By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Jun 23, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
 “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire” W.B. Yeats
Excuse the rant but I am outraged by the state of the U.S. education system. We have let the pilot light go out and we are failing our youth. It is time to move beyond public policy debates and institutional rugby scrums to try new solutions. What we are doing now isn’t working and far too much of the federal stimulus investment is being spent to sustain the current system.
A report last year from the nonprofit network America’s Promise Alliance showed that 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year. Only about half of the students served by school systems in the nation’s 50 largest cities graduate from high school. The U.S. public education system, especially in the country’s urban centers, must be transformed.
Only about 40% of the U.S. adult population earns a college degree. That may have been fine in the 20th century when an industrial economy supplied good jobs to those without post-secondary education. It is not fine today when a post-secondary credential is a necessity for a good job.
Our education system was built for the 20th century.
Everyone loves to point fingers at the other players in the system as the cause of the problem. Observing our education system today is like watching an intense rugby scrum that is moving in slow motion hoping the ball will pop out. Finger pointing and incessant public policy debates galore. We love to admire the problems: It’s the unions that are getting in the way. Teachers are resisting change in the classroom. Administrators don’t understand what is going on in the classroom. Parents are not engaged. Public policy makers can’t make up their minds. If only private sector companies were more engaged. Students are unruly, undisciplined, and disrespectful. Everyone is blamed and nothing changes.
The simple idea of “lighting a fire” expressed in Yeat’s quote says it all for me. Teaching is an important means to an end. Creating passionate life long learners is the objective of education. Content, subjects, jobs and requirements, will all change over time. The pace of change is accelerating and the half-life for assumptions and usable knowledge is decreasing. It has become a life long challenge to stay relevant. The only thing that is sustainable is a fire inside to keep learning
The objective of education is to light a fire for learning in every single youth. When the pilot light is on, everything else is possible. For starters, lets recognize that individuals have different learning styles. One-size industrial education models are not working and must be transformed. We have the enabling technology available to us today to create and scale an education system that provides access to killer content and experiential learning opportunities tailored to individual learning styles for every student. It is time to demonstrate that we can and will change our education system. Our country’s youth is waiting.
I am excited to be part of the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) community focused on real world experimentation for new education systems and solutions. In BIF’s Student Experience Lab we are bringing the voice of the student into the education innovation conversation and creating a network of innovators motivated to explore new system solutions. Join the conversation. The water is fine.
Lets reignite the pilot light and demonstrate that there is a better way to light a fire for learning in every youth.
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET I got a heavy dose of design vibe last week in NYC. You know. Hanging around really smart design thinkers and the places they hang out in hopes that some of it will rub off. I designed the boondoggle around an invite by Business Week and Smart Design to sit in on an innovation and design discussion hosted by my friend and BIF-5 co-host, Bruce Nussbaum. Bruce has gotten the design vibe thing longer than the rest of us and has a great new gig at Parson’s. I needed to go over a few BIF-5 things with Bruce anyway so off to the big apple it was.
Bruce invited me to Parson’s so we could catch up and I could see the vibe up close. The village and Parsons conspire to draw you in. I also spent time with Helen Walters and Reena Jana, who cover the Design and Innovation beat at Business Week. Interesting week for them as they learned McGraw Hill put Business Week up for sale. The event I came down for took place at Smart Design (known for Oxo, and flip design) at their very cool (high on the design vibe meter) space in Manhattan. The event was well done with an active conversation about design’s place in the U.S. economic narrative. My visit was complete when I also got to spend time with my friend Alice Wilder of Blues Clues, and Super Why fame.
I left NYC charged up and more convinced than ever that design has an important role to play in transforming social systems, including health care, education, and energy. I also left with a strong sense that the design community needs to move on from the incessant argument over the importance of design thinking and process. It is time to claim victory. Get over it. The argument is boring. Design is important. We stipulate that design is about more than sexy products. We get that design is about delivering a compelling customer experience. Now, can we get on with putting it to work to solve real world problems?
