Mapping Strategy

The Key To Innovation? Flipper? ...or His Sister?

Are females better at innovation than males (and/or, perhaps, at transferring, extending and preserving it within social groups)? Do dolphins know something about innovation that humans don't? Is it even fair to compare the two species? Or to call what they're doing 'innovation' (elevating it above the notion of simple behavioral adaptation)?

Interesting questions in the Christmas Day edition of the WSJ...

In the first in-depth analysis of this natural [and innovative] dolphin behavior, published in the online journal PloS One, marine biologist and psychologist Janet Mann at Georgetown University and her colleagues found that the dolphins of Shark Bay use their makeshift hunting masks more often than any other species uses tools, save human beings. "Tool use among this population is striking," says Dr. Mann, who has studied these marine mammals in the wild since 1989. "Spongers use tools more than any nonhuman animal."

... So far, almost all of the dolphin spongers have proved to be female. "The sex difference is really striking," Dr. Mann says. "I don't know of another species where it is so dramatic."

Of the spongers' offspring, only the daughters could be seen still sponging once they reached maturity. The sons tried it but almost always abandoned it...

For Dr. Mann, the discovery that dolphins too are tool users adds an unexpected dimension to the history of innovation, shedding new light on animal intelligence. Clever mimics and fast learners, dolphins have unusually large brains -- four times the size of a chimpanzee's and second only to humans in relative size. Dolphins even show evidence of self-awareness, by being able to recognize themselves in a mirror, some scientists argue.

Not to fuel further gender wars, but this note on the mid-sixties television series, 'Flipper' seemed interesting:

Flipper was played mainly by a female dolphin named Suzy, and occasionally by other females named Patty, Kathy, Scotty and Squirt. Female dolphins were chosen because they are less aggressive than males and their skins (unlike the skins of male dolphins) are usually free from scars and other disfigurations acquired in altercations with other dolphins. The five dolphins performed all of Flipper's thespian chores except the famous tail walk, a trick they were unable to master completely.

The Sun Never Sets... on the Orange County Register

The English language has, arguably speaking, been one of Great Britain's most prolific and resilient exports. Now it has become the basis for a new kind of international trade. That, along with cost pressures and reliable networks made the following virtually inevitable.

An Indian company will take over copy editing duties for some stories published in The Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily, the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.

Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register.

Mindworks' Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides "high-quality editorial and design services to global media firms ... using top-end journalistic and design talent in India."

Substituting 'z's for the new copy editors' instinctual 's's in words like 'institutionalized' won't be enough. As the saying goes: Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language. Perhaps more so with the other former colonies.

It will be interesting to see how they separate pure copy editing from tasks like fact-checking, local context, style and cultural nuance -- a lesson Dell and others learned the hard way, as faraway call center personnel (perfectly nice and perfectly competent) just didn't 'click' with their U.S. callers for a host of subtle reasons.

One demographic irony: in the not-so-distant future, the Indians may lose out to the Mexicans for the OC's outsourcing contract.

Predicting Armageddon

Sadly, In light of this, this seems undervalued [emphasis added].

"If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it," said [Deputy Prime Minister] Shaul Mofaz... "Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme."

One thing notable about this graphic is how little reaction there has been to this news. To my reading (and I've followed this closely the last several years) it marks a significant step up in rhetoric by the top echelons of the Israeli government. The second thing I find remarkable is how the market has trended steadily upwards over the past four months or so.

This is but one of many 'quarterly' prediction markets Intrade has been running on an airstrike on Iran. All of them, obviously (at least so far) have rewarded the skeptics, however most have trended downward as the market close approached. This one isn't doing that.

I'm of two minds on how much stock to put in this market. (Sorry, pun intended).

On the one hand, military missions are, or at least ought to be, closely guarded secrets. And this would be no ordinary military mission. It is truly existential. Sure a few thousand people might be privvy to some kind of knowledge or direct insight into what was going on, but I doubt any of them would risk being shot in order to make a little extra on the side. So, on that basis, this has many of the characteristics of silly/failed markets in things like papal elections and supreme court nominations.

