The Internal Corporate Incubator

via alles-schlumpf on Flickr

Imagine if every firm had an internal center designed to incubate ideas and truly invest in the best ones.  In fact, I'm positive that super innovative firms like Apple or IBM have these programs, but I think every company should.  

The reason is because I recently saw first hand the power that an incubator has to launch a start-up from an idea to reality.  My colleague Marlo Struve and I had the pleasure of working with the Hub Seattle these past few months to facilitate the creation of a new accelerator program.  In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of an incubator,  "a start-up incubator [is] for people to connect, work, attend and produce events, run bootcamps, access funding and mentorship, source clients and co-conspirators, build campaigns, prototype and test products, and launch companies."  An "accelerator program" is like a boot-camp within the incubator designed to fast-track a select group of start-ups to new heights.  I can't say enough about how great it was to work with Brian Howe and Lindsey Engh from the Hub, as well as Rashmir Balasubramaniam from Nsansa and Luni Libes from BGI to design this program.

Going through the process of designing the requirements was incredibly educational - especially because the Hub is focused on social entrepreneurship rather than the typical tech start-ups that other incubators focus on, so it had to be entirely new.  Yet it awakened me to the potential for ideas to explode into reality while providing something as simple as a space to be collaborative.  And it made me realize that all major firms should create internal incubators within their own walls - including my own.  

As a consultant, I operate in markets that change direction at the speed of light.  Deloitte's shift index highlights that the firms that stay on top from year to year is changing faster than ever.  At Hitachi Consulting, we're already focusing on the next round of emerging markets for clients to enter and designing systems for measuring energy ecosystems that were previously un-measurable.  But we should never stop increase the flow of information because we are supposed to stay ahead of everyone else, so it is imperative that we create environments that facilitate innovation.  

We already do a great job at staying ahead of the market and continually provide solid strategic advice.  But imagine how much more could happen with an internal incubator.  Employees could propose new products, service offerings, solutions for un-addressed client challenges, internal web apps and technologies, marketing campaigns, even corporate strategies.  The best ideas would be voted on by internal "VC's" and the teams with winning ideas would be taken to training centers where they could go through a quick 4-6 week intensive accelerator program.  This would also have the additional benefit of transferring knowledge from one market to the other as teams from Seattle would ideally focus on different challenges that teams from London or Iberia.  

As I've stated before, the faster a company can learn to channel flows of information and remove any damns in its way, the better it will be at surviving the new world of change.  

The Enterprise Ambiguity Manager

Via Paul (dex) on Flickr

Facebook recently launched their new profile layout called "timeline". It replaces a user's wall on their profile page with a stream of information surrounded with context such as date, place, photos, "likes", and a host of other details. Although it was always possible to view a person's history, the previous layout primarily focused on the events of the moment, a snapshot of what is happening "right now". The new layout provides a way for viewers to see the "flow" of information over the course of the person's life with the context needed to understand how the individual evolved to the "right now".

This concept of understanding information flow is important for managing risk at a firm.  Deloitte Consulting highlights this concept in their "Shift Index" white paper, "[b]ecause of the rapid change, higher unpredictability and volatility...knowledge flows are a particular key to improving performance'.[1]

Yet before diving into the nuances of how this applies to risk, first it's important to understand how measuring information flow is even possible. "Big Data" has become one of the most talked about aspects of business performance analysis in the past year. As W. Brian Arthur argues in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article, the ability to have so much data comes from the exponentially increasing number of sensors being placed all around the world. Individuals are infinitely connected through multiple devices and indeed the entire planet is being wired to track celestial movements and small insects. These connections converge to create an "...unseen, underground conversation [that] is happening among multiple servers talking to other servers, talking to satellites that are talking to computers." [2] Arthur says this is literally creating a kind of "neural network" for the economy and providing a level of intelligence. He says "I’m not talking about human intelligence or anything that would qualify as conscious intelligence. Biologists tell us that an organism is intelligent if it senses something, changes its internal state, and reacts appropriately." [2] 

