Innovation Blog

How To Get Your Customers To Innovate For You:  Building a Customer Innovation Center

By Shlomo Maital

     If you happen to be in St. Paul, Minnesota, and survive the freezing weather and deep snow, drop in to  3M’s “World of Innovation” Center.  You will find 40 “technology platforms” that 3M believes can be combined and applied to meet market needs. 

        3M wants its customers to come and see these platforms and then come up with ideas — like using dental technology to improve car parts.  Visteon, an automotive supplier and customer of 3M, has worked with 3M (following a visit to the Innovation Center) to develop navigation displays, Thinsulate material (to reduce noise) and optical films that hide elements of the dashboard until the driver asks for them to be displayed.   These technologies appear in a new concept car developed jointly by 3M and Visteon.

       According to Mary Tripsas, associate professor at Harvard Business School, more and more  companies are building centers where customers are invited for face-to-face innovation sessions.  [1]    3M has set up such centers in Japan, Brazil, Germany, India and China.  Its 23^rd such center opened this month in Dubai!

      Usually, notes Tripsas, such centers are located near the company’s own research centers.  They help bring marketplace customer-driven ideas to their innovation efforts.

       Dr. John Horn, VP R&D at 3M’s transportation and industrial business, notes the Centers are not just about harvesting ideas, they also cement long-term relationships with customers.  He notes that at the Centers, no products are shown.   ”It would constrain their thinking,” he notes.  He says that the focus is not to find out what customers need, but rather what they are trying to accomplish.   Typically a visiting customer team presents an open-ended view of their business to 3M experts, who pepper them with questions. 

        These centers remind me of EMC² ’s Executive Marketing Center, where customers similarly present their business.  Only after deep listening does EMC suggest a solution — and usually, a sale results. 

        Hersey, the chocolate company, has a similar center. There they try different merchandising  arrangements, to see which work best.  Pitney Bowes too has one.  I once visited  a model store at Staples headquarters, used to test new  store layout. 

   HBS Professor Ranjay Gulati’s new book Reorganize for Resilience discusses customer innovation centers, as part of his study of how companies can be more customer-centric.[2]

[2]  Gulati, Ranjay. Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization. Harvard Business School Press, 2010.

Innovation Blog

Why is Santa Claus Always Dressed in Red?

By Shlomo Maital

    Today, Dec. 25, Christians all over the world celebrate Christmas.  It’s a perfect day to ask the enormously important question:

     Why is Santa Claus always dressed in red, with white trimming?

     The answer is simple:  Coca Cola!

BBC’s news magazine reports that:

Coca-Cola’s involvement kicks in in the early 1930s when Swedish artist Haddon Sundblom started drawing ads for Coke featuring a fat Santa in a red coat trimmed with fur and secured with a large belt.  His drawings were used in the company’s festive advertisements for the next 30 years, well and truly cementing the image.   

    According to Cass Business School (London) Professor Vincent Mitchell,  Coca Cola achieved several goals with this clever marketing campaign.  First, to get people to drink Coke in the winter (it was previously regarded solely as a summer drink). Second, to make the image of Coca Cola younger and attract young people to drink it.   Third, to associate Coke with the happy fun-loving image depicting enjoyment and fun — a branding tactic that continues consistently to this day. 

    Prior to Coke’s ads, Santa Claus appeared in a variety of colors — red, green, brown, blue, white….   After the ads, the ‘authentic’ Santa dressed solely in red with white trim. 

    Coke changed the nature of Christmas, not just the image of Santa.  Prior to the Coke ads, Santa had a rather stern aspect, admonishing children that those who failed to be good would not get presents.  The Coke ads stressed the presents-without-strings aspect of Santa, making Santa obese, jolly, good-natured and the farthest thing possible from a moral figure.

Innovation Blog

Want to be a Top CEO?  Don’t Get an M.B.A.!

By Shlomo Maital

 Steve Jobs: NO MBA!

