That hungry whirring noise heard around offices across the U.S. is the sound of March Madness brackets being fed to paper shredders everywhere. Bracket busting is reaching historic levels in this year’s NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball National Championship Tournament. Since the tournament was created in 1939 this is the first time there are no number 1 or 2 seeds in the Final Four. All of the country’s top eight teams, as annointed by the experts, will watch the Final Four from home.
That’s amazing. It’s the first time in March Madness history that two teams, Butler (8) and VCU (11), seeded 8 or worse in their bracket will play each other in the Final Four. So if you shredded your bracket, you’re not alone. According to ESPN Research only two people out of the 5.9 million who filled out and submitted brackets in the ESPN Tournament Challenge have the Final Four correct. Only two. That’s .000034%.
As I shredded my bracket I couldn’t help thinking about the parallels between innovation and bracket busting.
In many ways, from the time we are born, we are seeded into brackets. Education tracks, organization charts, and industry value chains are all brackets waiting to be busted. Experts are always telling us where we fit and what our role is. We are tracked into school programs at an early age based on perceived academic ability. We are placed into boxes in organization charts based on age and tenure, constrained from contributing beyond our “seed.” We work for too many organizations that only fight for market share within well-defined and accepted industry value chains.
Not only are we seeded into brackets created by someone else, we are expected to play our defined roles. Top seeds are supposed to win. Lower seeds make a valiant effort but lose to top seeds in the end. Most of us don’t even get an invite to the “big dance.” That’s the way it’s supposed to work because the experts say so…
Innovators, in their way, are bracket busters. While incremental improvements can be accomplished by working within current brackets and seeds, the biggest opportunities to create value come from transformational change, the kind of change that requires bracket busting. Solutions for the big social system challenges we face, including education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship, require more than incremental change. The solutions we need require transformative bracket-busting business models and systems.
We need a new education system that doesn’t seed children into tracks and is designed to provide every student with a customized pathway to success. We need a new health care system that doesn’t track citizens through institutional and insurance sick care labyrinths and is designed for patients to champion their own pathways to wellness. We need organization structures that don’t constrain talent in boxes unleashing talent networks that enable everyone to contribute up to the limits of their imaginations. We need to transform industry value chains into value networks that break down boundaries between disciplines, organizations, and sectors to deliver value in completely new ways to students, patients, citizens, and consumers. We need more bracket busters.
So don’t be discouraged by your March Madness bracket now sitting at the bottom of the paper shredder. Celebrate the fact that none of the top seeds made it to the Final Four. Don’t settle for where you and your organization are seeded by so-called experts. Don’t allow anyone to say you aren’t allowed to go to the big dance. Don’t be constrained by brackets created by someone else. Create your own dance. Be the top seed in your own bracket. Be an innovator. Be a bracket buster.
(This post originally appeared here on the Harvard Business Review site.)
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Mar 22, 2013 at 2:30 PM ET
Click here to sign up for a competition — in which you can win prizes up to $5000 for developing apps to make government work. I will be serving as one of the judges. Read more below:
With the U.S. federal government careening from one crisis to the next, citizens are increasingly frustrated with the government’s inability to get things done.
We can’t solve this problem with software alone, but we can harness technology to educate and empower both citizens and lawmakers to make government more transparent or effective. The Apps for Working Governmentchallenge seeks to highlight software applications that can help reduce partisan gridlock and increase legislative productivity at the federal, state, or local level.
Individuals, teams and organizations are encouraged to enter new or existing software solutions. These can include web, mobile or desktop apps in one of two categories:
Educational tools: Apps that visualize or analyze data to illustrate the problem of partisan gridlock, legislative productivity (or lack thereof) and/or related consequences. This category can include apps that analyze and evaluate the polarization or productivity of Congress, state legislatures, local government, or individual lawmakers.
Solutions & action tools: Apps that citizens can use to communicate with legislators or mobilize other citizens, or tools legislators can use to advance collaboration. Submitters are required to explain how the app can be used to help reduce partisan gridlock and increase legislative productivity.
Check out the Suggestions and Data pages for ideas and join the discussionby sharing relevant data, existing software solutions, and solution ideas. Submit a software app you’ve already made or create something new!
Early Submission: Submit yourapp by May 1, 2013 at 5:00pm Eastern Time to get feedback. If your app is eligible, you’ll receive tips on how you can improve it before the final deadline.