David Weinberger from the Atlantic then builds on this concept of a system and big data to underscore that with the amount of data being collected it no longer makes sense to understand component parts of a system but to look at the system as a whole. In that same article he says, "[a] new science called systems biology studies the ways in which external stimuli send signals across the cell membrane. Some stimuli provoke relatively simple responses, but others cause cascades of reactions. These signals cannot be understood in isolation from one another... The result of having access to all this data is a new science that is able to study not just 'the characteristics of isolated parts of a cell or organism'...but properties that don't show up at the parts level." [3]

Via Rebecca-Lee on Flickr

Now it's possible to see that there is a network of sensors providing an intelligence to our economic system that produces so much data that the whole can reveal more than the parts.  It is tempting to measure system reactions from the perspective of it's current context -- what it's doing "right now".  However, changes within a system are never static, they continually evolve and eventually turn into yet another reaction leading to yet another state and each state change is related to the ones preceding it. Just as big data forces us to look at the system instead of a single component part, we should also look at the flow of change over time and not just a component instant.  The neural networks mentioned earlier are carrying a vast amount of information and businesses that can harness the "flow" of information will be able to understand state changes in the system of our economy far better than others.  

Flow is essential to managing risk because it prevents strategies based only on current state factors that are going to rapidly change.  "The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos."[4]

Harnessing flow is so important that a new business function needs to be created, traditional enterprise risk management (ERM) is not enough. As Booz & Co. states, "[m]ost ERM groups focus their attention on the risks that businesses most frequently encounter — such as whether the enterprise is complying with regulations, suitably accounting for its activities, and operating in an ethical and legal manner — rather than on black swans."[5]

This new type of manager must not only understand the traditional components of risk, they must be able to thrive in ambiguity, they must be what I call an Enterprise Ambiguity Manager.  The EAM must know how to use information flow to do traditional stress testing of component parts such as the supply chain and the customer portfolio, but also be able to build a model that reveals characteristics of a stressed system and then zoom back out to observe the flow again.  Surviving the chaos requires plugging into the neurons to collect big data on a massively complex system and then tuning in to the flow in order to ride the waves of change.  

[1] http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/About/Catalyst-for-Innovation/Center-for-the-Edge/the-shift-index/index.htm

[2]  https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/The_second_economy_2853 
[3]  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/to-know-but-not-understand-david-weinberger-on-science-and-big-data/250820/#.TyCKnDKxERg.twitter 
[4] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/generation-flux-future-of-business

[5] http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11303?pg=0 

Global Trend: Mobile Banking

It's interesting to see that developing countries and high-tech countries such as South Korea are all massively outpacing the US and Europe in terms of mobile technology. One important trend has been the rapid proto-typing and evolution of Mobile Banking. To see examples of success, one only has to look at Keny's M-PESA who provides services to "9.5m people, or 23% of the population, and transfers the equivalent of 11% of Kenya’s GDP each year; [and] has inspired more than 60 similar schemes across the world.[1] Additionally, in "2010, mobile banking users soared over 100 percent in Kenya, China, Brazil and USA with 200%, 150%, 110% and 100% respectively".[2]

Mobile banking is really the intersection between 3 main themes happening throughout the world:

• Successful expansion of micro- financial services products to the world’s poorest communities has proven that the ~ 3 billion “unbanked” global population can be reached in a profitable manner. Further, research such as Portfolios to the Poor and others have shown a sophisticated knowledge of personal finance even at the bottom of economic pyramid and a willingness to go beyond simple savings and debt finance. "The biggest market potential, believes Swiss Re, is in the life and health insurance sectors with the commercially viable market numbering some 2.6bn people with daily incomes of between $1.25 and $4. Swiss Re estimates the premium income potential of this income segment at $33bn".[3]
• The rapid expansion of mobile technology in only the last decade has brought 2.5 billion people online enabling a customer base of 1.1 billion mobile bankers by 2015 [4] . Solar powered cell towers, wifi, and other technologies enable even remote places to be connected.
• The search for new markets by all major firms from P&G to Citigroup and the promise of double digit growth in emerging markets has resulted in new and more remote distribution channels, new understandings of rural needs, and large amounts of academic data to guide investment decisions. 

