemic. (See the sidebar, “Our Research.”) While digital transformations...

California-based Koniku uses neurons fused with microchips. Startup began clinical trials of technology three weeks agoA biotechnology startup called Koniku is trying to develop robots that could sniff out Covid-19 infections faster than conventional testing.The technology fuses neurons with a silicon chip to create a “smell cyborg” capable of detecting scents ranging from explosives to patho...