On the other hand, this is not as surprising as a terrorist attack (a dumb thing in which to make highly specific markets IMHO, even though there are many related indicators that might be useful).

Most nations don't want to go to war. (Iran may be an exception, but we're talking here about an attack on them, not by them). Most nations 'do the (diplomatic) dance'. They do relatively rote, predictable things in the lead-up to any conflict. And those things tend to follow patterns that are not random.

They may not be easily predictable, but there is information out there, held by people not constrained by an oath of secrecy, that is meaningful in discerning whether this will go down or not. Sadly, if I were to bet on it (and I don't -- at least not on real money markets) I would have to say that this market is way undervalued.

UPDATE (July 1, 2008): Almost a month after I first made this post, the trend continues (see below). Despite Israeli moves that make such a strike seem more likely (whether for real or for bluff we can't know), the market hasn't had a very high 'beta' (volatility). This despite (or perhaps because of) significantly higher trading volumes in June. A good summary of recent events around this can be found here.

Overt Airstrike on Iran on or before Dec. 31, 2008

Next They'll Ban Thinking...

I find this item in today's WSJ both puzzling and ridiculous
[emphasis added]:

Television's late-night talk-show hosts are set to return to the airwaves next week, but their jokes will pretty much have to write themselves.

After sitting out the first two months of the Hollywood writers' strike, the hosts have agreed, under pressure from their network bosses, to go back to work. But members of the Writers Guild of America -- including the folks who supply the hosts with most of their laugh lines -- are still out on picket lines this week, and no new rounds of negotiations are scheduled...

The guild's strike rules are extremely broad and vague, prohibiting the late-night talk-show hosts, most of whom are guild members, from doing anything that constitutes "writing services." That means the hosts are technically forbidden from writing and performing the traditional opening monologue, plotting out sketches in advance, or creating fictional characters that would perform on the shows...

With all due respect to writers trying to make a living (and I can empathize because, in another sphere of my life, I am one) this is silly beyond comprehension. 

In the brave new Internet world of tens of millions of bloggers toiling for free (some of them reasonably clever, informative and funny) there's little to stop a late-night host from initiating an open contest for the best monologue or character for each night's show.

If no money changes hands, is it the same as crossing the picket line and hiring 'scabs'? What if a third party did the same thing and the host just happened to browse the website? Is finding and printing a volunteer monologue the same as writing? And what is writing, anyway, if not thinking? On what basis do they propose to control that? (Much less justifying their attempts to do so.)

There's nothing like trying to restrict the fundamentally unrestrictable to show how little power the Guild -- and other fluid, information- and creativity-based enterprises -- wield in this new paradigm. The article continues:

anything traditionally written by writers -- David Letterman's "Top Ten List," for example... [would be] unacceptable...

When a rule implies that replacing "anything traditionally done by [fill-in-the-blank*] would be unacceptable", we have approached the very definition of reactionary anti-innovation.

*E.g., as a though exercise, try substituting "typists", "file clerks", "telephone switchboard operators", "blacksmiths" or "horse-and-buggy drivers". Does the following sound Orwellian to anyone else?

Since much of the "writing" on these shows consists of generating ideas for skits and segments, which are loosely scripted and then partially improvised on air, producers say it is unclear how much forethought is technically permissible. [!!]

Then again, maybe someone 'gets it' after all:

Other ideas being batted around by producers that they believe don't violate strike rules include man-on-the street and audience interviews [and] clips from YouTube and other video Web sites...

Better be careful lest the YouTube characters display written words... that would be writing.

Rehearsing Like a Pit Crew

At a talk I gave last year, I put forward the idea that management teams seldom get a chance to rehearse or practice. When they do have the opportunity, very few outside the military are inclined to do so together--systematically war-gaming (even role-playing) comprehensive, integrated team approaches to a range of possible scenarios.

The habit of handling issues as they come up is a bad one... and yet it still has a strange hold in the boardroom where playing out hypothetical situations can seem a waste of time. Despite numerous examples of high-performance teams that spend the majority of their time rehearsing and practicing, the reality is that very few management teams do the same.