For firms that wish to move into this market, important questions arise around partnership or ownership. In the USA for example, Google is trying hard to launch Google Wallet to allow consumers to use their mobile phones for purchases in stores. Google is a software company, not a financial services institution (FSI) and yet they are pioneering this technology. However, doing so requires partnerships with manufacturers such as Samsung for special hardware, Citi and MasterCard for financial products, Sprint for access to telecom networks, and many other partnerships along the way. And the entire process has been fraught with resistance from major institutions such as Verizon[5] and rumors have said PayPal, Apply, Amazon, and Facebook are all on their way to developing competing systems.[6] In other countries, it may simply be easier for an FSI to simply create the software in-house depending on regulation or even the availability of existing services. In fact, the lines are beginning to blur so much between what a firm categorizes itself as and what products it offers, that it could be said that an FSI now also has to think of itself as a technology company.

There is no doubt that this trend will continue to propagate at incredible rates. The opportunity for customer convenience combined with cost reduction for firms is impossible to pass up. Here is a brief timeline of the action so far:

A BRIEF TIMELINE:

• Pre 1999 SMS based banking in US included ability to check savings account balance and recent transaction history.
• 1999 – WAP internet available for mobile phones, European banks launch internet banking.
• 2003 – Vodafone uses grant from the UK to develop mobile money transfer tech platform M-PESA in Kenya. Launches in 2007 as is the gold standard for proving it can be profitable.
• 2009 – Zain launches mobile money transfer in Kenya.
• 2009 – Telenor Pakistan launched mobile banking solution.
• 2009 – Syngenta Foundation uses M-PESA to launch mobile property (farm crop) insurance in Kenya.
• 2010 – Dutch-Bangla launches first mobile banking in Bangladesh.
• 3/2011 – MTN and Hollard Insurance launch mobile life insurance in Ghana.
• 7/2011 – ZONG launches mobile accidental insurance in Pakistan.
• 9/2011 – British American Insurance (4th largest insurer in Kenya) launches low-cost accident insurance in Kenya with Safaricom (Vodafone) and Equity Bank (JV now called M-KESHO) using M-PESA.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/16319635
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_banking
[3] http://www.vrl-financial-news.com/wealth-management/life-insurance-intl/issues/lii-2011/lii-257/micro-insurers-turn-to-technol.aspx
[4] http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/02/prweb3553494.htm
[5] http://techland.time.com/2011/12/28/looking-forward-to-2012-the-continued-demise-of-cash/
[6] http://technorati.com/business/article/google-fighting-for-our-wallets/

5 Things a Company Can Do To Stay Ahead

It used to be the case that businesses didn't have worry about strategy, it was enough to simply make a product.  Today's businesses however need a strategy that can pivot incredibly fast.  Below are only a few of the current practices that allow leading businesses to stay ahead.  

