A Better Education For Inmates

Wesleyan University, a selective, private liberal arts college in Connecticut, has expanded its academic programs to a local prison and is offering courses to inmates. While earning a degree from Wesleyan University while in prison is unobtainable, instructors of the courses insist that the same rigorous standards held in the classrooms on campus are held in the prison.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/college-ivy-sprouts-at-a-connecticut-prison/?hp

Here is my argument for this as a disruptive innovation. Wesleyan Professors are teaching the same courses to both inmates and traditional students at its main campus. From the article, instructors state that standards are identical and that "an A in prison is the same as an A on campus and that the inmates will be entitled to use the university’s career services upon release." However, traditional students at Wesleyan University pay approximately $51,000 for the course (tuition, room, and board) while the inmate's education is supported by public and private prison education funding. Wesleyan is taking a risk in its position as a reputable university. With college budgets shrinking, its interesting to see a university add such a program when the return on investment of educating criminals (many who will likely not re-enter society until many years down the road) is very low.

Wesleyan University maintains a good reputation as an institute of higher education through rigorous admission standards. For inmates, these standards mostly apply. What does the value of a degree from Wesleyan University hold when a once convicted criminal, released from prison, is out in society applying for jobs with "Wesleyan University" atop their resume? If an inmate, having taken classes in prison, was released and applied to the main campus of Wesleyan University in order to complete their degree, should they be given the same opportunity for admission that a honor-role high school gradate applicant would? As a parent of a student, or student yourself, would you want convicted criminals of serious crimes on campus everyday?

Please don't misunderstand me and think that I am against education in our prison systems. I am a huge advocate for rehabilitating the incarcerated. But I do see this as a move within education that could undermine a major concern for colleges and universities: prestige. This is an innovative position to take for a prestigious university when the role of educating inmates typically rests with community colleges and separate prison education initiatives.

So You Think You Can Innovate?

Bring your innovative ideas to the chapter planning meeting for the

Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM)!

Tuesday, November 17th

7:15-8:15pm

Commons Towers 107

Refreshments will be provided

(aka free pizza!)

****The attendee who brings the most people to the meeting will win a Starbucks giftcard!****

A bridge is not a bridge…

In my approach to bridges, the only purpose of them has been associated with taking me to the opposite point from where I start. Well, it seems that bridges can be more than the merely connection of two points as you can see in Copenhagen, Denmark by artist Olafur Eliasson. He is considered for some people as a demi-god of art for his fabulous projects such as the Weather Project in London's Tate Modem, the New York City Waterfalls and other places, and, this time, he has decided to create something different that will “slows them [people] down, and creates a meandering public space”, that is projected to be ready on 2012. You can see the difference:

I kept in mind the discussion of our last two classes, especially for the key questions that Malone (2009) introduces about collective intelligence: who and why, what and how. I felt curious about Eliasson's work and I was fascinated to find out that he has a studio in Berlin, which can be conceived as a laboratory for spacial research. He is not alone in this enterprise: there are 30 people in his team (engineers, architects, craftsmen and assistants) “who conceptualize, test, engineer and construct” large projects. But also, it is interesting to know why Eliasson has given this orientation to his work. He talks about “it makes a difference whether you have a body that feels a part of a space rather than having a body which is just in front of a picture”. Furthermore, he says that “having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility”. I expect I can follow his work, it has opened a new dimension for me.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/olafur-eliasson-puts-art-hold-designs-bridge

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/olafur_eliasson_playing_with_space_and_light.html

The Apple Tablet and Steve Job's Legacy

The Apple Tablet is a potential saving grace for print media. What is it you ask? Well it’s so new and top secret that even Apple is not discussing the Apple Tablet. According to Wired, “the tablet remains a technological unicorn -- a mythical beast whose beauty, elegance and singularity we can only imagine”.

What need does the Apple Tablet fulfill for print media? According to the article, “Many have defined the problem -- people are abandoning old media for new in droves -- but nobody has come remotely close to figuring out the formula to monetize this audience in a way that ensures the range and level of news and periodical content and offers the rich experience advertisers will pay a premium to be part of”. Jobs has a flair for innovation, and as he considers his legacy with Apple, “saving journalism would be the Holy Grail”.