In the talk, I drew a contrast between management teams and other kinds of high-performance, high-stakes teams such as military squads, SWAT units, orchestras and other musical groups, sports teams... and Formula One pit crews.

And so it was with that in mind that an article in today's Wall Street Journal caught my eye: "A Hospital Races to Learn Lessons of Ferrari Pit Stop" (subscription required; emphasis added):

Britain's largest children's hospital has revamped its patient handoff techniques by copying the choreographed pit stops of Italy's Formula One Ferrari racing team... The challenge of moving a patient to another unit, or to a new team during a shift change, is an old one... A 2005 study found that nearly 70% of preventable hospital mishaps occurred because of communication problems, and other studies have shown that at least half of such breakdowns occur during handoffs...

In early 2005, [two doctors] traveled to Ferrari's headquarters... played a video of a hospital handover and described the process in pictures. The Ferrari man wasn't impressed. "In fact, he was amazed" at how clumsy and informal the hospital handover process appeared to be...

In that meeting, [the Ferrari man] described how each member of the Ferrari crew is required to do a specific job, in a specific sequence, and usually in silence. By contrast, he noted, the hospital handover was often chaotic. Several conversations between nurses and doctors went on at once. Meanwhile, different members of the team disconnected or reconnected equipment to a patient, but in no particular order.

In a Formula One race, the "lollipop man" with a paddle ushers the car in and signals the driver when it's safe to go. But in the hospital setting, it wasn't always clear who was in charge. Though the anesthesiologist had nominal responsibility to take the lead during a handover, sometimes the surgeon assumed that role -- or no one at all.

The crew at Ferrari trained for the worst contingencies. "If [a driver] comes in five laps early because it's raining and he wants wet-weather tires, [the pit crew is] prepared"... The hospital team dealt with problems as they came up...

Back in London, [the doctors] began to incorporate Ferrari's lessons... After the changes, the average number of technical errors per handover fell 42% and "information handover omissions" fell 49%. It also took slightly less time to execute each handover, though, unlike the Ferrari team, the doctors weren't trying to speed up their process.

Supporting a Good Cause

I'm making a one-time plea to regular (and irregular!) readers of this blog to consider supporting the Dana Farber Cancer Institute's Barr program in innovative cancer research in tribute to my late brother and only sibling and my run at the Boston Marathon next Monday. He would have turned 40 last month. He had no risk factors for leukemia when it struck him last year at age 38.

I've met some of these scientists and they're amazing - doing world-class work on fundamental genetics across the length and breadth of the dreadful disease called cancer. If you or someone you know hasn't been touched by it, chances are high that that won't last. We will all benefit from the knowledge they are creating. Thank you. We return to our regular program.

Cancer Research - Limits and Hopes

I didn’t intend to be away from blogging for this long (three weeks). The day of my last post, I was with my brother at the hospital when he received the definitive version of the news we’d been anticipating:

You don’t have long. Days, probably. Maybe a week or two. Go home. Rest. Pray. Enjoy your family. Finalize your affairs.

He had a few good days there, breaking dietary restrictions he’d endured these past seven months of chemotherapy and immunosuppression, telling stories, living life. Then he began to slip. His wife, their daughter and I sat vigil through hospice care: four days and three long nights. He passed peacefully in his own bed, shortly after sunrise, Friday the 14th of October, surrounded by family: as it should be. Thirty-nine years young: as it should not.

To say that business has taken a backseat this month (and frankly, this year) would be the understatement of all time. But the mental gears grind on. This whole ordeal has caused me to reflect on the many ways in which medical science is amazing... but still limited.

In February, my brother was a healthy guy with a great life just coming into bloom. That changed in less than a week. In early March, he came home from a business trip, feeling a little tired. (Who doesn't?) The next day he felt like he had a cold. (It's March, so what?) The day after that he felt he had the flu but made it in to work anyway to give an important presentation. (Wouldn't we all?.) He told me it went well. Nobody remembers what it was about.

