Hasta La Gadget!

Wealthy people gain political influence by making large campaign contributions. The opposite is also true. Those who do not fund office-seekers can expect to be disregarded at decision-making time.

This political precept is particularly applicable when it comes to young people and students.

Survey data do not exist to indicate how much money young people contribute to political campaigns. But we do know that far fewer of them make contributions of any size than is the case for older people. In 2012 (the last year for which data are available) 7 percent of people 21 years or younger donated to political campaigns. That percentage for people older than 21 was more than double – 15 percent.

With that the case, it is not surprising that issues of importance to those under 21 will be neglected. Because students do not provide campaign funds, support by state and local governments for something very important to them – higher education – is accorded a low priority. During the recent recession, funds for higher education were drastically cut. Even today, after some recovery has occurred, state spending per student is 18 percent lower than it was at the beginning of the recession.

It might be argued that this decline is a short-term phenomenon associated with the near collapse of the economy. But the fact is that the retreat from public support for higher education predates the economic downturn. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reports that “in 1988, public colleges and universities received 3.2 times as much revenue from state and local government as they did from students. They now receive about 1.2 times as much from states and localities as from students.” (1)

The immediate victims of the decline in government support for higher education are of course young people who want to go to college but who struggle to pay their tuition. Evidence of their difficulty is found in the heavy level of debt that burdens college graduates. Today 60 percent of graduates from public four-year institutions carry an average debt level of $25,500. Student debt totals $1.23 million, more than car loans and credit card debt combined.

What is not included in this picture of increasing financial pressure on young people and their families is the number of students who opt out of higher education altogether in order to avoid indebtedness. One study on this subject estimates that there is a one percent decrease in enrollment for every $400 increase in tuition at public institutions.

All of this reflects students’ lack of political clout. But students are not alone. Any group that is not a major source of campaign funding lacks a powerful voice in politics and policy-making. Office holders need money to win elections, and those who provide big donations expect, and do, receive more favorable treatment than those who do not.

Inequality, and therefore injustice, is inherent in a privately funded political system like ours. Few have the ability to become big-time campaign donors. As a result, few see their interests at the top of the political agenda. Unless we adopt an alternative to private donations as the way to fund campaigns, we are stuck with a political process that is systemically unfair.

There is an alternative and more egalitarian way of paying for political campaigns. If candidates for office, having established their seriousness, were provided with public funding from government tax revenues, they would no longer be beholden to private funders. They could evaluate and act on policies without having to consider whether the positions they adopt might offend a rich donor, and thereby jeopardize their chances for election or reelection.

In such a setting we would have a real democracy. Policy positions would be debated on their merits rather than being considered through the prism of self-interested wealthy individuals.

To avoid first amendment complications, this system would have to be voluntary. It would also have to be generous. There is no point in adopting a structure that does not provide enough money for a publicly funded candidate to run a viable campaign. But with adequate funding, a candidate would be provided with a ready-made argument against his or her opponent: “I represent all the people while my opponent represents his or her funders.”

In a publicly funded democracy, students would be able to make the case for more government investment in education, and do so as equals with those who seek cutbacks. They might not win, but their concerns would at least be given a fair hearing.

In fact, in an unbiased system, students and their families probably would win. In a world of increasing economic competition, raising the level of the educational attainment of young Americans is necessary for the future prosperity of our country. We should be making it easier to secure higher education, rather than as at present, making it more difficult.

With a privately funded political system, this obvious way to strengthen the United States economy gets lost in the rush for campaign donations.

(1) This quotation and all of the data on education in this essay come from Michael Mitchell, Michael Leachman and Kathleen Masterson, “Funding Down, Tuition Up: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Quality and Affordability at Public Colleges,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Updated August 15, 2016.

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The worst place to develop a new business model is from within your existing business model. – Clay Christensen

The top 10 industries that are being disrupted the most by digital are media, telecom, consumer financial services, retail, technology, insurance consumer products, nonprofits, business and professional services, and education. 90% of the executives in these industries profess to having a digital strategy in place, so why are these business leaders worried about being disrupted? The research points to two perfect storm factors:

1. Low barriers to entry into these sectors lead to more agile competition
2. Large legacy business models

Incremental change will not prevent businesses from being disrupted. In fact, transformational change is a necessity for survival, requiring straightening of core business capabilities as well as investments in new business model innovation.

