Pflogging ... in pursuit of accelerated value creation

The term health care reform has diverse meanings for the many stakeholders involved in the US health care system. The underlying issues associated with implementing such reforms are quite complex, but pressures for reform are high. In 2005 alone, the United States spent more than two trillion dollars on health care, or over $7,100 per person, and are growing at over twice the rate of growth of our overall economy. Government and private insurance fund about 80 percent of those costs, and the rest largely comes directly (rather than indirectly) out of our pockets. About a third of these expenditures occur within hospitals; clinicians get another third, and the rest is spread across nursing homes, prescription drugs, and the costs of administering our insurance system.  read more »

In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel challenges traditional thinking on the practice of management. He argues that management innovation is needed since more traditional approaches - centered on control and efficiency - no longer work in a world where adaptability and creativity are increasingly crucial to business success. He argues that current management challenges most frequently are focused around how to accelerate change, get everyone involved in innovation, and engaged to give their best - and none of these goals can be achieved very effectively (or sustainably) in a command and control-oriented environment. I couldn't agree more.

Hamel offers a somewhat traditionalist job description for a manager, which is to:  read more »

The Future of Management author: Bill Breen Gary Hamel rating: asin: 1422102505 binding: Hardcover list price: $26.95 USD amazon price: $17.79 USD

I had a chance to tour the Kennedy Space Center just before Thanksgiving, and was able to provide input and ideas in pursuit of an updated CAPPS contract for NASA's new Constellation program. The completion of the $130B International Space Station's construction is in sight, and is expected by 2010. Unfortunately, the originally planned life of the station only envisioned operational support through 2016, so the ISS's long-term role and cost-effectiveness for scientific research is uncertain, and has been significantly reduced from original plans.  read more »

Enter Amazon's new Mechanical Turk service offering, which promises to take these same ideas - scalable solutions, predictable costs, and quality management - and apply them to managing the workflow through and across large pools of on-demand talent. read more »

A good summary of the growth of Wikipedia is here. A discussion about using similar technology within corporate environments is here.