No more books are needed to convince us that design thinking and process are a priority. They are important tools. If you want to convince us, stop talking about design thinking, and start putting it to work to mobilize real systems change. I want the next book I read about design to be about the “how”. I want case studies of how design enabled system experiments in health care, education, and energy. I want to know what we learn from these experiments and how we can try even better system configurations to deliver value to the patient, student, and citizen.
I am grateful for a strong design vibe because it gives me hope that we can create a better future. I just want the vibe to translate into trying more stuff and putting the tools to work rather than the navel gazing of today’s design thinking debate. Time to move the design conversation to a new, actionable, place.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jun 11, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
 I am at Walmart right now to buy an assortment of toiletries.
But on my way to the “Personal Care” aisle, I passed the “Automotive” section.
And I looked at the rows of sturdy tires and wanted to buy one–just a single tire at 12:41am.
Why? Because I could.
Maybe that is empowering.
But I have a feeling it’s just a really bad idea that sleepy people get when not expecting to see tires for sale when shopping past their bedtime.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 10, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET When a small world forgets how to feel small.
In Orlando for conference.
I love Disney but wonder if their profit motive has outgtown their commitment to reasonable customer service.
Disney employees still wish you a “Magical Day” (after getting your name, address, phone number, credit card number and expiration date and thanking you for participating in the short customer service interview after the call), don’t get me wrong.
But I believe I have seen ant farms more logically and efficiently organized and easier to navigate than Disneyworld seems to be these days.
And I don’t want to sound like Grumpy. It’s still a magical place. If you don’t mind feeling like an ant inside an ant farm that was built by people who didn’t spend enough time asking themselves, “Will the ants like it?”
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Jun 9, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET I love conversations about ideas worth scaling. Many of the comments to my BW column on biotech disruption are from industry stalwarts fighting to defend the industry. Thinking about how biotechnology can help enable a transformed health care system seems worth talking about.
I am not criticizing either the pharmaceutical or biotech industry or any of its companies and executives that work hard every day trying to bring forward life extending and life saving drugs. I have the utmost respect for the industry having spent nearly my entire career in and around it. I am suggesting that the current blockbuster industry model may have served its purpose and can be changed by the disruptive potential of biotechnology. It is this disruptive potential that will enable us to get under the buzzwords of personalized medicine and begin to understand how a new and better health care system can work.
It is predictable that existing industry players will fight to strengthen their relative position in the industry and to sustain the current industry model. I don’t criticize them for that. I expect it. I can hear Clay Christensen saying that companies and industries don’t disrupt themselves. He is so right.
Our current health care system is unsustainable and until we experiment and scale new system approaches that take advantage of technology to put the patient and citizen at the center of a well care system our current system will expand out of control.
I have lived and worked in every nook and cranny of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry over a 30 year career and have helped design and build capabilities at the function, company, and industry scale.
One commenter mentions Leigh Thompson from Lilly. Leigh was a friend of mine from old Lilly days and one of the smartest people I have ever known. We worked together during the latter stages of clinical and regulatory development as well as on the U.S. launch planning for Prozac. Leigh was remarkable and is sorely missed. He was indeed a big proponent of internal systems to fail fast for product and clinical development programs. I know Leigh would be an active participant in today’s conversation about the need to experiment with new business models and industry systems. He saw the promise of biotechnology and knew the industry would have to change to take advantage of it. He was a world-class innovator.
I had a front-row seat during the early days of the biotech industry. I remember like it was yesterday touring the very first industry scale production facility for a recombinant DNA derived product, human insulin (Humulin). As a road warrior consultant over too many years I worked with many project teams building new capabilities for both pharma and emerging biotech companies. Some even harbored early hopes of leveraging biotechnology to create new platforms for discovery and development for personalized medicine. I was in many great discussions about the difference between a platform and a product business model. In every case the siren call of the blockbuster industry model reinforced by a VC exit strategy dependent on either an IPO or Big Pharma acquisition won out. It was predictable and companies did the right thing to maximize shareholder value.
There is a lot more technology development work needed to enable personalized medicine but biotechnology has advanced enough for us to demonstrate how a system can work in several specific diseases and care path areas. All key levers and stakeholder roles must be on the table to fully explore available system options. At the non-profit Business Innovation Factory we are creating actionable lab platforms for exactly this kind of experimentation.
