Mickey Mouse innovation

Original post:  June 15, 2015

Perhaps the greatest challenge with technology is finding creative ways to merge the fantastical new capabilities with existing applications. There are so many possibilities, but it can be horrifically expensive to retrofit aging platforms. This is especially true if you have significant capital invested in what you already have!

When cutting-edge technology is discussed, you may think of obvious candidates like Google or Apple. You may not associate innovation with Disney. To me, that speaks to how well Disney has integrated their technology. It seems almost like a seamless extension of the existing platform instead of a wholly different experience.

Disney has spent over a billion dollars on technology. Perhaps the most visible example of this is in its smart bands.

This article from Wired helps explain how it works:

The MagicBands look like simple, stylish rubber wristbands offered in cheery shades of grey, blue, green, pink, yellow, orange and red. Inside each is an RFID chip and a radio like those in a 2.4-GHz cordless phone. The wristband has enough battery to last two years. It may look unpretentious, but the band connects you to a vast and powerful system of sensors within the park. And yet, when you visit Disney World, the most remarkable thing about the MagicBands is that they don’t feel remarkable at all. They’re as ubiquitous as sunburns and giant frozen lemonades. Despite their futuristic intentions, they’re already invisible.

Part of the trick lies in the clever way Disney teaches you to use them—and, by extension, how to use the park. It begins when you book your ticket online and pick your favorite rides. Disney’s servers crunch your preferences, then neatly package them into an itinerary calculated to keep the route between stops from being a slog—or a frustrating zig-zag back and forth across the park. Then, in the weeks before your trip, the wristband arrives in the mail, etched with your name—I’m yours, try me on. For kids, the MagicBand is akin to a Christmas present tucked under the tree, perfumed with the spice of anticipation. For parents, it’s a modest kind of superpower that wields access to the park.

....

It’s amazing how much friction Disney has engineered away: There’s no need to rent a car or waste time at the baggage carousel. You don’t need to carry cash, because the MagicBand is linked to your credit card. You don’t need to wait in long lines. You don’t even have to go to the trouble of taking out your wallet when your kid grabs a stuffed Olaf, looks up at you, and promises to be good if you’ll just let them have this one thing, please.

This is just what the experience looks like to you, the visitor. For Disney, the MagicBands, the thousands of sensors they talk with, and the 100 systems linked together to create MyMagicPlus turn the park into a giant computer—streaming real-time data about where guests are, what they’re doing, and what they want. It’s designed to anticipate your desires.

Which makes it exactly the type of thing Apple, Facebook, and Google are trying to build. Except Disney World isn’t just an app or a phone—it’s both, wrapped in an idealized vision of life that’s as safely self-contained as a snow globe. Disney is thus granted permission to explore services that might seem invasive anywhere else. But then, that’s the trick: Every new experience with technology tends to gently nudge our notions of what we’re comfortable with.

There are substantial business benefits as well. The "Fast Pass" system which allows users to skip the lines on rides three times per day also helps Disney.

It also allows Disney to optimize employees. The goal was to create a system that would essentially replace the time spent fiddling with payments and tickets for moments of personal interactions with visitors. The MagicBands and MyMagicPlus allow employees to “move past transactions, into an interactive space, where they can personalize the experience,” Crofton says. What started as a grand technology platform has inevitably changed the texture of the experience.

Here is a link to the complete article:  Disney's $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband | WIRED

Would you trust a robot?

Original post:  Jan 27, 2015

Would you trust a robot to pick out a wine for you?

If you did and it picked out a bottle that you didn't like, would you give it a second chance?

As technology is inserted into new areas of our lives, we will have to trust more and more decisionmaking power to fancy algorithms. Are we ready for the loss of control?

A recent study showed that it isn't quite as simple as placing blind faith in our computer overlords:

In a paper called “Algorithm Aversion: People Erroneously Avoid Algorithms After Seeing Them Err,” forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the University of Pennsylvania researchers Berkeley J. Dietvorst, Joseph P. Simmons, and Cade Massey asked subjects to consider the challenge of making a difficult forecast: predicting either MBA students’ academic success or states’ airline traffic. They could choose to tie what they earned to either the prediction accuracy of a human (usually themselves) or that of a statistical model. Before making their decision, they first saw the model’s performance on several trial runs, or saw the human’s performance, or both, or neither.

When they had not seen the statistical model perform on the trial runs, the majority of subjects bet on the model being more accurate in the money-earning round—they chose to tie their earnings to its performance rather than the human’s. But if they had seen it perform, the majority bet on the human. That’s despite the fact that the model outperformed the humans in every comparison, by margins ranging from 13 to 97 percent. Even when people saw the performance of both the model and the human in the trial runs, and saw that the model did better, they still tended to tie their winnings in the earnings round to the human over the model. They were more accepting of the human’s mistakes.