The difference between market takers and market makers is not product innovation, it is business model innovation.

To learn more about business disruption and what companies can do to prevent being disrupted by exploring new business model innovation, Ray Wang, bestselling digital business author and CEO of Constellation Research, and I invited Saul Kaplan, a business model innovation expert to our weekly show DisrupTV.

Saul Kaplan is the founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory and author of The Business Model Innovation Factory. Kaplan started BIF in 2005 with a mission to enable collaborative innovation. The nonprofit is creating a real world laboratory for innovators to explore and test new business models and system level solutions in areas of high social importance including healthcare, education, entrepreneurship, and energy independence. Prior to focusing on business model and system level innovation at the Business Innovation Factory Kaplan served as the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and as the Executive Counselor to the Governor on Economic and Community Development. Kaplan also served as a Senior Strategy Partner in Accenture’s Health & Life-Science practice and worked broadly throughout the pharmaceutical, medical products, and biotechnology industry. Kaplan shares his innovation musings on Twitter (@skap5), his blog (It’s Saul Connected) and as regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

DisrupTV Featuring Saul Kaplan, founder and chief catalyst at Business Innovation Factory 8.19.16 from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

The Path to Sustainable Growth is Business Model Innovation

Business model innovation is key to business survival. So what is business model innovation? “This is all about the difference between incremental versus transformation change. We are living in a century that screams for transformational change. Most of our innovation processes are designed to help us do better than what we are doing today, not to completely change it. Business model innovation is not just about improving existing business models and becoming more competitive – which you must do. To avoid business disruption, you must be able to imagine, prototype and test entirely new business models. It is imperative for leaders today to do research and development for business models the same way they do R&D for products and technology,” said Kaplan.

“Today, we love creating new products and we love developing new technologies but let’s face it, we have more technologies than we humans know how to access and use to solve problems. What we are missing is the ability to explore new business models. We need to start thinking about minimum viable business models. How do we make it safer and easier to manage in the real world,” said Kaplan.

Innovation Junkies Are Not Tweakers

What is an innovation junkie and do you need to hire these types of contributors to avoid being Netflixed (disrupted)? “Innovation junkies are people who are always trying to improve things. They are always thinking about what’s next and always trying to re-imagine and re-engineer to continuously adapt and improve. We have big social challenges that we need to work on and tweaks are not going provide the solutions. We have a nation of tweakers and what we really need are more people and leaders and organizations that can actually get transformational idea off of the drawing board and onto the real world,” said Kaplan.

“Being an innovation junkie is a blessing and a curse. You are always trying to make people’s lives better and that’s a very cool thing. But at the same time, you realize that the job is never done. They minute you accomplish something, you immediately focus on the next adventure,” said Kaplan.

Market Makers Versus Share Takers

Kapan believes that companies are not getting high grades for avoiding disruption. We give variable grades to organization on strengthening and protecting current business models. For proper context, we should consider and understand the distinction between share takers and market makers.

“Share takers think and act like this: here’s the industry we compete in, here’s where we stack up relative to the competition, and here’s how we protect our share and ultimately take shares away from competitors who are ahead. Most of the world is comprised of share takers. This is what we were taught in business schools. But the real interesting area of study, especially as it pertains to disruption is not share takers, but market makers,” said Kaplan.

Market makers do not play by share taker rules. They don’t necessarily view themselves as part of an industry, but rather they focus on creating new industries. Eventually as market makers succeed, they start to behave like share takers and that’s when they are most susceptible to being disrupted. “We need more market makers. We need leaders to figure out how to do both – share taking and market making – and to create parts of their organization that are capable of market making. You cannot tap someone on the shoulder and call them the ‘head of innovation’ and then expect them to do both share taking and market making. Market making requires a different approach and point of view,” said Kaplan.

“Uber, Airbnb and Netflix completely disrupted industries by creating new business models. They didn’t invent anything new technologies, but instead they created new business models that delivered value to their customers in a better way. The incumbent industries and companies had all the parts and capabilities but what got in their way was the straightjacket of today’s business model and they didn’t have an innovation sandbox to do the R&D for new business models,” said Kaplan.

Solution to the Innovator’s Dilemma? Business Model Innovation Sandbox

The new strategic imperative for businesses is to invest in a business model innovation sandbox. “We know the approach to transformational change is different than the approach for incremental change. We also know that organizations have to do both and so organizing around incremental change is within the core of your business. You can create committees and sort ideas and use traditional financial metrics to manage and select different projects. You can predict which ideas add value to today’s business model,” said Kaplan.