Harvard Business Review’s latest issue offers a list of the top 50 CEO’s in the world.  Each listing includes information on whether the CEO has an MBA or not. [1] 

    The study examined which CEOs of large public companies performed best over their entire time in office—or,  for those still in the job, up until September 30, 2009.  Data were collected on close to 2,000 CEOs worldwide.

   The results are startling.

   Of the world’s top 10 CEO’s,  half do NOT have an MBA, incuding Steve Jobs (#1 – Apple), Eric Schmidt (#9 – Google), Jeff Bezos (#7 – Amazon),  Yun Jong-Yong (#2 – Samsung), and Alexey Miller (#3 – Gazprom).

   And of the world’s top 50 CEO’s,   only 14 do have an MBA — or 28 per cent!  Some 72 percent do NOT have an MBA.

    Why? Isn’t the MBA degree, at vaunted schools like Harvard, MIT, INSEAD, Northwestern, London Business School, supposed to train managers for leadership roles?  Why are many MBA programs worldwide facing shrinking enrollment?   I know a major business leader who refused to hire MBA’s, for years, on the grounds the MBA did real damage.

     There are many possible hypotheses.  I have taught in MBA programs on three continents.  My own explanation is simple.  MBA programs all over the world are very similar.  They provide packaged solutions to business issues and encourage conservative here-is-how-it-is-done learning.   In one of my courses, I once asked my students if they would be upset if I criticized what they had been taught in a finance course (NPV, “net present value” – a major destroyer of human brain cells).   The students unanimously welcomed it…but my colleagues did not.  It just is not done. 

    Want to make the top 50 list?  Lead a great company?   Work for small companies, do a wide variety of functions,  take risks, learn incessantly — and if you must do an MBA program, pick one that is innovative and challenges conventional wisdom. 

 Hope for Innovators: You Do Not Need a Brain To be Inventive

The Case of the Einstein Octopus

By Shlomo Maital 

   A report on the BBC today captured headlines all over the world:

  An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists.  Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.  Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

   Tool use was once thought to be an exclusively human skill, but this behavior has now been observed in a growing list of primates, mammals and birds.   They do things which, normally, you’d only expect vertebrates to do.

 Vertebrates?   Do all vertebrates come up with inventive ways to adapt to their surroundings, breaking the rules and tradition???   Alas, all too few.   Witness Copenhagen — perhaps if the octopuses were gathering in Denmark, rather than world leaders, we might have a chance of reducing atmospheric carbon to survivable levels of 350 ppm, compared with 390 ppm at present.  But, regrettably, our leaders have two arms, rather than eight, and human brains (an hypothesis still to be proved) rather than those of octopuses.

   Apparently, the veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) used to use empty clam shells for their homes.    With a growing scarcity of clam shells, the clever octopuses (whose brains are very very tiny) have adapted to using half coconut shells discarded by humans.  The process through which this happened was probably fairly rapid, but nonetheless evolutionary.  These octopuses are tasty morsels for fish.  Only those smart enough to hide under coconut shells survive to reproduce, as Darwin explained.

Dr Mark Norman, head of science at Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and one of the authors of the paper, said: “It is amazing watching them excavate one of these shells. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out.”

After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell – or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other – before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.

    If only humans could speak ‘octupese’ (the language of octupuses).  We could ask them, how can we solve the problem of growing acidity of the oceans, due to water absorbing concentrations of atmospheric carbon which become carbonic acid?  

    Count on them to have better answers than Obama, Brown, Ban Ki Moon or Sarkozy.

 Innovation Blog

How Ada Yonath Deciphered the Ribosome and Won the Nobel Prize:  Lessons for Innovators

By Shlomo Maital

     Prof. Ada Yonath,  a scientist at Israel’s Weizman Institute, in Rehovoth, is the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.  She joins Madame Curie, Curie’s daughter, and Dorothy Hodgkins.