• Strive for higher quality products. Quality has always been a competitive advantage but in today's market it is possible to imitate everything from smart phones to cars within a matter months.   Patents and complex manufacturing materials do not provide the shelter they once used to and therefore quality is truly elevated to being the defining feature of a market leader.  
• Part of providing higher quality products is to offer a portfolio of services or products within a single product.  An even better way to think of this is as a platform with add-on capabilities.  Just like a computer operating system is a platform for building software applications on, a business can be a platform for building on top of.  IBM was able to successfully implement this strategy by divesting its single-serving commodity products and then launch their Smarter Planet technology.  They have created a platform for large entities such as cities and corporations to monitor resource usage with no end to the number of nodes that can be built on top of it.  And, by purchasing PWC's consulting practice they are also able to manage implementation, maintenance, and innovation.  
• Offering many services within a single product allows a business to enhance customer experience through frequent touch points.  Today's mobile apps and games are fantastic examples of platforms that offer new maps, new abilities and features, and other add-on capabilities for the user.  However, this also has the effect of providing an interaction between the vendor and the customer. Interactions are important for many reasons such as making the company more relatable and "human" to customers, remaining at the front of a customer's mind through weekly or daily interactions instead of annually (or some larger interval) during product launches, and listening to what customers are saying[1] which in turn leads to faster product innovation, quicker responses to crises, repeat business, and a more comprehensive profile of individual customers.  Establishing a direct connection to customer is essential. 
• Maintaining this level of customer service while growing an ecosystem of products is impossible if internal policies are too tight or if internal information flow is hindered.  A business that successfully implements the above strategy is one that isn't afraid to experiment. Google is often recognized as a leader in product experimentation with their large R&D budget, 20% time for employees, and investments in everything from solar energy to self driving cars.  Yet they stand out as a company that isn't afraid to launch an idea, sometimes only half baked, see where it goes and quickly kill or reinforce it.  The important part of getting this right is creating spaces for creative workers to experiment, having leaders that know how to provide just enough structure to channel that creativity, and then a system for harvesting and promoting the best ideas.  As they say in the start-up world, fail fast and fail forward.  
• Finally, re-think the pricing models of the past.  Today's online businesses have proven that freemium models can and do work, Amazon is proving that selling the hardware below production costs will payoff when customer's purchase everything that feeds into it, and newspapers are slowly working through the mechanics of digital distribution.  There is little that still works in this world "because it's always been done that way".

[1] http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Competing_through_data_Three_experts_offer_their_game_plans_2868?pagenum=1#interactive - Eric Brynjolfsson, 4 minutes and 42 seconds in.  

Business Use Cases for Gamification

Every 4 years the entire world comes together to watch the Olympic Games and if this isn't testament enough to the allure of games then consider that actual wars have halted in order to watch the FIFA World Cup[1]. Games have the power to capture the imagination and enthrall our competitive spirit, but what does it mean to translate these concepts into the business world? The concept of "gamification" is formally defined as "...the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences."[2]

Now, take game principles and apply them to real-world scenarios and you arrive at a much more interesting world to live in. Imagine a world in which people look forward to everyday activities (like work) as much as they look forward to playing games. And if you're unsure what this actually translates to in terms of time, according to Jane McGonigal, gamers have spent more than 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft and have created the largest wiki in the world on the game -- all voluntarily. Most adult games spend an average of 22 hours per week playing games, basically a part-time job.[3] This is an amazing amount of productivity. I am passionate about McGonigal's dream of directing these efforts towards solving poverty and inequality, but in the meantime, consider some of the other ways that gamification is being used now:

• Advertising: One of the most intricate and fascinating examples of gamification is Warner Bros. campaign for the movie Batman - The Dark Knight.  In the months leading up to its release an entire alternate reality game (ARG)[4] was created for fans that would play on the devilishly mischievous nature of the primary antagonist the Joker.  This included a Gotham Times newspaper with clues about the plot of the film, billboards and posters in different cities that tied together to contain clues about the film, and an army of websites including one for those who wanted to gather together to fight crime.  The entire campaign pulled in the likes of Hershey, Comcast, Nokia, Verizon, Kmart, MySpace, and other retailers to cross promote the film and brought together a world wide audience.  The website MovieMarketingMadness.com does a great job of walking through the various components.[5]  
• Solving diseases: The game Foldit is a highly publicized game in which players - usually non scientists - come together to identify the correct structure of specific proteins.  This is no easy task and the answer is unknown, but by working together to identify patterns, gamers were able to uncover the correct structure of proteins that are involved in HIV/AIDS.  The success of this game has led to a revolution in how scientists work to solve the diseases of our day.[6]  
• Crisis response: Brett Horvath outlines an excellent framework for the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative in which the small actions gamers are already doing in video games can be harnessed during crises (such as earthquakes and tsunamis) to organize massive amounts of information so that emergency responders can take action.[7]  
• Terrorism: NPR recently did a piece on how "Islamic extremist websites have borrowed from the gamification playbook by incentivizing participation in terrorist activity."[8] As frightening as this is, it adds weight to the argument that there are an unlimited number of scenarios for leveraging this concept.  

