Blog

Growth Champions - new book, out now

2012-04-10T17:30:27Z

A book that I co-authored has just hit the stands. It is Growth Champions: The Battle for Sustained Innovation Leadership, which was just published by Wiley, and is now available on Amazon. It was a collaborative effort, headed by innovation consultant par excellence Tim Jones, who runs the Growth Agenda, and the Future Agenda.

In the book Tim provides a holistic overview of many of the different innovation theories, and more important, practices, and then has 10 chapters of case studies of the Growth Champions themselves. I worked on Amazon and Google and found it fascinating as they - in my opinion - are two of the most interesting companies in the world of technology today. If I could pick a core competence to excel at, it would be what they do best: 'using data to get ever closer to customers'. The chapter explores the way each company implements that goal in very different ways, and the rest of the book is filled with data-rich, contemporary snapshots of some of today's leaders in consistently delivering growth. Hopefully worth a read!

Two new Fordcastle conference presentations: TedMed & Quantified Self

2012-01-19T15:22:32Z

Here are summaries of presentations from Fordcastle's attendance at two recent conferences in the mobile and health space: TedMed and Quantified Self Europe.

TedMed 2011 - Fordcastle Report

Quantified Self Europe, Nov 2011 - Fordcastle report

View more presentations from Stephen Johnston

New York City: a health-tech hub by 2020?

2011-12-19T04:44:57Z

Photo: Flickr / Moriza

Two of the biggest growth trends over the coming decades are health and technology, the epicenters of which are generally considered to be Boston and Silicon Valley respectively. So, is it even reasonable to ask whether New York can be a ‘health-tech hub’ by 2020, as a number of people have been doing recently? For this discussion, health tech is considered a loosely defined term that incorporates health IT, mobile health and many of new consumer-empowered solutions connected with the ‘Health2.0’.

New Vodafone report on mHealth

2011-11-08T22:14:05Z

Vodafone has just released a report on mHealth as part of its Health Debate. The report explores ways in which mHealth has succeeded, and ways that barriers to adoption by users still remain. Despite the considerable interest and coverage in the space, many of the solutions are still at the small scale. Fordcastle was asked to be part of the team, and we wrote about mHealth services in developed countries, and some common factors for success.

Finally, I understand what's wrong with Google+

2011-10-13T19:43:16Z

There's something delicious about peanut butter manifestos and this latest one from Google is a corker. Here's Google+ nailed:

Rip Rowan - Google+ - Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about?:

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone.

Behavioral economics comes to health care

2011-10-12T03:53:21Z

One of the most interesting developments in the search for disruptive solutions that lower costs and improve quality is the arrival of behavioral economics to the field of health. People who can help companies design systems to nudge populations in the right direction will be increasingly sought after. From this week's Economist - Getting on the treadmill:

Perhaps surprisingly, the most interesting incentives have been developed in an emerging economy: South Africa. The Discovery group, based in Johannesburg, has crafted a programme called Vitality that applies the air miles model to health care. You earn points by exercising, buying healthy food or hitting certain targets

Nokia finally getting into mobile health

2011-09-26T20:48:38Z

This is something we talked about a lot during my time there, but it never really took off. India is a natural place for them to start as they had a market share in excess of 75%, but as Android takes off there, it may be getting a bit late for them to develop a natural social network through their user base.

Nokia Announced Mobile Health Initiative:

New Delhi: Nokia India, in association with Arogya World, has announced a diabetes prevention mobile health initiative in India. With this Nokia aims to reach one million Nokia Life Tools consumers in rural and urban India in the next two years through text messages on diabetes awareness and prevention available in multiple languages. This initiative will use mobile phones as a vehicle to combat chronic non-communicable diseases like diabetes.

Reverse innovation goes green

2011-09-21T22:42:12Z

One of my favorite innovation concepts is 'reverse innovation' - where smart ideas get developed first in developing countries, because they have additional constraints that require more creative solutions. This week's Economist refers to a recent report that identifies the same thing happening in the field of sustainability. I'm rather optimistic about our planet's ability to support 9bn people by 2050 without becoming a desert wasteland, and this kind of story makes me feel ever more so.

Schumpeter: Green growth | The Economist:

A new study by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) identifies 16 emerging-market firms that they say are turning eco-consciousness into a source of competitive advantage. These highly profitable companies (which the study dubs ?the new sustainability champions?) are using greenery to reduce costs, motivate workers and forge relationships. Their home-grown ideas will probably be easier for their peers to copy than anything cooked up in the West. The most salient quality of these companies is that they turn limitations (of resources, labour and infrastructure) into opportunities. Thus, India?s Shree Cement, which has long suffered from water shortages, developed the world?s most water-efficient method for making cement, in part by using air-cooling rather than water-cooling. Manila Water, a utility in the Philippines, reduced the amount of water it was losing, through wastage and illegal tapping, from 63% in 1997 to 12% in 2010 by making water affordable for the poor.

Economist article on mHealth - it's getting real

2011-09-14T23:29:24Z

I had missed this when it came out in November last year. Mentions some of the companies I'm now familiar with - Dalberg Advisors, Weltel (not named, but it was their SMS HIV study that was the first data point) and Welldoc. I've been working in the mobile space for almost ten years, yet I've never heard the pun "M-powered" until now. Thanks to the folks at St. James.

Quoting Bill Gates, they agree that the next wave of innovation is going to come not from the west, but from developing countries.

Wireless health care: M-powered | The Economist:

No doubt a dose of scepticism is warranted about m-health. But given the growing evidence of its usefulness and the new business models from emerging markets, there is reason for hope too. As Mr Gates pointed out this week, ?Middle-income countries are where most innovation in health care is going to come from.?

Fluorescent tattoos: The latest innovation in a long, long journey towards non-invase blood monitoring

2011-07-25T02:26:11Z

I was sent this story about a novel tattoo for detecting glucose in blodd, from bostinnovation.com:

Northeastern professor Helen Clark and her team have created a tattoo that can track sodium and glucose in the bloodstream using a modified iPhone.