The day after that he felt like it might be a bad case of the flu. He went out to clear his driveway anyway. (How bad could it be?) That night his wife got worried and took him to the emergency room, thinking it might be meningitis. Good thing she did. Within hours he was in chemo. They told us he wouldn’t have lasted another 48 hours without it.

Because of medical science and my sister-in-law’s vigilance, my brother lived seven months after that awful diagnosis of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. A young teacher at my daughter’s school missed that diagnostic window, earlier this year. She died within days.

My brother received the best care available – of that I am absolutely certain. Yet it was not enough. The beast that slew him remains thoroughly untamed. Nevertheless, it’s exciting (albeit a little sad for us), to realize that new treatments are coming down the pipeline all the time. My brother missed a new, promising clinical trial by a little less than a month.

In hopes that it not be so for others, I will be running the Boston Marathon next April in support of the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I’ve met some of these folks. They are amazing: doing cutting edge stuff that (it’s not too presumptuous to say), has and continues to have a fundamental global impact on the understanding and treatment of all kinds of cancers.

All of the proceeds from my run go directly to the research program. (The marathon part is staffed by volunteers.) You can donate on-line here. Please think about giving generously and passing this along to friends and colleagues in your network. As my brother’s case illustrates all too well, no one is immune...

Betting (Against) Global Warming

Apologies for the dearth of posts recently. We've been told that the chances of my brother's leukemia allowing him to make it to October are extremely slim. Those are odds we're happy to take, though the odds window could close altogether this weekend with new test results.

On a happier note, this is interesting:

Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.

Blank Keyboards: Innovation in 'Commodity' Markets

About fifteen years ago, I was hired by a major U.S.-based computer keyboard manufacturer to consult on the prospects for that industry and recommend potential strategies for them in it. Tough assignment. Even then it was obvious that it was a commodity business in the extreme, (over 100 manufacturers globally - most of them in Asia.) Their manufacturing cost  alone was several multiples of the offering price of their up-and-coming competitors.

Nonetheless, our research showed tantalizingly quirky little customer preferences (e.g., around style and feel), everywhere we looked. Everyone had an opinion. After all, keyboards are an incredibly intimate, high-use product for many knowledge workers, not unlike phones in that regard. (To paraphrase David Byrne: same as it ever was... look where my hand was.) Satisfying any one of those desires offered the possibility for a niche play. In aggregate, who knew?

We did not have the benefit at the time of having seen the rise of cell phones as consumer fashion statements. Heck, we didn't even have the benefit of having seen cell phones get popular. My client never made the niche play, preferring instead to slash costs by sending their manufacturing offshore. But I always remembered the niche potential of that study. Thus, I note with interest and amusement this innovation - a computer keyboard with no labels... not unlike a piano. Innovation in plain sight. Cool.

Daniel Guermeur, chief executive of Austin-based Metadot Corp... says he first came up with the idea for a blank keyboard while attending Stanford University in 1989. It was there that the French native noticed others typing much faster than he was. "I was an OK typist but I was slowing down when I looked at the special characters," said Guermeur, 41. "One day I said, 'If I could just improve my typing I could be much more efficient.'" Two years ago, he built a prototype to test his hypothesis that a blank keyboard would force him to become a better typist. After many people asked him where he bought it, he decided to start making them commercially... A popular observation: Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a normal keyboard and either strip off the markings or give it a quick coat of spray paint? "You could do it," Guermeur concedes, "but it's a pain in the butt to do that, a major pain. Also the paint would wear off eventually." It might seem a gimmick, but Guermeur maintains Das Keyboard is an invention rooted in logic. "If you look at a piano, it doesn't have notes on the keys, it's blank," he says. "Writing letters seems like a good help but actually it's not. It's counterintuitive, actually."

UPDATE: This innovation runs in precisely the opposite direction.

Drucker the Great

There is nobody like Peter Drucker - his every word infused with deep wisdom and intelligence. This wide-ranging interview produced by WBUR is a must-listen... despite the interviewers constantly trying to 'spin' his views into a narrow current political context.