Question

Select one of the following WSJ articles and apply the type concepts from producers and users view of innovation in the case.

High Drug Prices? Pharma Startup Thinks It Has the Right Medicine

Comcast Creates Accelerator for Sports Startups

Spotify Rolls Out Tech Aimed at Helping Podcast Advertisers

Welcome to Walmart. A Robot Will Grab Your Groceries.

Quantum Computing Remains a Challenge for Tech Firms

U.S. Adopts Policies to Ease Shortage of Donated Organs

Answer 1

Welcome to Walmart. A Robot Will Grab Your Groceries.

There are robots roaming the aisles of Walmart and other grocery stores. Monitoring inventory, cleaning up spills and potentially replacing workers. Automation is coming to a supermarket near you.

The robots aren't quite replacing the humans in these supermarkets. Built by Brain Corp., which has also built robotic janitors for Walmart, Martys will be alerting humans to problems that need their attention. They'll move through the Giants and when they notice spills or other trip hazards, they'll alert customers verbally and reach out to employees through the store's public announcement system.

Marty does not replace Walmart associates – instead, he allows members of our team to spend more time engaging with and assisting customers,” says Ashley Flower, spokeswoman.

While Marty seems to have a limited scope, robots manning aisles in either grocery stores or warehouses appear to be closer on the horizon than ever. Amazon, for example, has been holding competitions for years for picker robots, which can grab various items off the shelves.

In theory, robots are supposed to take over the manual and repetitive tasks, like taking inventory, scrubbing floors or spotting spills and messes. This, in turn, frees up humans for higher-level tasks and the time to engage in more customer service.

Some of these potential missteps in implementing robots could be because we are still in version 1.0 of this automation experiment, and there seems to be a mismatch between the customer expectations, robot design, and the tasks being handed over to robots.

The robots being used in the front of store (fulfillment robots in the back of house are a different story) are industrial looking. They are tall, cold and utilitarian in design, and move about in a very, well, robotic manner. Shoppers aren’t used to sharing aisles with an indifferent machine that is beaming a light to scan shelves for missing inventory or just watching the floor (with giant googly eyes) to see if anyone has made a mess. The Marty robot, we should note, doesn’t clean up any mess; it just stops and points them out for humans to deal with.

The way we shop for groceries is undergoing and will continue to undergo big changes in the coming year. Robots will be a part of that, and there will be problems that arise. It will be up to the retailers to figure out the right balance to avoid a robot-driven backlash.