On a recent trip to an organic farm in the Southern California highlands, I came across these two women talking under an 1100 year old live oak tree.  Though thirty years separated them and their life histories had little in common, the image captured shows them at ease in their conversation.  The shared moment juxtaposed with the ancient tree reminded me of the significant and powerful role images play in teaching.  In a recent blog post in Edutopia on analyzing complex, non-verbal texts, Professor Todd Finley explores some of the methods that exist for analyzing non-verbal texts such as images, sounds, diagrams and human gestures.  One suggestion was to identify the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual/philosophical reactions of the observer.  Take a look at the article to get the full details.  By confining ourselves to the written and spoken word, we may be overlooking the importance of nuances that only images can impart and especially when we are working across cultural and lingual differences.  CCPence

Source: Adapted from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/CCSS-analyzing-complex-nonverbal-texts-todd-finley

Patient satisfaction surveys haven’t changed much since the last century.  Paper and pencil is still the most common way to get the job done. Research shows a positive correlation with both revenue and patient satisfaction for those who do conduct these surveys. Few medical practices today, however, are conducting these surveys. Doctors complain that the typical paper-based survey offerings are expensive and slow. The expense limits the frequency of survey projects to once a year.  The time from survey start to final report can be several months, thus resulting in conclusions based on outdated data.

Innovation in the form of Cloud computing and tablet technologies is disrupting the way satisfaction data is collected and analyzed.  Additionally, new government regulations now financially penalize hospitals with low performance ratings.  The overall calculation includes patient satisfaction scores which are worth 30% (Meaningful Stage 2) of the total. With this new focus on satisfaction scores, evaluation and monitoring systems are of significant importance to healthcare service provider evaluations.

Caretotell, a health technology startup, has an innovative solution for service providers.  As a small and agile company, it ignored traditional business offers and models and built a new survey platform that leverages the capabilities of tablets such as the iPad. Using bootstrap funding only, marketing is constrained, slowing the process of building up product awareness. Their innovative ideas may bring attention, but ideas are also easily copied. Industry incumbents such as Press Ganey are large entities with massive resources and strong relationships with healthcare providers. They easily could find the means and know-how to copy Caretotell’s new technical solution. It is not clear that they could copy the low cost revenue model, however, without cannibalizing their current high margin offerings. This is the innovator’s dilemma.

Source:  Adapted from https://www.caretotell.com; https://twitter.com/caretotell; http://www.linkedin.com/company/caretotell-llc; http://www.pressganey.com/; https://www.caretotell.com/blog/real-time-patient-satisfaction-surveys/; http://bphc.hrsa.gov/policiesregulations/performancemeasures/patientsurvey/satisfactionsurvey.html

Any of the completed work from these activities can be converted to face-to-face discussion.   Try adapting the content to your specific course format.  Using your classroom teams in their online Wiki sites, have students conduct the following studies:

1. Innovation disruption, as presented in the short case on Caretotell this month, often is a strategy alternative chosen by start-up ventures.  Find another example of a start-up that used disruptive innovation to capture market share.  Explore the company’s timeline and the decisions made until the breakeven point.  Did the company take an exit strategy before that time?  Explain their decision in terms of their strategic plan.
2. Review the article on Yahoo in this month’s new articles.  Find another example of a company that used a similar acquisition strategy.   What was the outcome of this strategy for acquiring rapid marketplace dominance?  Did the company maintain a sustainable margin over time?  Explain your conclusions.

On your class discussion forum:

1. Is the Kickstarter model for bringing together innovative offers with funding sources a viable model?  Does this model work for all types of innovations?  Explain your conclusions.

Deborah Perry Piscione discusses her life and latest book with TechCrunch journalist, Andrew Keen.  Piscione is an author, philanthropist, publisher and commentator who moved to Silicon Valley with her family in 2006 and became fascinated with the Valley culture for success.  In addition to starting Alley to the Valley that brings together influential women for networking opportunities, she is active in the deal-making community.  In this video clip, she discusses aspects of the uniqueness of Silicon Valley that may be difficult to copy elsewhere.  One of these is the openness of life in and outside of the workplace.  People move easily from one activity to another.  She believes that the closest region in the world to the Silicon Valley is in Israel.  Technology, personal attributes such as tenaciousness, the culture of ideas and the ability to sell them, go beyond just money and power.  The video clip provides an interesting selection of ideas that could provoke good conversation.