There has been a lot of talk about business models built around outcomes that deliver better care for less money. The hypothesis has always been that drugs are cheaper than other types of health care and should be used, more not less, to save the health care system money. The theory goes that if you squeeze the toothpaste tube in one place it only pops up in another. Only looking at the entire tube not just squeezing all over the place will result in an opportunity to design and test possible new systems.
The pharma industry has never done particularly well at selling the “toothpaste tube” story and seems content working the current system for maximum return. The current blockbuster model is bringing continued consolidation and is not sustainable.
New business model discussions with industry friends that are open to the discussion and not defensive about the history and current position of the industry are always interesting. Discussions with the “lean against” crowd that don’t think the system has to change don’t go very far or last long. Most of this crowd just point at another silo in the rugby scrum as the source of the inertia. It is the fault of doctors. No, it’s the insurance companies, the hospitals, the government, the patients etc. Everyone points at everyone else as the source of the problem and nothing changes.
In the current health care system drugs, whether they are from chemical or biological processes, are treated as a cost center or one more silo to manage. The industry fights every day to make sure the silo is managed in a way that benefits the industry. Rules form the architecture that the industry operate and compete under including patent law, FDA regulations, and federal/state legislation. I don’t blame the industry for fighting for rules that are in their best interest. I am suggesting that we should at least consider that with today’s technology we can do better and should be testing new system designs to see what works and can scale.
The silver tsunami is coming as the first baby boomer turns 65 in 2011. We had better get on with exploring new system approaches before the current system crashes. I am proud of the industry I grew up in and want it to be an innovator and leader in shaping a new and better health care system. The patient is waiting.
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Jun 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET  The national health-care debate is many things to many business interests. To the biotech industry, it seems to be a matter of life and death. Makers of biotech drugs, which are derived by manipulating genetic material in living organisms, insist that their products must be patent-protected from generic “biosimilars” for at least 12 years. That would ensure monopoly prices, which the industry says are required to earn back their big investments in research and development.
To reform the U.S. health-care system, the government shouldn’t be creating a road map to biosimilars, however long the trip. Instead, it should open the floodgate to “biodissimilars” and to the personalized medicine options they will enable.
Biotech is a great U.S. innovation success story with the potential to be the disruptive force that makes personalized medicine possible. Personalized medicine creates remedies designed for your specific genetic makeup or condition and offers a path toward better, longer lives, and lower health-care costs. Unfortunately, the biotech industry has moved away from its disruptive potential and morphed into Big Pharma, adopting the pharmaceutical industry’s unsustainable “blockbuster or bust” business model.
Blockbuster BustBiotech executives will claim that they are different from the pharmaceutical industry. Don’t believe it. Just check out the overlap of their participation in the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers Assn. The biotech and pharmaceutical industries have locked into identical business models, both dependent on producing a steady stream of blockbuster products, or drugs that generate at least $1 billion a year in revenue. Blockbuster drugs offer a one-size-fits-all therapeutic approach—think Lipitor or Advair—and the antithesis of personalized medicine.
Today both industries are valued on Wall Street solely by the net present value of their product portfolios and compounds under development. In addition, the few biotech companies with branded productsmarket them exactly as pharmaceutical companies do. It works both ways. Check out almost any pharmaceutical company and you will find that it has fully integrated biotech platforms into its R&D capabilities. You can’t tell the difference between these two industries.
Initially, all new technologies are deployed as a sustaining innovation. Biotechnology is no different. As predicted by Clay Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, the pharmaceutical/biotech industry has deployed biotechnology tools and platforms in an effort to sustain its current blockbuster business model. Both pharmaceutical and biotech companies will fight to the death to wring out every possible blockbuster product from the current industry model. There is still money to be made—a lot of money, in fact—but the model is not sustainable.
Imagine needing to introduce three, four, or five products every single year each with more than $1 billion in market potential. That is the scale it takes to compete in the drug industry today. This daunting challenge will force another wave of consolidation as a few very large companies try to feed the voracious appetite of the blockbuster monster. Everyone else will be either a niche company or a development company feeding products to the few behemoths left standing.