   Yonath deciphered the structure of the ribosome.   How? And why does it matter?  What can innovators learn from her discovery? 

    Here is an edited transcript of the short interview that appears on the Nobel Prize website, following the phone call that told her she had won the prize.

—————-

Interviewer:  Your prize was awarded for your work in discovering the crystalline structure of the ribosome.  What is a ribosome? What did you discover?

Yonath:   The ribosome is a machine [inside the human cell].  It gets instructions from the genetic code, and operates chemically in order to produce its product:  Proteins.  During their work, ribosomes work very fast, very well, very accurately.   During their work, they have to “proofread” the results (check that the protein they produced is precisely right), and to protect the protein until it  is capable of protecting itself.  Think about a baby kangaroo,  in its mother’s pouch for weeks before it emerges into the world. Likewise, the protein made by the ribosome first goes into a “pocket”,  or tunnel, and only then into the world.   Like the baby kangaroo, the newly born protein progresses, until it emerges from its ‘pouch’.

Interviewer:  You are the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.  Your predecessors were: Marie Curie; her daughter;  Dorothy Hodgkins; and now you.   What gave you the courage to try?

Yonath:   A serious bicycle accident.    I had a brain concussion, a serious one.   I had some free time while recovering and I read a lot.  I read a study that showed that polar bears’ cells pack their ribosomes  regularly, periodically, on the membranes of the cells, when they hibernate for the winter. I asked myself, why do they do this? 

     The logical explanation:  At the end of the winter, when they awake, bears need lots of active ribosomes.    By packing them closely, the ribosomes are preserved and are ready to function when the bears wake up in Spring from hibernating.  This is the way they preserve active ribosomes, by this close packing.   I read this and I thought, maybe this is the way to for solve the structure of the ribosome.     This gave me the idea that ribosomes can be packed in an orderly way, so that one can determine their structure [by X-ray crystallography].  This was not believed at that time.   I used ribosomes from very robust bacteria, ones that survived the harsh conditions of the Dead Sea, under very active conditions, and I took advantage of research done before me at the Weizman Institute on how to preserve their activity, and their integrity, while they crystallize.   [The method Yonath developed is known as cryo bio-crystallography.  It is now the standard method used by structural biologists]. 

   When people ask me, how did I discover the structure of ribosomes, I say, because of a brain concussion, a blow to the head.  This is technically true — but it is not the whole story. 

Interviewer: Did you ever doubt you would succeed?

Yonath:   I doubted all the time,  the research was extremely difficult.    The insight I had with the Bears was just one small step.  Afterwards, there were lots of problems. At one point I described what I am trying to do in this way:  we are climbing mountains in order to reach the summit; these mountains are like Everest, very  difficult to climb; when you get to the top,  you find there is another mountain behind it to be climbed afterward, an even higher one… and so on.

 ———————————

 Yonath’s research will likely have world-changing impact.  According to Wikipedia:

       Yonath elucidated the modes of action of over twenty different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, illuminated mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, deciphered the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness, thus paving the way for structure-based drug design (i.e. designing molecules that heal, rather than use trial-and-error on thousands of compounds, hoping to find one that works). 

       Yonath’s life story holds the key to understanding her dogged persistence and fiercely-independent thinking, in the face of huge skepticism (in a male-dominated profession). She was born in the Geula neighborhood in Jerusalem, then and now a slum, living in a tiny apartment.  Yonath’s parents were extremely poor; her father, a rabbi, ran a failing grocery store. Her parents sent her to elementary school in a better neighborhood to make sure she had a good education.  Later she went to a top (and expensive) high school, and gave math lessons to help pay the tuition.

    In her career:    ”I was the village fool for many years,” she told the Jerusalem Post. “It didn’t bother me at all. I had doubts of course. At first, I wasn’t sure that it would work. I had a lot of luck. For quite a while, I didn’t receive a higher academic status. I didn’t feel any discrimination against me as a woman scientist, but I hadn’t produced a lot of science journal articles. The Weizmann Institute showed me respect and didn’t require many administrative tasks, so I was quite independent. I did what I wanted.”