PRIZES
Best New Applications (2)
$1,000
Best Existing Applications (2)
$1,000
Popular Choice Award – New Application
$500
Popular Choice Award – Existing Application
$500
Large Organization Recognition Award
Awarded to competing organizations of 50+ employees. Non-cash, recognition only.
Co-founder & Contributor, The Monkey Cage, and Associate Professor of Political Science, George Washington University
JUDGING CRITERIA
Quality of the Idea
Includes creativity and originality
Implementation of Idea & UX
Includes how well the idea was executed by the developer as well as the overall design (graphics, typography, and visual aesthetic, etc.)
Potential Impact
Includes potential impact on partisan gridlock and legislative productivity through education and/or citizen or lawmaker action or collaboration
HOW TO ENTER
Click the “Register For This Challenge” button at the top of the page and confirm your registration. This step ensures that you’ll receive important challenge updates and also allows you to view the submission form. Before you start building your app, be sure to read the Official Rules.
Create a working software app or submit an existing one that falls into either category (educational tools or solutions & action tools). Refer to the category definitions in the “About the Challenge” section.
Complete all of the required fields in the submission form.
By Nick Paleologos, on Fri Mar 22, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
The notion that America is sharply divided between free market capitalists and big government socialists is complete baloney. This country is lousy with consensus around an economic value system, which is deeply embedded in the DNA of most Americans and based upon generations of experience with capitalism in this country.
For the first third of the 20th century, America was the Wild West. Low taxes. No regulation. No unions. Anything goes. We called it the Roaring ’20s. The rich got filthy rich. Everybody else just got filthy. The Roaring ’20s officially ended on October 29, 1929 when the entire American economy crashed, ushering in a decade of unrelenting misery and despair featuring 25 percent unemployment, widespread bank failures, bankruptcies, foreclosures and food lines. We called that the Great Depression. The closer we looked at capitalism, the more we found it wanting. So we did what Americans always do when we see a problem. We fixed it.
In this case, the fixer-in-chief was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The damage done to the country during the Depression convinced him that unregulated capitalism always favors the rich at the expense of everyone else. So to save capitalism from itself, FDR introduced what turned out to be the crucial missing ingredient: compassion.
Roosevelt understood that compassion did not grow naturally in the harsh climate of an unfettered free market. He knew instinctively that fairness — essential to any functioning democracy — was an alien concept to pure capitalism. So FDR gave us a new, improved version. Call it compassionate capitalism. No senior citizen ends up destitute (Social Security). Banks and Wall Street don’t get to gamble with peoples’ savings (FDIC and SEC). Anybody who serves their country goes to college (GI Bill). Everybody who wants to work gets a job that the country needs to have done (CCC and WPA).
Far from hobbling private sector growth, these programs actually fueled it. Tons of people got very rich. However, the immense wealth created in America during the post-Roosevelt years was much more evenly distributed — with the biggest chunk going to a rapidly expanding middle class. Compassionate capitalism worked for everyone without busting the federal budget.
Read the rest of… Nick Paleologos: The Case for Compassionate Capitalism
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 19, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The column below is an irresistible one—even for me (at age 49) and not looking for either a college major or a job.
They are interesting reading and worth glancing at for information. Bu…t not, in my opinion, for life guidance.
The only thing worse you can do than pursue a degree you are interested in that pays a low starting salary is get a degree you aren’t interested in because it pays a high salary. If you do the former, at a minimum you will almost surely do much better while in college or graduate school (higher GPA), which translates into more professional options, better educated, and more self-confidence. Not a bad outcome.
If you do the latter, you will likely do poorly, have a negative experience with school, have a lackluster record, get a second or third tier job in the field of study and not enjoy or excel at it. Pretty lousy outcome.
I’m not saying don’t balance the practical aspects of the connection between college degree and future jobs. You should and must. But make it only a part of your analysis. And at the end of your analysis, go with your gut and your passion.
No one has yet been able to quantify either. But being engaged something you are interested in and passionate about seems the common denominator of almost every person I know who excels in their field.
Even if they majored in English. (And many did!)
From Forbes:
The Best And Worst Master’s Degrees For Jobs
Thousands of new college grads will enter the workforce this year, but with unemployment at 8.2% and underemployment near 18%, many will put off the taxing job search process and opt out of the weak job market to pursue graduate degrees.