However the sandbox is different. “To stand up the exploration of transformational ideas, the traditional approaches will not work. The notion that the CFO is using a spreadsheet that predicts how much revenue and how much margin you’re going to create is out the door. Companies must be willing to experiment with ideas, prototype the work and concept and test the market to see potential value and market need. Companies must give innovation junkies the space to explore. Kaplan uses the sandbox metaphor to illustrate the need for adoption and use of design and experimental mindset. “Most innovation does not require us to invent anything new. We already have the technology. Innovation is about combining the parts in different ways to change the value equation. The reason we don’t do it is because we are locked in the straightjackets of today’s business model. We need a sandbox with all the capabilities there that we can combine in a new and different ways to change how we deliver and capture value from the customers,” said Kaplan. All disruptive companies use a sandbox to redefine new business models with existing technologies, in new combinations, that incumbent companies also had access to.

Kaplan believes that cloud computing is the perfect and most effective solution for companies to develop a business model innovation sandbox. The cloud can be an amazing feeder of capabilities into a sandbox, to enable ongoing business model exploration. The most disruptive companies in the world have leveraged cloud computing technologies to service and connect with customers in a whole new way. Kaplan points to companies that fail to gain momentum because they ignore scaling challenges using traditional management practices – the lifecycles vary, meaning exploration and optimization require different set of skills and capabilities.

CEOs Must Lead Business Model Innovation

Kaplan is starting to see more executives at the highest levels including CEOs, thinking more about new business models. CEOs are leading digital business transformation across all industries. Leaders are more open to invest in the sandbox. Kaplan advises CEOs to delegate the responsibility of managing the core functions to the chief operating officers, so they can spend more time on exploring new business models. Kaplan believes that new business model innovation sandbox is part of the answer to the innovator’s dilemma. Organizations will always choose incremental transformation and strengthening the core existing capabilities versus transformational change. The nuance here is to strengthen the core and at the same time create the condition for exploration.

Business leaders must explore and answer the following: Which business models are feasible? Which models do I want to create separate business from? Which models can lead to separate models or spin offs? Too many leaders answer the change management questions before they settle on the model.

The Minimum Viable Business Model

Kaplan points to entrepreneurs being taught about the minimum viable product and yet no one is discussing the importance of the minimum viable business model (MVBM). They pour all of their efforts and investment dollars that they raise into the product, not answering the simple question of what business model is needed to take the idea or working prototype into the real world with paying customers. Does the business model support the product use cases? Does the product solve the customer’s problem or create incremental value? Worry about scaling and change management and how hard it is for the rest of the organization to do it. Worry about developing a MVBM. Too many leaders get bogged down very early in the scale and change management questions, killing the opportunities that exist to do transformational work.

The power of storytelling is a key ingredient to any innovative process. – Saul Kaplan

Kapaln invites the most amazing innovation junkies (or storytellers) to attend an annual event called the Business Innovation Factory (BIF). Kaplan launched BIF 12 years ago in order to invite and cultivate an innovation community with the purpose of enabling ‘random collisions of unusual suspects’ – or making a ruckus. BIF is a community of innovation junkies (including some of the most influential business executives of the biggest companies in the world) from around the globe. The BIF event is quite intimate – Saul and his team purposefully limit the attendance to approximately 500 innovators in order to ensure meaningful connections are made at a comfortable and highly inspiring setting. Storytellers (32 guest speakers) share intimate stories with no slides and references to companies or products, leaving it to the audience to recognize innovation and meaningful patterns. This is a very intense and inspiring two-day event where very deep connections are made with incredible change agents and explorers. I so much enjoy the BIF event that I volunteered my time to serve as a BIF Board member.

I highly recommend that you follow Saul Kaplan on Twitter at @skap5 to learn more about BIF and business model innovation. And if you are interested, here is my life’s story that I shared at BIF.

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Although I’ve been home from Bali several weeks, I keep dreaming I’m there…the sounds, the smells, images of the people wash over me:

• The beauty of this island full of flowers and smiling faces.
• The gamelan music, an orchestra of percussion instruments, bells and bamboo flutes that mimic the sounds of a Bali morning – insects, birds, roosters, ocean waves.
• The scent of incense lingering from the daily offerings of carefully crafted coconut or palm frond containers full of colorful flowers, offered to appease the lower gods and honor the higher gods.
• The chaos of cars, trucks and motorbikes carrying whole families and goods to market passing within inches on narrow roads – made safe by the gentle toot or toot-toot that signals passing.