    The result was a Nobel Prize and a breakthrough discovery that one day will save many many lives. 

   ====================================================

       POSTSCRIPT:  Break the Rules!

    Innovation is (intelligently) breaking the rules, this Blog has noted countless times.  In her Nobel speech on behalf of  all the participants (she was chosen to speak for them all) at the gala Nobel banquet, before 1,300 participants,  Ada Yonath broke the rules: the strictest one.  Do not NOT use your talk to say ‘thank you’, the Nobel organizers cautioned, wisely seeking to avoid the inane boring speeches actors make at, for instance, the Oscar ceremonies.  

   “I’m known as someone who carries out orders,” she said, meaning the precise opposite.  “I want to warmly thank my loyal driver, Nisse.” (The crowd laughed).  “Without him I would be lost in Stockholm, a wonderful (though dark) city.  As a result, without Nisse, I would have missed most of the exciting events during this magical week.”  (Loud applause).”   Does this suggest a key innovation principle:  Share the glory with those who help you, including the lowliest!  According to her colleagues and students at the Weizman Institute — Yonath does.

     She continued: “ …Isaac Bashevis Singer [who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978] said in his Nobel speech, ‘people ask me why I write in a dead language, Yiddish’.  Well,  in my case too, people used the word ‘dead’ –   when I spoke of my plans to determine the structure of the ribosome, top scientists said, ‘why?  …ribosomes are already ‘dead’ and we know all we need to know about them!’.  ['Dead', because until Yonath, to study ribosomes, you had to kill them].   ‘You will be dead before you succeed,’  these scientists said.   Well, happily, ribosomes are alive and kicking …and so am I!”  

   Yonath sat next to the King,  Gustav XVI, and said the conversation was fascinating; the King is knowledgeable about science and technological innovation. 

Innovation Blog

HuaWei – Case Study  -    “Created in China” Is Real, Imminent – and a Major Threat To Your Business [1]

By Shlomo Maital

Dec. 2/2009

 技 有限公司    Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

“Their (HuaWei’s)  technology is innovative, and their bid provided the lowest cost of ownership for us.  In our business, the lowest cost of ownership is key.”      – Morton K. Sorby,  head, business development,  Telenor

    A Personal Note: Two years ago, I helped lead a best-practices benchmarking trip to China, for 30 senior  Israeli high-tech managers doing a TIM executive program.   During our visit to a huge science park near Beijing, we heard the Director tell us:  “Today, Made in China.  Tomorrow:  Created in China.” 

     Loose translation:  Today China achieves phenomenal economic growth by low-cost manufacturing of products invented and designed in the West.   Tomorrow it will move up the economic ‘food chain’,  and invent and design its own products — and then make them, too.  Can you compete with that?  

     This strategy is a direct threat to the U.S., Europe and Israel, because if China replaces them in the food chain, they will by definition be below China — and the implications for economic growth, wellbeing and GDP per capita are sweeping.

     Do we see widespread awareness in the West of this strategic threat? Do we see national industrial policies designed by panels of experts to meet the challenge?  Or does the West continue to believe that China will remain where it is — a low-cost manufacturer. 

      HuaWei Technologies Co. Ltd., global producer of network solutions for telecoms,  is a concrete example of a major success of “Created in China”.    This is why I have written this brief case study narrative.   There are many more HuWei’s in China now gaining in strength and self-confidence.  You will doubtless soon meet them in the marketplace.  Are you ready?