These findings surprised the researchers. They had expected people to shy from algorithms at first and then change their minds after seeing their superior performance, Dietvorst says. Instead, he says, they “found completely the opposite.”

One of the study authors speculates that people are less likely to trust computers when it touches on their health or their ego. We may feel that human  judgment can provide superior advice by weighing variables no computer can possibly comprehend. That belief may not actually be supported by the data:

There can be a real cost to this aversion. A 2000 meta-analysis summarized 136 studies comparing predictions made by experts with those made by equations, in areas including medical prognosis, academic performance, business success, and criminal behavior. Mechanical predictions beat clinical predictions about half the time, while humans outperformed equations in only 6 percent of cases. Those are judgments with significant implications for our lives, and it’s a genuine loss to ignore a system that can give us much more accurate answers.

A possible solution might be trying to incorporate some user feedback to help return a level of control to the user:

The researchers at Penn are now exploring why people abandon algorithms so quickly. There may be a hint in the fact that subjects judged the statistical model as worse than humans at learning from mistakes and getting better with practice. Perhaps people could learn to trust algorithms more if they were told that computers can learn. Balfoort says that once you inform customers that WineStein gets better with feedback, “you get a satisfied nod.”

In current work, Dietvorst is finding that giving people the chance to alter an algorithm’s forecast even a trivial amount increases their adoption of it over a human counterpart, from less than 50 percent to more than 70 percent. People “don’t want to completely surrender control,” he says. Ironically, the user’s adjustment usually makes the computer forecast slightly worse, but at least it gets them to use it.

What do you think?

Here is a link to the full article:  Why we need to learn to trust robots - Ideas - The Boston Globe

Bulletproof anti-stink workout wear

Original post: Jul 30, 2014

Technology is working its way into a number of unexpected area. One of the latest battlefronts is in workout wear. As manufacturers look to differentiate products in a crowded marketplace, some are trying a different tactic than the usual price cuts leading in a race to the bottom.

This blue shirt is from Lululemon. It features a technology they call Silverescent:

  

Lululemon has been using a technology it calls Silverescent for several years, which executives enthusiastically describe as “anti-stink.” While it does not promise to keep you smelling like peaches while running a marathon, the company claims that materials in the thread kill odor-causing bacteria in the garment itself.

These shorts from Reebok feature Kevlar and Cordura. Kevlar is the super-strong synthetic material commonly used to make bulletproof vests. Cordura is often used in luggage and car seats because it is so tough.

One way to protect this technology is through patents:

In many cases, these fancy fabrics are protected by patents, owned by companies that develop them, like Invista, which holds a patent on a chlorine-resistant additive aimed at making swimsuits last longer. Apparel brands more typically hold design patents than patents on the technical side, according to Susan Scafidi, who teaches fashion law at Fordham University. Lululemon has developed a reputation for aggressively patenting its wares, she said. It has 36 approved or pending design patents and three utility patents to protect new inventions or materials.

There is an even stranger new innovation coming to market:

And then there is Anke Domaske, of Hanover, Germany, who founded Qmilk, which makes thread out of sour milk, using the milk protein casein.

“You dry it to a protein powder that looks sort of like flour,” she explained. “Then imagine a machine that looks like a big noodle machine. Add the flour, add some water again, then you have the dough,” which then gets forced through holes that are thinner than a strand of a hair.

Qmilk fibers are resistant to bacteria and fire, Ms. Domaske said, and because the process relies essentially on just milk and water, the result is compostable. She says the strands feel like silk.

And you can eat it.

“I’ve been eating it with strawberries,” she said.

Here is the link to the full story:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/business/workout-clothes-with-high-tech-twist-sell-briskly.html?ref=business

The secret to innovation? Winning hearts and minds....

Original post:  Nov 14, 2013

This post is linked to part one.

As the article goes on, Dr. Gawande discusses simple innovations to combat infant mortality in rural hospitals. One of the simplest methods is to keep newborn infants warm. While high-tech incubators exist, the most effective tactic is using the mother's own body warmth. Yet even this simple advice is consistently ignored.

The author goes on to discuss why people struggle to adopt new ideas. He writes:

The most common approach to changing behavior is to say to people, “Please do X.” Please warm the newborn. Please wash your hands. Please follow through on the twenty-seven other childbirth practices that you’re not doing. This is what we say in the classroom, in instructional videos, and in public-service campaigns, and it works, but only up to a point.

Then, there’s the law-and-order approach: “You must do X.” We establish standards and regulations, and threaten to punish failures with fines, suspensions, the revocation of licenses. Punishment can work. Behavioral economists have even quantified how averse people are to penalties. In experimental games, they will often quit playing rather than risk facing negative consequences. And that is the problem with threatening to discipline birth attendants who are taking difficult-to-fill jobs under intensely trying conditions. They’ll quit.

