March 2014

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 mar 2014

Access to timely and effective healthcare in developing countries, particularly in the remote and underpriviledged areas, is challenging with prevalence of smuggled and counterfeit drugs, the inefficient supply chains, insufficient resources and poor economic conditions. A panel of experts suggest ways to enhance global healthcare delivery: David Jamieson (Crown Agents, USA) - Multi-sector partnerships bring together unique qualities and boost project's capacities. Tamsin Chislett (Living Goods, Uganda) - Make logistics technology easy to use for consumers and healthcare workers. Andreas Seiter (World Bank, USA) - Create new drug payment systems that ensure against corruption. Simon Berry (ColaLife, Zambia) - Partnerships with governments should run down to the community level. Rose Reis (Center for Health Market Innovations, USA) - Emerging pharmacy chains lead to better, cheaper drugs; Don't overlook informal healthcare providers. Mandy Sugrue (mHealth Alliance, USA) - Work at the community level. George Jagoe (Medicines for Malaria Venture, Switzerland) - New technologies should be adapted to fit broader needs. Read on...

the guardian: Healthcare logistics - delivering medicines to where they're needed most
Author: Anna Scott

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 mar 2014

Although large and established organizations have best talent and process execution abilities but they are less inclined to incorporate startup culture as they try to maintain status quo, stability, size and reduced appetite for risk taking. Justin Ferrell of Stanford d.School suggests the following for individuals that have expertise, restlessness and irrationality to catalyze startup culture in established organizations - Encourage the uncomfortable, in yourself and in others; Bypass authority early; Get horizontal; Talk to each other (a lot); Lead from the bottom. He also cites the central thesis of the paper 'How do committees invent?' by computer programmer Melvin Conway, which is often termed as Conway's Law - "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." - to enforce the value of communication in organizational change and how, what and with whom this communication happens. Read on...

The Wall Street Journal: Justin Ferrell - Bringing Startup Culture to an Established Company
Author: Justin Ferrell

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 mar 2014

Different stages of the startup and new venture formation have different needs and requirements. Some startups, due to the very nature of their formation and development have sufficient resources and expertise to grow and succeed independently. But others may not have what all is required to build a successful business. For this incubators and accelerators play an important and critical role within the entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem to fund, support and mentor these fledgling ventures. Incubators and accelerators have different approaches and dynamics to lead startups towards their common goal of achieving success during initial stages. According to Phil Morle, founder and CEO of an Australian incubator - incubators get things started from scratch and build business as a solution to a problem; acts as co-founders and generate ideas and find problems internally and through their networks; it's outsourced innovation. While for accelerators the core idea is investment and investing capital in a good idea in return for a small amount of equity, says Niki Scevak, founder of an Australian accelerator. According to him, accelerators - are geared for competition; they aim to drive faster growth in innovative companies within a stipulated time frame; accelerators are a platform that provide resources and assistance to founders and entrepreneurial teams who themselve drive their concepts and ideas, build and develop them and make decisions. Read on...

Business Spectator: Incubators vs Accelerators: Choosing the right start-up path
Author: John Treadgold

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 mar 2014

Professor Edgar Schein of MIT defines culture in his book 'Organizational Culture and Leadership', as pattern of basic assumptions and beliefs, the learned behaviors, shared values and norms that define the work in an organization. Culture plays an important role in building and developing relationship of organization with its stakeholders. In large organizations culture generally gets evolved and established over a period of time through multiple iterations. But in case of smaller entrepreneurial companies with fast paced environment, culture can have critical impact on the success or failure of the venture during its formative stages. Article explains with examples the importance of culture in new companies and how it can be consciously and deliberately created by entrepreneurial teams. According to the author, culture can be intentionally designed but it has to be 'lived', thus helping the company to overcome ups and downs of the start-up environment. Moreover it is also a strategic resource similar to technology, brand or people that can be central to the success of the company. Read on...

Forbes: Building Culture In A Tech Start-Up
Author: Candida Brush

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 mar 2014

Social media, search terms, blogs, online surveys etc are becoming new methods for researchers to analyze data and get insights into various aspects of human behavior. According to James Pennebaker, President of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), 'these technology tools provide capability to capture people's thinking, communication patterns, health, beliefs, prejudices, group behaviors etc'. Article provides examples of studies conducted through various web-based media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google etc that have considerable impact on the understanding of personality and social psychology. Analysis of 400,000 Facebook posts by scientists points out the differences in the communication pattern of parents while interacting with their children versus their friends and how they deal with their adult vs teen children. Scientists analyzed 36,000 tweets during the three months leading up to the births and some 40,000 tweets for three months after the births to detect changes in mood and behavior, and found 376 new mothers who might be at risk of postpartum depression. Scientists J. B. Michel and Erez Aiden of Harvard University, used millions of books digitized by Google to build a scientific tool to measure trends in our shared culture, history, and language going back hundreds of years. Roxane Cohen Silver of University of California at Irvine has been using online surveys to study how people cope with trauma in the aftermath of disaster. She is now planning a project with Baruch Fischhoff of Carnegie Mellon University, to use mobile app for the study of communities at-risk due to severe weather events. Read on...