     Basic Facts:   HuaWei was established 21 years ago, in 1988, by Ren Zhengfei, a former People’s Liberation Army officer.  He remains its CEO.  HuaWei began as an importer of PBX phone systems. It quickly began developing its own.  In 1993 it began selling its own digital telephone switch, beginning with rural areas in China and expanding into major cities.  HuaWei won its first overseas contract in 1996.  By 2004 its sales abroad exceeded its domestic sales.  In 2009 the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO reported that   Huawei was ranked as the largest applicant under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), with 1,737 applications published in 2008, replacing Philips Electronics.  In Dec. 2008 Business Week ranked HuaWei 3^rd, after Apple and Google, in its World’s Most Influential Companies list.

   HuaWei is privately owned.  HuaWei marketing director Edward Zhou says the company is owned by its 87,502 employees.    The U.S. thinktank RAND Corp. claims HuaWei “maintains deep ties with the Chinese military”, as a customer, political patron and R&D partner.  HuaWei denies it.  Its headquarters are in Shenzhen.

   HuaWei’s revenues in 2008 (a bad year for network infrastructure companies) was $23.3 b., up 43 per cent from a year ago,  and generating $1.15 b. in net income (up from $957 m. in 2007).   Foreign sales account for three-quarters of its revenue, up from 43 per cent a year ago.  (See Figure).

    HuaWei supplies gear to China’s three largest operators — China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom — and has doubled its share of the $38 b. global mobile equipment market to 20 per cent in 3Q 2009, up from only 11 per cent a year earlier.  It thus replaced Nokia Siemens (19.5 per cent) but trails Ericsson (32 per cent).  

    HuaWei as Innovator:   HuaWei’s value proposition is based on “cost of ownership” i.e., the total lifetime cost of their equipment, rather than the price.  HuaWei is not always the lowest-priced competitor.  “Our focus has been on lowering the total cost of ownership for the network as a whole,”  Edward Zhou notes.  In an era when telecom’s ARPU (average revenue per user) is falling, cost of ownership is crucial.  For instance, HuaWei’s SingleRAN multipurpose wireless network that transmits in 2G, 3G and LTD (long term evolution) signals saves operators money, because they can buy a single grid rather than install separate ones for each technology.   HuaWei is apparently the first to deploy, on a large scale, the new 4G technology, LTE,  in base stations. 

     Another Personal Note:   My reliable inside sources at HuaWei tell me this:  HuaWei is regarded in China as its most prestigious high-tech global company.  HuaWei’s salaries for engineers are significantly higher than those paid by other Chinese high-tech firms, though they are still much lower than in the West.  So, Chinese engineers, when they graduate, compete fiercely for HuaWei jobs, both for prestige and for money.  What HuaWei demands in return?   Twenty hour (20) work days.  This is not an exaggeration.  Twenty hour workdays out of 24.  Four hours of sleep, etc.    Because HuaWei gets the very top talent among the hundreds of thousands of graduating Chinese engineers,  it has enormous innovative ability and enormous ability to scale up rapidly and deploy globally. 

     To prepare itself for global expansion, HuaWei engineered an enormous transformation of its business processes, using leading consultants.  They now employ best practices in management innovation, gleaned from top companies all over the world.

    And if this is not sufficient…..:    China’s second largest networking equipment firm is ZTE.  Its sales, too, rose 43 per cent in 3Q 2009, to $2.2 b. ($8.8 b. annual).    In our benchmarking trip, we visited ZTE, which is now supplying China’s mobile operators with its own home-grown 3G technology. We observed that  ZTE is no less dynamic and menacing, as a competitor, than HuaWei.   And both have become highly self-confident, following marketplace success.

     If you believe that China’s mobile market is the world’s fastest growing (rivaling India’s), and if your company is in the industry, you may eye that market enviously.  As you do, think about meeting HuaWei and ZTE head-on, in China or in Asia in general.   Think of meeting them in more stagnant markets in Europe.  Think of matching their scale, innovativeness, infinite bank credit and speed.  

     If you are happily not in the network infrastructure business, picture a version of HuaWei in your own industry.  If there is none right now, there will soon be.  Believe me.

     Valium, anyone? 