In order for the Tablet to succeed, “The device will have to make readers forget -- really forget -- the printed page. E-readers, for all that they do, don't do this yet”. E-readers such as Kindle have much invested in them and Apple is studying the trends of this and hoping to adapt it to fit the Tablet.

Part of the innovation of the Apple Tablet is that “the unveiling of an Apple Tablet will have to be accompanied by a fundamental policy change. Apple will have to let publishers roll the dice on pricing and cede control of the customer relationship it has jealously guarded”.

While it seems like a tall order to Apple to succeed in this innovative venture, “Jobs' resume is one long treatise on paradigmatic yet somehow pragmatic innovation.” He brought new life to animation when he joined Pixar. While at Apple, Jobs “Apple fixed their business with an iTunes/iPod ecosystem and a one-price-fits-all policy that made sure not all music was going to be provided by pirates”, thus changing the way music was shared over the internet. Another example of Job’s innovative streak is with the iPhone. Apple was able to bust through a “mobile phone market controlled by a tiny band of hide-bound telcos and handset makers”.

As one ponders Job’s legacy was he truly a great innovator, or was he at the right place, right time with the right people to succeed in these ventures? Did he capitalize on the failures of other innovations and just improve them?

Is the Apple Tablet something that will be successful and change the future of print media? Is it truly innovative or just improving upon things such as the Kindle?

Since not much is known about the Apple Tablet, other than it has enormous potential to change an entire industry, I think it is a truly innovative device that will succeed and build off the successes off things such as the Kindle. Steve Jobs will add to his legacy as a great innovator.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/09/apple.tablet.jobs/index.html

A Litl voice in a loud world

In his TED speech in February of 2003, Seth Godin spoke in the wisdom of selling to early adapters. His argument was that in a world in which we are flooded with advertising, that it makes sense to target those precious few who may actually be listening to what you’re saying. For most innovative new products the logic seems sound, but it seems like there is at least one situation in which this may not be true. That is when the innovation is actually a simplification or refinement of current technology to make it appeal to the masses. How would Henry Ford have launched a car for the common man in today’s noisy market? I think the Litl may be a good modern example. The Litl is a small home computer that is not a laptop, desktop or netbook. The idea is that most home computer users only access web content, to surf the web or watch videos. To better meet this need the Litl has no hard drive, a super simple operating system, and is designed to be able to blend into a home’s ascetic. It also has an HDMI output for attaching to a TV and playing hi-def videos. The main selling points are ease of use, the non-computer ascetic, and a lack of excess features. This is the exact opposite of what early adapters would typically want, which is the whole idea. How then, do they get heard and noticed? I really don’t have an answer to this. I think I would love the Litl,, but for two reasons. One is the $700 dollar price tag, another is that you can only buy it online. I can’t see it and play with it before I buy it, although they are offering a money back guarantee to add incentive. The founder has completely self funded this project because he wants the company to be able to tolerate more risk than investors would tolerate. I think this is well advised. I think Godin’s theory is incomplete. Certain companies earn a voice even in a crowded market. If Apple launched this product, I think we would all have heard of it, and I might have one. As it stands now, I doubt I’ll ever own a Litl.

Innovation in Employee Compensation - Efficient but Unfortunate

Our country is fairly quietly experiencing a major transition in the ways that professionals are compensated. The shift at hand causes services to be measured in more discreet increments than ever. The new ways that professionals are paid can be seen in medicine, law, and banking. Furthermore, the reforms in each undoubtedly will cause major change in the nature of each industry.

Putting aside the healthcare reform discussion for a moment, doctors currently are paid on a procedure-by-procedure basis, a system which some argue creates a strong economic incentive to over-prescribe procedures. One suggested answer so far has been to compensate physicians on an "episode-by-episode" basis, which would mean paying, for example, for a few months of cancer treatment at a time. The idea is to provide less incentive to over-prescribe, while staying away from simply paying one price for all healthcare.