PsychCentral: Using Social Media as New Tool to Explain Human Behavior
Author: Rick Nauert

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 12 mar 2014

Wearable devices have the potential to become a part of human lifestyle, but for their sustained use they should be able to induce long-term healthy behavioral changes in users. According to Michael A. M. Davies of MIT, companies developing wearables have to understand the importance of three factors of behavioral science - habit formation, social motivation and goal reinforcements - to overcome the challenge of sustained engagement and provide long-term health benefits. Research by Endeavor Partners found that 1/10th of the US comsumers above the age 18 owns a modern activity tracker but half of them no longer use it. A large percentage of wearable devices have fatal user experience flaws and fail to fulfil one or more of the nine baseline criteria of product design (selectability, design, out-of-box experience, fit/comfort, quality, user experience, integration ability, lifestyle compatibility and overall utility). For successful and effective wearable devices and related services, companies have to incorporate the insights provided by the science of behavior change. Read on...

VentureBeat: How to make wearables stick: Use them to change human behavior
Author: Michael A. M. Davies

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 mar 2014

Marketers are always trying to find innovative ways to connect and build relationships with the consumers. Experiential marketing does the same and assists brands and companies, by creating events in public setting like malls, stations, conferences etc and even online, to directly interact with their prospective customers through experience with products and services. The relationship building can be a two way process and companies can utilize experiential marketing to gain customer information and data in return. The article explores this value exchange by utilizing experiential and marketing research to build and retain customers and cites various examples of companies that are doing it right. Experiential marketing can provide opportunities for data capture through use of latest technologies and attractive deals in return for interaction with the brands. Read on...

CREAM: How experiential will become a new form of market research
Author: Will Northover

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 05 mar 2014

Influence is an important aspect of human personality that provides the ability to affect and attract others. Psychologist Herbert Kelman of Harvard University wrote about 'social influence' and considered 'compliance' (agreement with others in public, disagreement in private), indentification (influence due to likeness and respect for a specific personality) and internalization (agreement in both public and private) as three processes of attitude change. In the article John Hagel III explores the changing nature of influence in the dynamic world of today and recommends ways to achieve more influence. According to him the conventional approach to build influence included - by providing answers; by demonstrating strength; by being a hub of a network of like minded people that further persuaded others through the answers that were provided. But in the transient world of today the answers lose value rapidly as the new and better ways and methods displace and make the older ones obsolete. Therefore he suggests the new way of building and retaining influence by asking questions. Questions have the ability to invite participation and provide the opportunity to co-create and co-develop answers and solutions by sharing ideas and insights. But the challenge is to frame the right and effective questions to get valuable insights. He suggests - ask broad questions; questions where stakes are high; questions with depth that require consistent effort over extended period of time; questions that provide step by step answers that encourages continued participation. Asking questions demonstrates individual's vulnerability that helps in building trust-based relationships in the initial stages. Moreover it enhances the ability to access tacit knowledge of the participants. The new approach also requires mobilization of a new kind of network, more mesh-like, connecting every participant with each other, thus providing unexpected and evolving ways to co-explore. This assists in building creation spaces with smaller teams connected with each other and getting together when required. To demonstrate the influence in action, John Hagel provides the example of Santa Fe Institute and its formation by a group of scientists led by George Cowan, and participants - David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, and Peter A. Carruthers. They all represented different fields but all came together to seek answers to the questions about potential common themes regarding complex adaptive systems that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Read on...

Edge Perspectives: The Big Shift in Influence
Author: John Hagel III

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 05 mar 2014

Joseph Shumpeter defined 'economic innovation' as - bringing a new product, a better or new process or method of production, developing a new market, exploring a new source of raw material or creating a new and better form of organization of industry. In the article Michael Scholl proposes 'commercial innovation' as an approach to bring new products and services into the market by identifying existing customer needs and willingness to pay (WTP) in areas where available products and services don't fulfil customer needs. Thus expanding the existing market with speed and market-oriented focus. He argues that commercial innovation should not be confused with 'product re-launch', that companies often use to bring existing products into market with different name and market strategies to enhance product life-cycles. He provides recommendations to implement commercial innovation - keep the idea secret as it may affect organization; designate separate task force to work on this initiative; shift R&D budget to this task force; be quick to implement and act on the plan. Read on...

Real Business: The key advantages of commercial innovation
Author: Michael Scholl