Source:  Adapted from http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/02/keen-on-exposed-the-real-secrets-of-silicon-valley-tctv/; http://www.secretsofsiliconvalleybook.com/

The idea for Kickstarter originated in 2002 and by 2009 it became an Internet success, according to co-founder, Yancey Strickler, in this interview with Engadget Editor, Myriam Joire. Using crowd social media, the online venture brings together funders with projects through an online system of pledges.  Strickler discusses the evolution of the company that started with an idea, but had no useful talent providers.  After bringing together the right team of technical enablers, the company now has facilitated over $.5B in investments in new projects over the past four years.  An average project gets $5000 on the Kickstarter platform. Their ambition is to change how the world chooses and finances entrepreneurial activities through the alignment of good experiences for backers and creators.  One of the ideas funded is Pebble, a smartwatch that received over $10M from 68,929 backers.

Source: Adapted from http://www.viddler.com/v/431b8d85

Readability is a free app that works across IOS, Android, and Kindle platforms.  Readers choose specific articles to read in real time or at a later date.  The app cleans up the article so that only it is presented.  Personalizing options exist for changing reading skins and type size.  Customized versions exist for publishers to embed into online content that facilitate easy consumption of articles.  A quick link at http://www.readability.com/shorten lets the user try out the functionality of the service without downloading the app.

Source:  Adapted from http://www.readability.com/

The free Pocket app works across many platforms, permitting the reader to save articles, videos, web pages and images for consumption at a later time.  Integrated into over 300 apps, the versatile service is easy to use.  Links can be added via email in addition to directly from the Internet.  One of the interesting pitches for publishers is that this offer extends the life of content beyond the original publication date and across all user platforms.

Source:  Adapted from http://getpocket.com/

Authors Lafley and Martin bring their combined academic and business experience to bear in developing their recipe for building successful strategy.  Lafley is the former Chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble.  Martin is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.  With over twenty years of working together, the two authors conclude that strategy is “an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.”  At the core of any successful strategy is the commitment to win in the marketplace.  Their framework lays out five choice sets that need to be addressed when building strategy: (1) a winning aspiration, (2) where to play, (3) how to win, (4) core capabilities, and (5) management systems.  Tied with the commitment to win is the willingness to push past the risks associated with any chosen strategy.  These include misevaluation of the customer and the relationship between customer-company.  The authors suggest that their framework must be followed in its entirety and in the end will shorten the odds, but does not guarantee success.  Strategy is an iterative process that must be reviewed continually.

Source: Adapted from Lafley, A. G., & Martin, R. L. (2013).  Playing to win:  How strategy really works. Boston, MA:  Harvard Business Review Press.

http://hbr.org/books/playing-to-win

Author Brad Feld, is a serial entrepreneur who now applies his knowledge to building successful, entrepreneurial cities.  Using his experience with the city of Boulder, CO, Feld develops a model for building entrepreneurial ecosystems that can be transferred to any city that has the resources necessary for successful venturing. After a brief review of generally accepted theories that explain successful start-up clusters (external/agglomeration economies, network effects, the creative class), the author develops another framework (“The Boulder Thesis”) that he believes exemplifies the necessary components supporting a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.  At the heart of this framework are four components: (1) entrepreneurs who lead the startup community, (2) long-term commitment by leaders, (3) inclusiveness of all participants, and (4) ongoing activity that engages the entire entrepreneurial community.  The rest of the book elaborates on how these four elements of the framework can be nurtured by any region desiring to grow through entrepreneurial venturing.

Source: Adapted from Feld, Brad (2012).  Startup communities:  Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your city.  Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley & Sons Inc.; http://www.startuprev.com/books-communities/

With the recent acquisition of the news app company, Summly, Yahoo continues its current trend to purchase innovative offers rather than design its own.  Over the course of the last year, it acquired six start-up companies:  Snip.It, OnTheAir, Jybe, Stamped, Alike, and Propeld.  These companies add to Yahoo’s strategy to develop its mobile social marketing offers.  As a latecomer to this marketplace, the acquisition strategy is expected to permit it to leap rapidly past its rivals and to contribute significantly to its bottom line through mobile market revenue.

CEO, Marissa Mayer, joined Yahoo in July 2012 directly from Google where she began in 1999 as employee number 20 and its first female engineer.  With an extensive background in rolling out search media offers, Mayer is expected to leverage her experience to return Yahoo to its glory days.

Source: Adapted from http://www.nasdaq.com/article/yahoo-acquires-summly-app-analyst-blog-cm231370#.UVow-RyP3To;  http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/in-the-news.aspx