Fail Faster!I don’t know how long it will take, but all of the disruptive innovation theory and supporting evidence predicts that the current industry model will fail. We need it to fail faster because the patient is waiting. Reform, as currently contemplated, is little improvement. Legislation under consideration today does nothing more than extend access and marginally increase the efficiency of our current system. Costs will continue to escalate out of control and outcomes will not improve.
Biotechnology has the potential to change the way we understand and treat disease. It has the disruptive potential to put the patient at the center of a new system with individualized diagnostic and treatment approaches. As such, it could deliver better care for less money.
To fix the U.S. health-care system, we need to design a system where incentives are realigned and the roles of the players—doctors, patients, insurers, hospitals, etc.—are reconfigured to create a “well-care” system that puts the patient in charge and at the center of the system. Biotechnology can help enable the transformation to personalized medicine, but not until we take better advantage of its disruptive potential.
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon May 26, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET  Innovators leap across learning curves exploring new ways to deliver value the way Tarzan swung from vine to vine across the jungle. Innovators thrive on the steepest part of the learning curve where the changing rate of learning is the greatest. Watch how innovators manage their careers and lives. They always put themselves on a steep learning curve. I know I always have. Staying on a steep learning curve is the most important decision criterion for any career decision an innovator makes. Along the way innovators make many career moves none of which are primarily about titles, offices, number of direct reports, or money. Innovators believe those things are more likely to happen if they keep themselves on steep learning curves. Every choice to take a new tack or direction is about the next learning curve. Innovators are self aware enough to know they do their best work while learning at a rapid rate and are bored to tears when they aren’t. Steep learning curves matter most.
I have known many people who sacrificed learning curves for money and other extrinsic rewards and in the long run most ended up unhappy. In my experience innovators who follow their passions and are in it for the learning always end up happier and making more money anyway.
The tricky part for innovators is to know when to leap from one learning curve to the next the way Tarzan traversed vines to move through the jungle. Innovators get restless when any curve starts to flatten out. Instead of enjoying the flat part of the curve where it takes less effort to produce more output, innovators get bored and want to find new learning curves where they can benefit from a rapidly changing rate of learning. If the goal for innovators is to get better faster the only way to accomplish it is to live on the edge where the knowledge flows are the richest. It isn’t the most comfortable place to be. It’s understandable most suffer the pain of the steep part of the learning curve, not for the kick of learning, but to finally reach the flat part of the curve. No urgency to move to another curve once the plateau is reached. It is comfortable on the flat part of the curve where the workload lessens and rewards are only available to those that have paid their dues and put in the time to climb up the curve. Yet innovators seem to extract what they need from the steep part of the curve and leap off to do it again moving on to the steep part of the next curve just when the effort required to further climb the current curve gets easier.
Read the rest of…
Saul Kaplan: Innovation Lessons From Tarzan
By RP Nation, on Thu May 22, 2014 at 3:00 PM ET  As one door closes, another one opens. Sometimes it takes a few shakes of a lamb’s tail. Sometimes it feels like you’ve tredged up the hill both ways in the snow, barefoot, exposed, vulnerable, in shark-infested water with no life preserver, on an island by yourself with a volleyball for a best friend….
Wait. Too much. Dial it back. Sometimes I get so excited to tell the similar tales of endearment and struggle I was raised on by my (founding) father(s) that I get too ahead of myself. I also remember that although we share the foundation of struggle, our stories and generation gaps, so to speak, fill the holes. They pave a way of evolution for the tykes that come next. That in spite of our differences, we share the same principles. We raise and are raised to fight. We fight to make this world a better place.
That said, I can only speak to unemployment in this day in age, and that is what I’ve been. Unemployed. You feel like a bright, eager, talented, little twerp. You feel so passionately about pouring yourself into your career and being the best and the most. You feel so much feeling that when the checks stop, the spirit leaves you. You hate the phrase, “The glass is half full” because you are drained by being a drain of resources, knowing you can be a source that recharges the economic battery. Wanting to do that. Feeling that. Lots and lots of feeling in our generation…
And sharing. Pouring it out in public, looking for dignification.