With this in mind, Forbes set out to determine which master’s degrees would provide the best long-term opportunities, based on salary and employment outlook. To find the mid-career median pay for 35 popular degrees, we turned to Payscale.com, which lets users compare their salaries with those of other people in similar jobs by culling real-time salary data from its 35 million profiles. We then looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment projection data to see how fast employment was expected to increase between 2010 and 2020 in popular jobs held by people with each degree. Finally we averaged each degree’s pay rank and estimated growth rank to find the best and worst master’s degrees for jobs.
As it turns out, although there are too few doctors in the U.S. and too few seats in medical schools, those shortages are good for one segment of the population: people who get degrees as physician assistants.
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Mar 18, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Part 1 of 4: FINDING A HOME. When we left home we hoped that we’d find the city for us. We’d walk the streets and feel comfortable. We’d savor the foods and feel fine if we got fat there. We’d see the homes and picture ourselves growing old there. It would feel like home. After visiting more than 200 cities, where have we decided to settle? Follow us on the second Wednesday of each month to discover what traveling the world taught us about where we want to call home.
The biggest question of all was what do we need in a home? Do we need the creature comforts of the developed world, or do we want the daily adventure of the developing world?
HE SAID…
Developing vs developed says it all, one is present-tense, happening now, one is past-tense, as in finished. I can’t lie, I love the idea of the developing world, the constant change, the action, the loose liquor laws, but I don’t think it’s for me.
The reason to live in the developing world is simple: it’s where money will be made for my generation. As the economies grow, so will the prosperity, get in early, play your cards right, and wealth will be created.
Vietnam, one of the places growth is happening today.
The downside of the developing world is the lifestyle. Sure I can live great, have a driver to deal with the endless traffic jams, have a housekeeper to clean, and have assorted other staff that I’ll never be certain what they do. Within a walled house everything seems great, but living with the crappy infrastructure, having to send my children to pretentious private schools, and being part of such a vast wealth distribution doesn’t interest me.
Read the rest of… Matt and Erica Chua: Finding a Home
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Mar 12, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
With last week’s Dow Jones record high, most pundits tell us that the recession is over. Various economists might debate the specifics, whether the deficit is still a problem, why unemployment numbers still matter, but no matter whether you follow Fox, MSNBC, or Uncle Sol, things are definitely looking better. Which is great news – but a little sad for me.
My husband and I are both musicians, which means we clearly married each other for our money. (Cue rimshot) (What’s the difference between a T-bill and a musician? Eventually the T-bill matures and makes money . . . . ) Our income has always lagged behind our neighbors, we rent instead of owning a home, and when people start to complain about the hassles of remodeling their kitchen or how hard it is to decide where to go on vacation, we just smile weakly and hope someone changes the subject.
But during the height of the recession, everyone we knew was in the same boat – my designer-savvy friends were shopping at TJMaxx, families couldn’t plan vacations around their next stock windfall, and high-earning high-tech dads were getting laid off. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t happy for anyone else’s misfortune, but it was really nice to have company. Now when friends would ask us where we should meet for dinner, we didn’t feel like the poor relations when we suggested the cheap cool Burmese restaurant instead of the casual-but-pricy bistro.
Now that the stock market seems to have rebounded and things are coming back to normal, at first I was afraid we’d be alone again in our financial struggles. But it turns out not everyone is feeling the joy – in fact, many middle-class families are still having a hard time – and I’ve heard that from Fox, MSNBC and Uncle Sol.
Many terrific blues songs came out of The Great Depression, so here’s a modern-day blues for those of us who feel a bit left out of the latest economic good news . . .
From Janet Patton of the Lexington Herald-Leader (who has been doing some incredible reporting on the industrial hemp issue):
A week after a first attempt, a hemp bill made it out of the Kentucky House Agriculture Committee with a nearly unanimous vote. But the bill still could die if House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, blocks a vote on the House floor.
Committee chairman Tom McKee, D-Cynthiana, said he hoped that the bill would move forward for the sake of farmers and for the jobs that he said hemp could bring to Kentucky.
“I expected the bill to pass,” McKee said afterward. “In talking with members over the past week, I think a lot of people got some of their concerns relieved.”
McKee said he thinks the bill could pass easily in the House if a vote is allowed.
“That’s up to the speaker. I favor taking it to the floor,” McKee said. “He knows I would like to see it on the floor.”…
Stumbo said Monday that he isn’t for the bill. Late last week, he requested an opinion from Attorney General Jack Conway on whether the hemp legislation is needed, because state statutes require Kentucky to mirror federal law.
“It is my contention that Kentucky is already poised to adopt the federal hemp growing rules as soon as they come into existence and that Kentucky has no need for additional state bureaucracy involving permits issued by a state hemp czar,” Stumbo wrote.
