Business Models Beyond Profit - Social Entrepreneurship Lecture

Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is in many ways a Guru within Business model design. Check out this SlideShare Presentation about social entrepreneurship. Very impressive indeed:

Business Models Beyond Profit - Social Entrepreneurship Lecture

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Service Design - a short introduction

Customer interaction and practical beauty are some of the terms applied to this new and exciting concept. Service design pioneer Birgit Mager at the Köln International School of Design, uses the following working definition:

Service design…
• Aims to create services that are useful, useable, desirable, efficient, and effective

• Is a human-centered approach that focuses on customer experience and the quality
of service encounter as the key value for success

• Is a holistic approach that considers in an integrated way strategic, system, process, and touch-point design decisions

• Is a systematic and iterative process that integrates user-oriented, team-based interdisciplinary approaches and methods in ever-learning cycles

Also check out the 'eye candy'- presentation below. I really have to learn to make such elegant presentations myself :) Uploaded by Yves Pigneur on Slideshare:

Service Design

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Explaining the theory of disruptive innovation in an innovative manner...

A new, special friend

Nexi is a robot developed by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She visited the Milano Senior Center in Melrose this week to allow her developers to conduct research on how she — the robot — interacts with seniors.



Jun Ki Lee, a researcher with the Personal Robots Group at MIT’s Media Lab in Cambridge, said Nexi is an MDS robot — Mobile, Dexterous and Social — meaning that she can move around on wheels (mobile) and pick up objects (dexterous). The “social” aspect comes from Nexi’s unique face, which is modeled after an actual human face, complete with eyes with eyelids, eyebrows and a mouth — all of which helped her land at number 17 on Time magazine’s list of the “Best Inventions of 2008.”

Truly amazing!

Business Model Innovation in the Public Sector

Check out the slideshare below. It demonstrates how visualization of a business model can highlight essential improvement possibilities. It is interesting to reflect on how technological infrastructure changes can dramatically innovate a public sector business model.

Business Model Innovation (public sector dilemma)

View more documents from Harry Verwayen.

Robotic baby seal for elderly

It is little, cute and cuddly, loves being petted and responds to touch and speech by moving and making sounds. It even has a beneficial effect on people with dementia. Paro is the name of the creature, which is neither dog, cat nor rabbit. Paro is a seal - a robotic seal from Japan!

This original pet is a stuffed animal robot, developed by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Engineer Takanori Shibata said Paro prototypes are being tested in Japan and Sweden at nursing homes, and with autistic and handicapped children. "We know that pet therapy helps physically, psychologically and socially, and Paro does the same thing for people who are unable to care for a live pet," said Shibata. Paro may soon be tested in children's hospitals in the United States. It's expected to cost between $2,500 and $3,000.

What is Catalytical Innovation?

Professor Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School has increasingly been recognised as a guru in the field of innovation theory. His "The Innvoator's XYZ" books prove his concept of disrupive innovation in a very exciting and cheerful manner and make them an interesting read indeed.

The main focus for his disruptive innovation theories is often directed towards private sectors. However, Christensen has also adapted business based theories in the context of social change - coined "Catalytical Innovation". Interestingly, the principles of disruptive innovation may support organizations who aim at creating new solutions to social challenges. Christensen, Bauman and Heiner have identified several criteria for catalytical innovation:

The Five Qualities of Catalytic Innovators:

1) They create systemic social change through scaling and replication.
2) They meet a need that is either overserved (because the existing solution is more complex than many people require) or not served at all.
3) They offer products and services that are simpler and less costly than existing alternatives and may be perceived as having a lower level of performance, but users consider them to be good enough.
4) They generate resources, such as donations, grants, volunteer manpower, or intellectual capital, in ways that are initially unattractive to incumbent competitors.
5) They are often ignored, disparaged, or even encouraged by existing players for whom the business model is unprofitable or otherwise unattractive and who therefore avoid or retreat from the market segment.

Interesting stuff!

The Best Robots of 2008

To fully understand the rapid development in robot technology it can be useful to view videos that demonstrate their abilities. The link below shows some extremely entertaining and fascinating robot demonstrations in several categories: Soccer, humanoid, self assembly, music, ornithopters, exoskeleton and rugged terrain.

Enjoy!
--> The Best Robots of 2008

The Need for Service Innovation in Home Care Services

The need for service innovation will most likely be very apparent in home care services as the number of elderly will increase sharply over the next decades in many OECD countries. In Norway for instance, there will be twice as many people over 80 years by 2035. Moreover, the aging population will probably have increased need for health and care services, while access to labour most likely will decline. The way that care services are designed today, the need for assistance may eventually exceed the labour which is available. To address the challenges above – care technologies, such as smart house technology, body sensors, tracking technology and robot technology, could prove to be essential to provide a dignified care in the future.

In addition to the technological advances, new service models must be developed that can incorporate new and emerging technologies to provide more efficient home care services in the future. Customer interactions must be adjusted with appropriate adjustments in infrastructure of the value models. Consequently, this research aims to investigate the following research question:

How can new service models improve service provision in home care with the utilization of new and emerging technologies?