Immersed in the Balinese culture for two weeks, I was reminded there are so many good ways to live. We visited my friend Susan, a psychologist, who lives in Bali. There is no work for her among the locals. They are too happy. Traveling with my daughter Lisa, we mused about what keeps the people contented. Lisa wrote about it in her blog: What the Balinese do for Anxiety.

As part of their Hindu Buddhist religion, as Lisa describes, everyone prepares and dedicates offerings to the gods. Every day. In every home, store and village. Before picking us up, our drivers prayed in their family temples for our safe trips. Children learn very young to play in a gamelan orchestra, and to dance the traditional Balinese dances. The dancing is complex, physically difficult, using every body part including head and eyes, in still and flowing patterns to the sound of the gamelan, each movement carrying meaning. The dances act out familiar stories that are sometimes funny, always teaching moral lessons. Characters include the gods of good and mischief and evil. Beautifully carved sacred masks and elaborate costumes are integral to the dances.

We saw several Balinese dance performances, and one night we were treated to another traditional form of theater – a shadow puppet show. Behind the screen, which we were invited to visit, was an entire family supporting the puppeteer. He told a piece of the traditional Ramayana story – an ancient, epic Hindu story. However, he improvised the telling for the audience (our small group of Americans.) He made it modern and relevant to us, including references to surprising things like Pokemon Go!

Steeped in tradition, ritual and shared beliefs, the Balinese are warm, relaxed and friendly. Good humor abounds. They seem untroubled by questions like, “Who am I?” “Where do I belong?” and “How can I feel safe?” Those questions are answered in the context of their daily lives, living with family, belonging to compound and village, doing the daily rituals, sharing in the many large ceremonies and celebrations.

Bali is an open-hearted culture. Thinking of it makes me happy. I hope my Bali dreams continue.

Since coming home, I’ve been asking myself questions: how might we build ritual and tradition more solidly into our daily lives? How open-hearted is the United States? And – what might be an American equivalent to the gentle, respectful horn toots on the highways that keep people calm, safe and cared for?

COACHING QUESTIONS

1. What new perspective have you gained from visiting other cultures (here or in other countries?)
2. What rituals or traditions do you practice in your life?
3. How do they help you feel safe and connect you with others?
4. What rituals/traditions would you like to create in your life?
5. When will you start?
6. How do you contribute to the open-heartedness of your culture?

P.S. I promised to follow up on how well StopJetLag worked. It worked! Stopped jetlag in its tracks. Lisa and I recommend it heartily.

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A Missouri mom’s viral post is tearing down some ridiculous misconceptions about C-section births.

On Aug. 19, Raye Lee, who gave birth to her son Roxas via C-section just five days earlier, posted photos of her post-surgery scar on Facebook. In the caption, she shared a powerful message about the way people tends to view this method of childbirth. 

Lee begins the post with a comment that represents some common reactions to her birth experience: “Oh. A c-section? So you didn’t actually give birth. It must have been nice to take the easy way out like that.”

The new mom then shared her perfectly sarcastic response to those kinds of comments.

“Ah, yes. My emergency c-section was absolutely a matter of convenience,” she wrote. “It was really convenient to be in labor for 38 hours before my baby went into distress and then every contraction was literally STOPPING his HEART.”

“Being told at the beginning that I was displaying great progress and wouldn’t need a cesarean section… and then being told that I was being prepped for major abdominal surgery was not a shock at all,” Lee continued. “It had nothing to do with the fact that I physically couldn’t because I was given no other choice to save the life of my child.”

The mom explains that having a C-section is decidedly “not pleasant” ― as it involves doctors pulling a baby out of a five-inch abdominal incision. She also noted that dealing with “shredded and mangled” core muscles in the aftermath is no picnic either.

“This was the most painful thing I have experienced in my life,” she wrote. “I now belong to a badass tribe of mamas with the scar to prove that I had a baby cut out of me and lived to tell the tale.”

Lee concluded her post with a message to people who suggest that women who gave birth via C-section had an “easy peasy” experience. She wrote:

“When that first nurse asked you to try getting out of bed and the ripping pain of a body cut apart and stitched back together seared through you, you realized the irony of anybody who talks about it being the ‘easy way out.’ So f**k you and f**k how you see what I did.