In response, Comer has written Conway to say that the statute also requires the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission, which Comer leads, to “recommend legislation with respect to policies and practices that will result in the proper legal growing of industrial hemp. … By recommending SB50, the KIHC honored its obligation under existing Kentucky law.”
Hemp commission member Jonathan Miller, the former Kentucky treasurer and a Democrat, also has written Conway and planned to meet with him Wednesday to discuss why the hemp commission recommended the language in SB50.
Miller said that if President Barack Obama’s administration removes the restriction on growing hemp or issues a waiver, Kentucky might not be considered eligible without the licensing framework.
Miller also said that if the federal bill sponsored by U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, and Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, and others in Kentucky’s Washington delegation passes, federal rules might not address the concerns brought up by Kentucky State Police.
Measures to address those concerns, such as requiring the GPS coordinates of all hemp fields, have been incorporated into Senate Bill 50, Miller said, but they might be part of a “one-size-fits-all federal regulatory scheme.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 5, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I first learned about the 80-20 rule while in business school and it is an ingenious formula that apples not just in the workplace but in every area of life —including marriage
With most couples I know each spouse –almost like a rule of nature –believes he or she is to blame for about 20% of the recurring marital disagreements –while their spouse is respon…sible for the other 80%. And vice versa.
Psychologists and marriage experts tell us the key is sharing that burden equally between the spouses. But such advice flies in the face of science and the 80-20 rule .
My bold innovative idea to solve this age old imbalance is to include a third partner in every marriage. Not a third party that is actively involved at any level of the day-to-day marriage (from finance to romance) but rather an extra person to lay blame on when the primary couple needs to displace blame.
Just do the math. If each primary spouse is willing to accept 20% of the blame , then having a third person available in the marriage for the remaining 60% is the perfect solution! And during periods of above-average disagreements, the third party has another 40% to be absorbed if necessary.
This allows us to use mathematical and scientific principles to our advantage to manage around the 80-20 rule in both work and play –and even within the sanctity of marriage.
By Garrett Renfro, RP Staff, on Fri Mar 1, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
The Politics of Sequestration
It is now March 1 and no deal to avert the $85 Billion across the board spending cuts has yet been passed by Congress. There were two last gasp efforts on the part of the Senate to pass a bill last night, however both the Republican and Democratic sponsored measures went down in defeat. Jonathan Weisman explains how both bills were essentially doomed from the start, perhaps even designed to fail. [NYT]
As the sequester draws nearer, lawmakers are further away, not only from striking a deal but from The Capitol itself. Many members of the House of Representatives and the Senate have already left town for the weekend and many have resigned themselves to leaving the sequester cuts in place for months to come. House Republicans are reportedly looking toward the next deadline (March 27) and drafting legislation which would avoid a government shutdown. Such legislation would likely keep the sequester cuts in place through September of this year. [WP]
This morning, the Congressional leadership arrived at The White House to meet with President Obama and try to cut through the gridlock before the cuts officially begin later tonight. The meeting is currently in a standoff, with both sides admitting that little progress has been made. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has stated that if there is any deal to be reached, it will absolutely not include tax increases. [Politico]
When contributing RP Jeff Smith, a state senator representing St. Louis, found himself behind bars for political missteps, he discovered a unique business world churning in prisons.
He saw that a meager prisoner’s salary quickly leads to ingenuity. You have to figure out how to get what you want without much money. What Smith saw on the inside struck him as very similar to business leaders he had come in contact with outside of the penitentiary.
He’s been released and has landed a job teaching at the New School. One of his crusades is to figure out a way to harness the ingenuity he experienced behind bars and getting ex-cons back on their feet with a business plan.
Jeremy Gregg works with the same population that Smith found so underutilized and inspiring. Gregg is the chief development officer of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, where inmates take classes on how to build a business.
Minnesota Public Radio’s “The Daily Circuit” discussed harnessing prison ingenuity to get ex-cons on their feet.
Guests
Jeff Smith: Assistant professor of urban policy analysis and management at the New School
In many ways, from the time we are born, we are seeded into brackets. Education tracks, organization charts, and industry value chains are all brackets waiting to be busted. Experts are always telling us where we fit and what our role is. We are tracked into school programs at an early age based on perceived academic ability. We are placed into boxes in organization charts based on age and tenure, constrained from contributing beyond our “seed.” We work for too many organizations that only fight for market share within well-defined and accepted industry value chains.
