Motivation and incentives related to creative work

How do we become more motivated? Higher salary? Maybe to a certain extent. According to Dan Pink, there are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Check out the fantastic video below - called 'The surprising truth about what motivates us'. Now, that's what I call a creative presentation!

Exploring Service Models for Technology Induced Innovations in Elderly Care

I know I haven't written for a while, so here comes an update after my visit to UC Berkeley.

In addition to writing mandatory assignments I have been developing the problem statement for my PhD project – with related hypotheses. For the time being, the problem statement concerns the lack of knowledge and conceptualization related to services in business model constructs. Much of the business model literature still applies the product logic where the user is considered as a passive receiver of value. Consequently, the inclusion of the user’s infrastructure in the value creation logic of business models is seemingly in need of rigorous development. I have therefore spent time on conceptualizing a model where the business model of the provider and user is integrated as part of a service system. By considering two business models, one is compelled to consider the infrastructure (skills, processes and network) of the user as a critical component of a service development endeavor.

In order to test out my hypotheses, technology induced service innovations in elderly care will be the empirical focus of attention. The emerging resource challenges related to the care of elderly as “baby boomers” head for retirement are enormous and indeed call for collaborative efforts. In order to provide sound innovations which might aid care workers and concurrently increase care quality a deep understanding of user needs is required.

A pilot project is now being organized to collect data in Østfold, Norway. The idea is to identify the most important problems in private homes where elderly need help. The focus is set on understanding problem parameters such as: importance, frequency and frustration related to different ‘jobs to be done’. By applying a framework where we are able to understand the infrastructure of the user we might be able to identify accompanying technologies and business models more precisely in the context of Norwegian elderly care.

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.