Similarly to paying for "episodes of care," many law firms are switching to flat-fee arrangements. This fee-for-service approach means rather than paying attorneys by the billable hour, companies will pay a single price for services rendered. An example of fee-for-service would be paying one price for bundled tax service rather than paying by the hour. The shift will likely hit corporate attorneys first, and will almost always result in reduced earnings. Some companies have reported anticipating 15-20% reductions in legal expenses.

Investment Banking has taken national spotlight lately, especially with regards to employee compensation. In the wake of our economic collapse, G-20 (The Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors) has put forth new compensation guidelines. According to a Wall Street Journal article about the ways one company has adjusted to satisfy G-20, "the guidelines focus on shifting bankers' pay away from annual cash bonuses toward a compensation model based on deferred stock and the potential for firms to claw pay should performance suffer" (Wilson). Again, the emphasis is on being paid for no more than the necessary services - in the case of investment banking, only paying for services that create profit.

New, industry-wide pay systems are clearly innovative because they represent new ways of solving an old problem - namely, how to properly pay for services rendered. Each industry's approach to this problem has its own origin: purely from governmental regulation in the case of investment banking, from perceived societal needs in the case of medical care, or from general market forces as seems to be the case in the legal industry. Whatever the cause, though, each industry has an expressed need for new ideas about employee compensation. I think these innovations in employee compensation strive to increase efficiency throughout the economy. However, as an individual interested in two of the three professions mentioned above, I am not very enthusiastic about these changes.

Goldstein, Jacob. "Beyond Fee-for-Service: Paying Doctors for ‘Episodes of Care’." Web log post. WSJ Health Blog. Wall Street Journal, 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. .

Koppel, Nathan, and Ashby Jones. "'Billable Hour' Under Attack." Web log post. WSJ Law Blog. Wall Street Journal, 24 Aug. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.

Wilson, Harry. "Commerz Revamps Pay System." Wall Street Journal 11 Nov. 2009: C2. Print.

Volunteering and Tourism…Voluntourism!

Are you familiar with the idea of voluntourism? For me, I encountered this strangely coined word for the first time in a recent article in the Time Magazine--Silver-Spoon Voluntourism: Luxury hotels offer day trips to help vacationers connect with communities. Voluntourism, also known as Volunteer Vacations, means doing voluntary work while you tour. Only after Googling did I realize that voluntourism is nothing new. In fact, it was recognized by the Travel Industry Association of America as a growing trend in tourism back in 2005. According to the latest poll by travel web site Travelocity, the percentage of travelers planning to volunteer during vacations in 2007 nearly doubled from the previous year, jumping from 6 percent to 11 (forbestraveler.com). Following traditional travel agencies and some NGOs, luxury hotels now jump in line and start to offer voluntourism trips to wealthy clients. Designed to connect tourists with the communities they visit, many short-term voluntourism projects involve hard labor. For instance, the Mandarin Oriental in Miami offers a two-night package in which guests spend a morning removing invasive plants and assisting with recycling programs in Everglades National Park. But unlike programs such as Habitat for Humanity that pair weeklong projects with unglamorous accommodations, “hotel-organized excursions generally take up no more than a day, and participants can cap off the experience back at the ranch with $15 cocktails and a night on high-thread-count sheets.”And do guests get discounts for being do-gooders? They don't. In some cases, hotels charge participants an extra $40 or more to cover transportation and other costs associated with their manual labor.

Having trips with a heavy focus on voluntary services sounds interesting. But is it innovative at all? Do you think it innovative for luxury hotels to offer voluntourism excursions? Presumably, participants in luxury hotel-organized trips are rich people who care about local communities.Thus so-called silver-spoon voluntourism claims another goal, which is to link local charities to potential donors. Unsure of how well this social function can be served,I see offering voluntourism trips as a clever move for luxurious hotels to address emerging consumer needs-just like adding another hotel amenity. In this regard, it is a well-received innovation, or even a Blue Ocean strategy--it creates a less competitive market for voluntourism where ordinary travel agencies can't easily enter because of its high-end nature.