The kinder version of “You must do X” is to offer incentives rather than penalties. Maybe we could pay birth attendants a bonus for every healthy child who makes it past a week of life. But then you think about how hard it would be to make a scheme like that work, especially in poor settings....

Besides, neither penalties nor incentives achieve what we’re really after: a system and a culture where X is what people do, day in and day out, even when no one is watching. “You must” rewards mere compliance. Getting to “X is what we do” means establishing X as the norm. And that’s what we want: for skin-to-skin warming, hand washing, and all the other lifesaving practices of childbirth to be, quite simply, the norm.

In his eyes, here is the solution:

But technology and incentive programs are not enough. “Diffusion is essentially a social process through which people talking to people spread an innovation,” wrote Everett Rogers, the great scholar of how new ideas are communicated and spread. Mass media can introduce a new idea to people. But, Rogers showed, people follow the lead of other people they know and trust when they decide whether to take it up. Every change requires effort, and the decision to make that effort is a social process.

This is something that salespeople understand well. I once asked a pharmaceutical rep how he persuaded doctors—who are notoriously stubborn—to adopt a new medicine. Evidence is not remotely enough, he said, however strong a case you may have. You must also apply “the rule of seven touches.” Personally “touch” the doctors seven times, and they will come to know you; if they know you, they might trust you; and, if they trust you, they will change. That’s why he stocked doctors’ closets with free drug samples in person. Then he could poke his head around the corner and ask, “So how did your daughter Debbie’s soccer game go?” Eventually, this can become “Have you seen this study on our new drug? How about giving it a try?” As the rep had recognized, human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.

As we develop our own innovations, it will be important to keep this in mind. We must never forget the human factor in change management.

You've got a great idea. Now how do you get it adopted?

Original post:  Nov 13, 2013

I like to think that the world is logical. In this idealized version of reality, simply making the case for a good idea is enough. Everyone agrees that this new method is the right thing to do and it gains adoption. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Most of the time, the good idea itself is only the first step. Then comes the long slog of convincing those who are vested in the status quo that the change will be worth all of the disruption it takes to get there.

If you've ever sat in a monster traffic jam as they work to expand a freeway, you will know exactly what I am talking about.

Atul Gawande has another great article on this very subject in the New Yorker. "Slow Ideas" discusses how some (medical) innovations spread more rapidly than others. He opens with two clear-cut examples of revolutionary innovations in medicine:  anesthesia and infection control in surgery.

Anesthesia spread more quickly. Prior to its invention, surgeons were judged for their speed. Even minor procedures like tooth removal still required restraints and struggle. Once William Morton demonstrated the idea and Henry Jacob Bigelow published an account in a medical journal, the idea spread like wildfire. Within two months, the idea had already spread to London and Paris.

Despite this rapid uptake, there were still skeptics:

There were forces of resistance, to be sure. Some people criticized anesthesia as a “needless luxury”; clergymen deplored its use to reduce pain during childbirth as a frustration of the Almighty’s designs. James Miller, a nineteenth-century Scottish surgeon who chronicled the advent of anesthesia, observed the opposition of elderly surgeons: “They closed their ears, shut their eyes, and folded their hands. . . . They had quite made up their minds that pain was a necessary evil, and must be endured.” Yet soon even the obstructors, “with a run, mounted behind—hurrahing and shouting with the best.” Within seven years, virtually every hospital in America and Britain had adopted the new discovery.

Infection control took a more torturous path. It was the leading killer of surgical patients. It was so common that oozing pus was considered a sign of healing! Dr. Joseph Lister read a paper by Louis Pasteur about how microorganisms could cause fermentation and spoilage. He had an idea to use small amounts of carbolic acid to improve surgical infection rates. By 1867, he published the results of years of study showing that the common use of his method dramatically reduced the rates of sepsis and death. Despite these findings, his ideas faced a much colder reception than anesthesia. Gawande reports:

....The surgeon J. M. T. Finney recalled that, when he was a trainee at Massachusetts General Hospital two decades later, hand washing was still perfunctory. Surgeons soaked their instruments in carbolic acid, but they continued to operate in black frock coats stiffened with the blood and viscera of previous operations—the badge of a busy practice. Instead of using fresh gauze as sponges, they reused sea sponges without sterilizing them. It was a generation before Lister’s recommendations became routine and the next steps were taken toward the modern standard of asepsis—that is, entirely excluding germs from the surgical field, using heat-sterilized instruments and surgical teams clad in sterile gowns and gloves.

Why did one innovation have such an immediate impact while the other took decades to take root?

We'll discuss Gawande's insight into the answer tomorrow.
Here is a link to part two.