I am the strongest woman, that I know. Not only for myself, but for my beautiful son… and I would honestly go through this every single day just to make sure I am able to see his smiling face.”

Lee’s post has received over 14,000 likes and counting. In a follow-up comment, she wrote that she never imagined her rant would reach so many people and is grateful to learn that she’s not alone in feeling that way as a C-section mama.

“I’m so happy that people are spreading the awareness that not all mommies can deliver the ‘natural way,’” she added in another post.

Cheers to empowering moms, no matter how they became parents.

H/T Scary Mommy

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Case study: A 48 year-old man, athletic and highly successful in his career, enjoys a day of surfing. While walking back to his car, he collapses and cannot be revived. A heart attack is to blame for his sudden death. Rare? Unfortunately, this is neither rare nor hypothetical as the world lost a good man recently and my heart goes out to his young family.

How can this happen? Although I did not know this man, I imagine he saw doctors and had checkups. Perhaps he even had a stress test along the way. There is a disconnect in the identification of early heart disease that is not true of some other important ailments. For example, consider the fact that when you turn 50 you are asked to have a colonoscopy to look directly at the colon for masses. Women are asked to have a mammogram to look directly at the breast for growths. But heart artery blockages, the number 1 cause of sudden death over age 30, are still not looked at directly. The standard recommendations at a physical exam include measuring blood pressure and cholesterol and maybe performing an ECG, all of which are indirect and inadequate examinations of the status of the coronary arteries.

I know there is a better approach, the coronary artery calcium scan (CACS). It is endorsed by the Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication (SHAPE), the American College of Cardiology, and hundreds of peer reviewed research studies. The American College of Cardiology has given a high endorsement (IIA) to the use of CACS in persons with known risk factors for silent coronary disease.

The “mammogram” of the heart, as the CACS is known, is low-cost ($80 in my community) and offers a direct examination of the heart arteries. There is no contrast or IV injection and the test takes about 1 minute.

Who should not have a CACS?

If someone already knows they have coronary artery disease such as a previous cardiac catheterization showing blockage, a previous heart stent, or a previous heart bypass surgery, there would be no need for a CACS. People who know that they have blockage in other parts of the body, like an artery of the brain called the carotid artery or the arteries of the leg, remain debatable candidates for the CACS.

What about risks of the CACS? 

Other than a small out of pocket cost (insurance covered in a few states like Texas), other concerns are the possibility of creating undue stress, missing soft plaque without calcium, and the dose of radiation. For decades, cardiologists have relied on exercise nuclear testing using treadmill examinations. One measure of the dose of radiation is called a milliSievert or mSv. An exercise test with Cardiolite may expose a patient to 12 to 15 mSv of radiation. By comparison, a cardiac catheterization done in an efficient manner may expose a patient to about 10 mSv of radiation. In centers with the most advanced multislice scanners, the imaging has gotten so fast that the radiation dose of a CACS is less than1 mSv and on par with a mammogram.

Furthermore, a new research study has demonstrated that a CACS over 400 adds independent prognostic information even over the most advanced nuclear stress test.

Why do a CACS?

A CACS may provide life-changing information. For example, the European Society of Cardiology said that “there is overwhelming evidence that coronary calcification represents a strong marker of risk for future cardiovascular events in asymptomatic individuals and have prognostic power above and beyond traditional risk factors.” The same position statement indicated that in asymptomatic individuals a calcium score of zero was associated with a very low risk of heart events over the next 3 to 5 years (less than 1 percent per year). Individuals with a coronary calcium score greater than 1000 have an eleven-fold increase in risk of major events even if they are without symptoms. This is a huge difference.

No one should be surprised by heart disease. A CACS at age 40 or 45 can identify if there is a burden of silent calcified atherosclerotic plaque. If silent heart disease is found, a range of measures from plant based reversal diets, exercise, stress management, supplements, and monitoring can be implemented. In my clinic, I monitor patients with abnormal CACS and work on reversing their plaque with all of these strategies. Yes, $80 can save a life (perhaps $150 in your community). Do not wait. Call your local hospitals to see if it is offered, find out the cost, get a Rx from your health care provider, and schedule a CACS today. Finding out your score can help you ride the waves knowing the true status of your heart health.

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