Author: Alec Fearon

Posted on

A recent newsletter from Plymouth Social Enterprise Network introduced its board members. I was interested to see that one of these – Dave Kilroy – is an NHS Digital Innovation Associate and that, according to his LinkedIn profile, in this role he is involved with LiveCode, OpenEHR and the Code4Health platform.

OpenEHR was at the heart of a project I managed from 2001 to 2003; our purpose was to demonstrate the feasibility of creating an Electronic Health Record  by gathering together clinical records and messages already produced within the care pathway. Although widely used in research programmes, at that time OpenEHR had not been deployed in many operational systems. There are now more, one of them being OPENeP – a paperless prescribing and medications administration (ePMA) system being implemented by Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust.

Posted on

Teacher workload: three key issues

In 2014, the DfE launched a ‘workload challenge’ seeking information from teachers about their day-to-day challenges. About 34,000 teachers responded.  Three key issues emerged: marking; planning and resources; and data management. Independent review groups (led by serving teachers) looked further at these issues and reported in March 2016.

Reviewers found that marking was taking precedence over all other forms of feedback, with little evidence that this improves pupil outcomes. Marking should be “meaningful, manageable and motivating”.

Reviewers found that the act of creating a lesson plan doesn’t necessarily add anything to the quality of the lesson. Governing boards should ask senior leaders what expectations they place on staff and ask them for the evidence that any requirements around lesson planning have an impact on pupil outcomes.

Reviewers highlighted the temptation for senior leaders to collect data simply because they can – data for the sake of data. Governing boards have a role in making sure that the data collected is fit for purpose; ask senior leaders what data they are collecting and why. It may be that the data would be useful, but a second question should be whether the time collecting it outweighs its usefulness.

Posted on

Due diligence for research papers

Derek Lowe writes here [link] about “the sudden demise of Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers“.  He explains that these are publishers whose journals “publish verbatim whatever gets sent in, despite promises of peer review and editing, as soon as the funds hit their bank account“.  The list was controversial and the reasons for it’s demise are not public. However copies have been retrieved from the internet archives, for example here [link]. The problem with a blacklist such as this is that publications deserving to be on it keep mutating and growing in number, so it is difficult to keep track of them. An arguably better approach is to focus on publishers and publications that can be trusted, a list that will change more controllably. Helpful sources for locating these include: Continue reading “Due diligence for research papers”

Posted on

Three categories of entrepreneur

Carland & Carland (1997) noted three categories of entrepreneur:

Macro-entrepreneur Risk-taker seeking self-actualization. Innovative and creative, and highly driven despite extreme wealth. More willing to accept debt and equity financing in order to grow their businesses rapidly.
Micro-entrepreneur  Includes the smaller family businesses with only a few employees. These individuals could be described as those who work to live, rather than live to work. They are also typically much more casual about their businesses.
Entrepreneur This group falls in between the other two groups and is less likely to take risks, as their goal was to preserve the business. Would likely include the accidental entrepreneurs, whose businesses developed gradually out of a hobby or a particular interest.

 

Posted on

Three kinds of fit for a business model

Reference: blog post in Strategyzer in Nov 2014

Nabila Amarsy argues that one should strive to achieve three kinds of fit before executing a business model. These are:

“1. Problem-Solution Fit – when you have evidence that customers care about certain jobs, pains, and gains. At this stage you’ve proved the existence of a problem and have designed a value proposition that addresses your customers’ jobs, pains and gains. Unfortunately you still do not have clear evidence that your customer really care enough about your value proposition enough to buy it.

2. Product-Market Fit – when you have evidence that your value proposition is actually creating value for customers by alleviating their pains and creating the gains they desire. Your product or service is beginning to gain traction in the market and you’ve gone through the long and iterative process of running tests that have validated and invalidated the various assumptions underlying your value proposition.

3. Business Model Fit – when you have evidence that your value proposition is embedded in a profitable and scalable business model. You have done the laborious back and forth between designing a value proposition that creates value for your customers and a business model that creates value for your organization. You have found the right business model that delivers optimal profitability.“

Posted on

Some snippets about customer loyalty

Attitudinal loyalty: the sense of loyalty, engagement and allegiance.

Behavioural loyalty: repeat purchasing, giving recommendations or referrals.

Loyalty antecedents: product or service quality, customer satisfaction, trust.

Brand loyalty: influenced by perceived level of product or service quality, the perception of value for money and customer satisfaction with the purchase.

Customer engagement outside of product or service use has an influence, eg non-transactional activities such as word of mouth, recommendations, customer-to-customer interactions, blogging, and writing reviews. Continue reading “Some snippets about customer loyalty”

Posted on

Where are the new jobs going to come from?

Thomas Friedman, talking at Intelligence squared about his latest book Thriving in the Age of Acceleration discussed the question of where the new jobs are going to come from. His answer: for many generations we worked with our hands; in the modern era we began to work with our heads; but in the age of acceleration we are going to work more with our hearts.