The link to the full article is in the title above and here:  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/07/29/130729fa_fact_gawande

Tick, tock

Original post:  Jul. 18, 2012

Analog clocks with the sweep-second hand sometimes are based on mechanical motion. That familiar tick, tock is a movie staple. That sound is etched in our mind and is a reminder of the constant passage of time.

Humans have improved timekeeping dramatically. When I was younger, clocks and watches would often have to be reset at least once a month or so to maintain some semblance of accuracy. Today, it's possible to buy cheap quartz or digital watches that may lose a second a year. Many models now work off signals from the national nuclear clock and are so accurate they might be off by less than a second over the course of a century! They will be accurate as long as they have some constant source of power.

When I think of technology, I think of relentless efficiency. I think of assembly line robots rhytmically repeating the same motions over and over again. I believe technology is great at taking a known process and making it better. Once humans defined what time should be, they set out making it as accurate as possible. There may be even better ways of getting slightly more efficient, but the difference between the new and the old is so small that it is probably not worth the effort.

As we continue to search for relentless efficiency, it may pay to remember the limits of technology. I use the example of my GPS.

My GPS unit is a fairly basic model. It stores information about millions of places and hundreds of thousands of streets across North America (including Hawaii). I can never aspire to know the streets in random town halfway across the country, but I am sure it may come in handy if I were ever lost in the backwoods of Maine. Despite my limitations, I can also do some things more effectively than that unit.

On my normal route into Boston, my unit will direct me to take Route 1 to get to the freeway. I usually take the back roads. While Route 1 is quicker by straight-line distance, it also has at least three major stoplights that invariably turn red just as I approach. Once you factor that into the equation, it can often be much quicker via the longer route. We've learned to ignore the disappointment in her voice as she says "recalculating" over and over again.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before the computers develop the ability to grab the wheel away from me....

We are not as different as we think

Original post:  Jan. 9, 2012

Yesterday, our family went to see the Pompeii exhibit at the Museum of Science. In an ironic twist, the ruins of Pompeii are in their condition because a disaster nearly two thousand years ago buried the city and preserved it until the eighteenth century.

My wife and I were amazed by the treasures. We were also pleasantly surprised that our two boys displayed remarkable patience and allowed us to linger as a family for over 90 minutes in the exhibit hall.

The picture above is from the exhibit. As I studied the details, I thought that this frescoe reminded me of some of the sketches of Leonardo DaVinci. Then I realized that he would not be born for about 1,400 years. I had always thought of the Romans as being relatively primitive (at least from an art perspective). I thought that the use of the vanishing point to give the illusion of depth wasn't invented until the Renaissance. You can clearly see that at least some artists over a millenia prior to that were well on the way.

There were other aspects of the exhibit that clearly reminded the viewer that these people were quite sophisticated and ingenious in their own ways. At Pompeii, there were fruits and vegetables from the Far East that passed through the thriving port city. Elaborate marble tables looked as if they were recently made and could be found in a regional antique store. There was even evidence of the doctors of the day splinting broken bones and suturing wounds.

Perhaps it is not so much that people have changed as much as our tools. It is difficult to imagine what our world would be like if we lacked the technology that undergirds much of our present economy. If those things were stripped away, we might actually be far less capable than these citizens of a long forgotten past.

It's not about the procedures, it's about the data...

Original post:  November 21, 2011

My work has moved from the world of commerce to the world of data. Information management is an amorphous subject. It can be molded and shaped in seemingly infinite ways. The data itself is valuable. What is even more valuable (and harder to quantify) is the correlation between the underlying information and knowledge.

I recently posted in another group about the invention of the microscope. The first microscope was fairly humble--not much more sophisticated than the spyglass from Sherlock Holmes. The true power was not in the instrument. Rather, the power was in the information that had always been latent but could now be analyzed for the first time. The ability to see complex animal structures opened up new pathways in science that literally could not have existed before the invention of the microscope.

Computers have an amazing ability to measure. Unfortunately, they are not really smart. They will do as they are told. We can record all kinds of information about a transaction--who purchased what and when. By itself, it isn't really interesting. However, if we notice that there are sudden unexplained spikes in the sale of N95 respirators, it could help us realize that there may have been an outbreak of a contagion like the swine flu in some area of the world. It is that analysis of the data that gives the underlying information so much of its power.

I wonder if we could use some of this type of analysis when it comes to the procedures that are powered by our products. If we had some type of database that could help record the results of the procedures where clinicians used our products, it might allow us to generate some surprising new insights. Those insights may be able to help provide objective evidence in favor of a new way of performing a certain procedure (or proof that an existing treatment is more or less effective than a baseline).

I'm not sure that this type of repository exists, but perhaps we ought to be thinking along those lines. If not, someone else might be glad to step in the breach.