I have been one of the lucky ones. I posted an article here on The Recovering Politician about my laments of being unemployed, and within ten minutes, I had multiple responses. People reaching out to help. People reaching out to learn how they could help. People as conduits. People offering to learn more about me in an effort to hire me directly. People that had known of my struggle, but when pen came to paper and a Word document met a blog, felt too, the existence of empathy – generational gaps and all.
That article was my own personal white flag. I thought that before I had done so, I had reached my bottom. It wasn’t until I wrote those words and exposed my feelings that I truly felt like it was time to make the climb. It was then I realized I didn’t have to climb alone – up the hill, both ways, in the snow, shark-infested waters…yadda, yadda, yadda. It was time that I changed “feeling” into acting.
As soon as I acknowledged I needed help in the most public and Gen-Y way possible, my digital smoke signals got picked up by the captain of a major vessle.
I am so pleased to announce that I am no longer unemployed – and haven’t been for some time. Two weeks after I posted the first article, I sat down to have simple, genuine dialogue that would pave the way for a brand new journey. Walking hand-in-hand with the most surprising of mentors in the most serendipitous of circumstances.
My Old Definition: Mad Woman Among the Mad Men. Advertising Agency World left me cold, bitter, ill-adjusted, unrefined, crass.
 My New Definition as a Work In Progress: Polished Professional Woman, deemed so by her peers, her predecessors, succeedors, family, friends, and mentor: Shelia Bayes.
I have been taken under a wing of a strong, female mentor. As much as I have been taken under a wing, I am also being taken very seriously. I have a full glass if I choose to partake. I also have the responsibility of filling the cup. I plan that, the time I spent wallowing and feeling pitiful about how eager and passionate I am, that I am overdue to have this cup runneth over. For myself – for the company I am proud to be an ambassador of – and – for the people willing to take a chance on me when I was sailing uncharted, scary waters.
I think big. I dream big. I fill my heart and my hopes with nothing but…big. I am the quintessential millenial with big hopes and big dreams. I would be kidding if I tried to state anything less.
So, as one chapter closes, another one opens. Thus is the beauty of life. I said in closing of my last article: “Career, life and love are like great bourbon. They’re fun when they’re young, but there’s something sweet and powerful when they get a little age on ‘em.”
“Oh, and they’re more of a commodity too. Because they’ve grown to become something very special. The days of boxed wine and cheap seats are over for this gal. At least that’s the metaphor. I will be drinking boxed wine and looking on from the nosebleeds until I find a job that soothes the pockets…and then lines them….”
Well, folks? Career seems to be shaping up to be beautiful medley of foundation, confidence and passion, coupled with the good old fashioned molding from those who take a special interest in raw, unpolished, mouthy pieces of (art)work. Boy, she’s got her hands full. Pat her on the back when you see her, will you?
****
I close with the same phrase as before, with subtle differences: “Love? I assume that may be next. Life? Well that’s what I’ve had all along. I won’t be waiting for wrinkles to become special. This is one thing I’m confident of; a sweet gift I do have in my half-empty pocket that is sure to surprise.”
UPDATE: Here’s to lining pockets, wrinkles in time – not on faces; faces that smile, smiles that ignite. Here’s to a remix to ignition, a new definition, and yes, if anyone asks? We DID start the fire.
Here’s to fires that burn so brightly you can see them from space. Here’s to opportunity, whether it be from failure, honesty, success, or flat-out digital SOS smoke signals. Here’s to sweet, simple, serendipitous moments and the spirit for life that can manifest again and burn so brightly – for a little twerp like me – ready to take things on with vigor. We have a new captain, a charted course…and we are full steam ahead. That’s so stinking cool. Oh, life…aren’t you full of stories. You wanker, you.
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon May 19, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Nooks and crannies are important to both English muffins and innovation.