Global Crisis Blog

America and the Marshmallow: Obama’s Real Dilemma

America today faces the same choice that psychologist Walter Mischel presented to a group of American four-year-olds in the 1960’s. 

     In a famous experiment, Mischel offered the pre-schoolers a tasty marshmallow, in full view and ready to pop into their mouths, or two marshmallows if they could wait for 20 minutes. 

      Some kids grabbed the ‘instant gratification’ marshmallow.  Some waited.

      In a follow-up study, Mischel showed that the kids who could defer gratification were better adjusted, more dependable, and got SAT (scholastic aptitude test) scores that were 210 points higher than kids who wolfed down the tempting marshmallow, when graduating from high school.

       Later, Daniel Goelman featured this experiment in his book on Emotional Intelligence.

       Today,  America as a country confronts a similar dilemma.  After years of small or zero personal saving, with rundown infrastructure, inadequate human capital investment and staggering public debt,  Americans are looking at a tempting “marshmallow” on their tables.  With the economy struggling to emerge from recession, and with job creation anemic,  Americans are asked in various ways to resume their old habits of spend/spend/spend (marshmallow NOW!). 

    But what America needs is a bit of improved deferred gratification.  It needs to increase saving, in order to pay off huge debts, rebuild infrastructure, modernize its factories and revamp its failing schools. 
     How in the world can this occur?  What will bring Americans to wait for the two marshmallows?  When an enormous bloated monster exists — advertising, marketing, sales — whose sole purpose is to get Americans to spend, when not even a ‘mouse’ organization exists to encourage saving, and when Americans no longer trust banks, brokers or investment funds, after losing half their pensions and life savings —  why would Americans suddenly become good at deferring gratification?

     Two years ago, scientists discovered the physical location in our brains, where the ‘marshmallow’ decisions are made. [1]   Americans do have brains.  They do have the medial-frontal cortex capability of waiting for the two marshmallows.  It just needs some exercise, after withering from disuse.    Perhaps an adult version of the grade-school program “Stoplight” (see box)  might be in order.

      Somebody (President Obama?) needs to tell Americans that the party is over.  It is time to tithe — set aside ten per cent of everything for future marshmallows.   When this happens, we will know America is serious about remaining a First World power, rather than sinking into Third World mediocrity.       

                        ===========================================

                                                                        “STOPLIGHT”                               

     In school lessons in social/emotional learning,   posters on school room walls remind kids, that when they get upset, they should remember:

      Red light – stop, calm down, and think before you act.

     Yellow light – think of a range of things you should do (not just your first impulse)

      Green light – pick the best one and try it out.

What about an adult version?   Spread similar posters all over shopping malls, Macy’s,  supermarkets, Wal-Mart…?   Red light — do you really need this shmata?  Will it really make you happy?  Yellow light –  think of other ways you could invest that money, and how much more good it could do, either for yourself, your family, or for others.   Green light — pick the instant marshmallow, or the delayed one — after using your medial-frontal cortex, which daily grows stronger and stronger.   

Innovation Blog

“M” Stands for Murdoch, Microsoft &….Monopoly

By Shlomo Maital

Nov. 25/2009

   Microsoft is like the famous racehorse Silky Sullivan — the greatest come-from-behind racer in the history of the world.  

          Ridden by jockey Willie Shoemaker,  Silky once galloped along in a race until the field was 41 lengths in front of him—and still won by three lengths.  To  accomplish this, he had to clock the last quarter in 22 seconds flat.   

    Microsoft never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Then, using their muscle, cash and aggressive marketing,  they blow smarter faster competitors out of the water. Anyone remember Netscape — the browser that invented browsers, before Internet Explorer?   Microsoft leveraged its Windows monopoly to stuff Internet Explorer down our throats;  bye bye Netscape. 

    Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is at it again. (Bill Gates is busy giving away his money, rather than trying to make more).  Microsoft missed the search-engine/advertising boat.  So, Microsoft is negotiating a deal with News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch, giving Microsoft’s new search engine Bing exclusive rights to news from Murdoch’s newspaper (New York Post, Wall St. Journal,  The Sun, Times of London and others).  Exclusive — meaning, the news from those papers will not appear in Google.   Microsoft will pay Murdoch substantial sums in return.[1]    

     Murdoch is a hardnosed businessman.  He hates leaving money on the table.  Why give news away for free?    he says.   But guess what, Mr. Murdoch?  Infinite amounts of news are available for free on the Internet.    If you try to limit access,  people will read their news elsewhere.  They have oodles of alternatives.   The BBC, a great source of news,  already announced they will continue to provide their content for free.

     “I’d rather have fewer readers who pay, than many readers who don’t”,  Murdoch says. 

      Microsoft’s attempt at creating monopoly restrictions is not surprising.   What is surprising is Murdoch.  He is known as an implementer of modern technology.  Why does he not understand that the rules of the news game have changed forever and irrevocably?   Monopoly by definition rests on there being no alternatives or substitutes.  When there are infinite substitutes,  monopoly is impossible. 

     Nice try, Microsoft. Nice try, Murdoch.  In your case,  ”M” stands not for Monopoly, but Mistake — a Big Mistake.

Innovation Blog

Lifeline Express:  400,000 Lives Changed in India -  Should America Follow Suit

By Shlomo Maital

Nov. 24/2009

   How can one bring medical care to remote villages in India?  Often, children and adults in India have medical problems that can be cured easily with surgery or other care, things like cleft palate or cataracts — but suffer with them for their entire lives, because they cannot afford medical care in the cities, or even get to the cities, where hospitals and clinics exist.

      India’s rail network is one of the largest in the world.  It transports 18 million passengers yearly, has 1.4 million employees and has a route covering nearly 40,000 miles. 

       In 1991,  Indian Railways and the Indian Health Ministry joined forces to provide a simple solution to providing basic medical care for remote poor villagers.   They called it Lifeline Express, or Jeevan Rekha Express.   Equip a train with modern medical equipment and operating theatres.  Staff it with volunteer doctors and surgeons.  Run the train through the length and breadth of India, to more than 7,000 stations.  Inform the villagers in advance,  examine them quickly and choose those best suited for the Lifeline Express care.    The project is supported by Impact UK (a charitable foundation), Indian businesses and individuals.  Some 400,000 Indians have benefitted so far.   A second train has now been added. 

Lifeline Express focuses on:

* Orthopaedic and surgical intervention for correction of handicap and restoration of movement, especially those as a result of polio.

* Opthalmological procedures and interventions, eg cataract surgery and intraocular lenses.

* Audiometry and surgical interventions for restoration of hearing.

* Surgical correction of Cleft palate.

    Other countries, such as China, have begun imitating Lifeline Express.  But why, I wonder, should Lifeline Express be implemented only in poor countries?  Why not in America?

    United States has some 48 million persons without health insurance.  What about an American Lifeline Express, travelling to remote areas and cities alike, bringing badly-needed medical care to those who cannot afford it because they are uninsured?    America, like India, has a rail system and a large number of people who need medical care but cannot afford it.  Indian found a partial solution.  Why should not America imitate it?  Funding should come from the pharmaceutical companies, whose obscene prices for lifesaving drugs generate many billions of dollars in profits.   

Innovation Blog

Innovation in Cities:   “Remove One Zero, Two Zero’s, from the Budget” — The Case of Curitiba

By Shlomo Maital

Nov. 21/2009

   This is the story of the world’s most innovative city, Curitiba, in Brazil.  Curitiba is the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Paraña,  with some 3.5 m. people in metro Curitiba.  Every mayor and city council in the world should have made at least one trip here to benchmark the innovations led by the incredible Jaime Lerner.  Most have not. 