I haven’t been able to get a picture of a lightly toasted Thomas’ English muffin with butter and strawberry preserves oozing into those marvelous nooks and crannies out of my head. Maybe it’s because I’m resisting the temptation while on one of my frequent short-lived diet and exercise delusions. More likely it’s because of a story that caught my eye last week about an executive who left the company (Bimbo Bakeries, I’m not kidding) that makes Thomas’ English Muffins to join the arch enemy, Hostess Brands. It seems that Bimbo is suing to prevent the executive from joining Hostess because they suspect he has absconded with and will divulge the secret of how to make English muffins with perfect nooks and crannies.
You heard right. The row is about protecting the trade secret for creating nooks and crannies in an English muffin. Bimbo claims there are only seven people who possess the trade secret and of course the executive leaving to make Twinkies is one of them. I find it hard to believe that only seven people have the know-how necessary to create great nooks and crannies. It sounds more like a marketing ploy. But what do I know. I thought it was just using a fork to split the muffin! Think about it. Samuel Bath Thomas left England headed for America in 1874 with a recipe for his muffin baked on hot griddles. Surely in over 135 years more than seven people have accumulated the know-how for nooks and crannies. And how are we to know if Samuel Thomas didn’t borrow the formula before heading for fame and fortune in America. Not to accuse Samuel Thomas of pilfering the recipe and starting an English muffin revolution but it does sound eerily similar to Samuel Slater escaping England with the trade secrets for the textile mill, which of course started the U.S. Industrial Revolution!
No surprise that nooks and crannies are the secret to a great English muffin. Those air pockets allow for both perfect toasting and a natural repository for the aforementioned butter and jam. So Bimbo Bakery goes to incredible lengths to protect its know-how. Instead of recipes they use codebooks. Employees are on a need to know basis and only have access to the pages of the codebook necessary to complete their specific task. They are shielded from the information and people in departments working on other tasks. It doesn’t sound like a formula for innovation but then maybe Bimbo isn’t interested in innovation. Perhaps they are just obsessed with protecting the status quo for the nooks and crannies of English muffin making.
Nooks and crannies are also the secret to great innovation. Innovators thrive in nooks and crannies and refuse to stay in any silo barred from communicating across them. They know freely exploring nooks and crannies is the only way to get better faster. Nooks and crannies increase the surface area an innovator can expose to the best knowledge flows and new ideas. With more surface area comes greater exposure to and absorption of a broader range of ideas, experiences, and capabilities. A thoughtfully comprised network of unusual suspects increases an innovator’s surface area. Social media platforms are just nooks and crannies on steroids to an innovator.
Innovators also know that most important innovations emerge from the nooks and crannies between silos, disciplines, and industry sectors. It is by combining and recombining ideas and capabilities from across silos that innovators create new ways to deliver value. System solutions for the big social challenges of our time including education, health care, and energy, will only be found if we get more comfortable in the nooks and crannies between us. Pass the strawberry preserves.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue May 13, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
Pardon this brief political and commercial announcement about the importance of supporting our local industries.
Let’s make sure we don’t ever let another state become the Horse Racing Capital of the World.
Sure the jobs and economy are… important.
But imagine what we could end up with instead the first Saturday each May (see below). There’s not a lot to choose from if we lose this proud and well deserved title. Do we really want to become, say, the “Car Touching Capital of the World?” That could be our only option. Think about it. Florida will never concede Dog Racing Capital of the World.
Could we even take that title from Shanghai?
I’m not sure we could. At a minimum we probably couldn’t get Toyota to be the sponsor after last week’s announcement. It’s just a lousy fallback position to have.
It’s just important we think about the consequences of taking our key Kentucky industries for granted. Taking something for granted is usually the last thing you do before feeling really dumb about whatever you are taking for granted.
Car touching, admittedly, has some superficial appeal. But I don’t think it has the potential to have the long proud history comparable to being The Horse Racing Capital of the World.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a few years in the future that post time is about to be announced. For car touching. Billboards featuring car touching images would dot our highways. But it just wouldn’t be the same picking out a special hat or tie for this new annual event.
You get the idea. I’m not sure I’d open my eyes either.
You can open your eyes now, though. And enjoy the grandeur of yet another Kentucky Derby.
Let’s make sure we keep it that way.
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