    To my knowledge, the mayors of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (past and present, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) have not been here.  The result:  expensive, over-budget, bungled projects for light-rail or subway systems,  in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, that, at least in Jerusalem, are making inhabitants’ lives miserable (owing to torn-up streets) and will do so for years to come.  In contrast, in my city Haifa, a dedicated bus lane is zipping residents from the southern end of the city to the northern end in next to no time. 

   What are Jaime Lerner’s innovations?   Choosing to run for mayor in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1988, only 12 days before the election, and winning a surprise victory, Jaime Lerner  did the following, using creativity and common sense, and a lot of independent thinking:

  *  Speedybus:  Used Federal money earmarked for a subway to build instead a Speedybus system — long ‘accordion’ buses carrying up to 300 people, built specially by Volvo, owned and run by private companies, with dedicated bus lanes.  Bus stops board passengers in one minute (you pay in advance of boarding), buses run frequently, and housing is planned so most people are within walking distance of a bus, making cars unnecessary or even inconvenient.  The Speedybus system costs one per cent of a subway and does the same job.  Curitiba’s bus system carries 2.3 million passengers daily — more than Rio de Janeiro’s subway!

      “What is a subway?”  Jaime told the BBC.  “Speed, comfort, reliability, frequency!  We provide these with Speedybus, because we designed it for these four qualities.”

  *  Sheep:  According to Wikipedia,  “Curitiba is bordered by floodplain. While wealthier cities in the United States such as New Orleans and Sacramento, have chosen to build expensive, and expensive-to-maintain levee systems to build on floodplain. In contrast, Curitiba purchased the floodplain and made parks. The city now ranks among the world leaders in per-capita park area. Curitiba had the problem of its status as a third-world city, unable to afford the tractors and petroleum to mow these parks. The innovative response was “municipal sheep” who keep the parks’ vegetation under control and whose wool funds children’s programs.”

     Jaime told the BBC, “the sheep are the best public servants!  They never go on strike!”

*   Food for garbage:  Like many Brazilian cities, Curitiba has barrios, slums.  They were once jammed with garbage; the streets were too narrow to permit access for garbage trucks.  Jaime Lerner told the people:  Bring me your bags of garbage to collection centers, and I will give you in return a bag of food.   One bag of garbage, one bag of food.  It was cheaper than garbage collection.  The barrios residents responded.  Within three months, the barrios were   clean. 

*  Recycle:   Many cities are drowning in garbage.  Curitiba is not.  Curitiba citizens recycle.  How?  Jaime Lerner had the schools teach children how to separate organic and non-organic garbage.  Organic garbage goes into compost piles.  The children taught their parents. Now, 70 per cent of all garbage is separated, one of the highest ratios in the world.  Curitiba has a lovely nearby bay.  Once it was a garbage dumping ground. Lerner began to pay fishermen by the pound for retrieving garbage from the bay.  Now, fishermen fish for fish, when they can, and when they cannot, they fish for garbage. Curitiba saves many millions of reals in this way.

* Schools:   Lerner has a program where poor kids who don’t want to go to school  can be apprenticed to city employees.  As a result Curitiba has many fewer gangs than does, for instance, Rio.   

* Bikes:   There are 62 miles of bike routes in Curitiba, used by 30,000 bikers daily.  

  But what is Jaime Lerner’s biggest idea — the truly revolutionary innovation?

  How often do we hear public officials and politicians say this sentence:

       Yes, we would like to do good things, solve problems, make citizens’ lives better — but, we lack the money.

   Here is Jaime Lerner’s ‘take’ on this statement.

   “Do you want to change things quickly?”  he asks.  “Remove one zero from the budget.   Do you want to change things even more quickly?  Remove TWO ZERO’s from the budget.”

      He did it.  If you have no money, you have to invent, create, innovate, improvise.  How often do we throw money at a problem (or accept the problem because of lack of funds),  rather than throwing energy, creativity and start-from-scratch innovation at it?  

      If the world’s mayors do not visit Curitiba, perhaps Jaime Lerner can visit them. 

      But will they listen?