Now consider some of the ways that it could be used:

• Career performance management: It isn't hard to see how Google's new platform Schemer - a social network that allows users to share their personal goals - could be enhanced with a few additional game design features and then be implemented in corporations for employees to develop performance goals.  This wouldn't automatically make work more engaging, but with a little creativity and some employee freedom, an additional layer of fun can be added to what is otherwise often a boring and meaningless environment.   
• Talent acquisition and product development: The giant cosmetics company L'Oreal currently uses a game called Reveal in which prospective employees compete to launch a new product. The success of the player helps the company understand skill sets from talent across the globe and determine a potential career path.  This platform could easily be extended to existing employees to test product launches and marketing campaigns, or even to work together to design completely new products.  It's a scenario that engages employees and creates loyalty and camaraderie while also providing a platform for enhanced knowledge sharing within the firm.  
• Customer engagement: Loyalty programs have been trying for decades to enhance customer engagement and yet they often result in simply paying the customer (in points) to make specific purchasing decisions.  With the money and audience already in place through millions of credit card programs around the world, it wouldn't be hard to tweak these programs to make purchasing decisions more fun.  One of the most successful loyalty programs in the world, Nectar, is already experimenting with incentives not just for purchasing, but also for "green" behaviors such as riding a bike to work and bringing re-usable shopping bags to the grocery store instead of using plastic.  Imagine this being extended to entire sustainability initiatives across a company or across a nation.  
• Health and wellness programs:  Currently, many corporate health insurance companies act like loyalty programs and pay employees to make healthy choices such as exercising regularly or quitting smoking.  And while people do respond positively to monetary incentives, other virtual currencies such as positive feedback from other users, "like" points (think Facebook and LinkedIn), and Facebook credits can be leveraged as well.  The game SuperBetter[9] for example would be an excellent platform for encouraging healthy choices within a broader health and wellness program.  

It is important to remember that using game dynamics to enhance business practices is no easy task and the ideas above don't even begin to scratch the surface in terms of game dynamics and their application.  Decades of trial and error have yielded principles such as virtual currencies, meaningful work, competition vs cooperation, and specific mediums for engagement.  Audiences can be picky, not all programs will work, and subject matter expertise has to come from a team of diverse backgrounds.

Yet the potential for gamification to completely revolutionize the world in which we live is huge by changing our every behavior.  And, hopefully, this goes beyond just influencing consumers, but that the technology actually extends towards making us better people[10].  Whatever the changes, from problems of poverty to worker boredom to gaining a competitive business edge, there are both economic and philosophical reasons to implement these programs.

[1] http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1139402,00.html 

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

[3] http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

[5] http://www.moviemarketingmadness.com/blog/2008/07/movie-marketing-madness-the-dark-knight/

[6] http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/gamers-discover-protein-structure-relevant-to-hiv-drugs.ars

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIbDkUc2DXg  
[8] http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/may/06/the-gamification-of-jihad/transcript/
[9] http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/sep/30/gaming-back-health/
[10] http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html

Monetary Policy and Business

The US Federal Reserve (The Fed) recently announced that it would cooperate with the European Central Bank (ECB) to lower the borrowing rate of swaps in order to help ease liquidity in the European markets.  "The plan is to reduce the cost of loans between central banks -- these are known as liquidity swaps -- so that dollars are cheaper to obtain.[1]” In the face of uncertainty, local currency credit markets are tightening in the Euro area and the dollars are meant to help allow banks continue operations.

It is these types of actions by central banks that can have significant impact upon businesses and in fact have become more common since the start of the global recession in 2008.  Think of the Quantitative Easing programs (QE) that the US, the UK, and EU have undergone[2], or the US contention that China keeps its currency artificially low.[3]  

All of these programs cause exchange rates, and therefore the price of goods, to fluctuate rapidly and unpredictably causing significant impact to supply chains, payroll checks, loan repayments, capital expenditures, and other aspects of normal operation.  "In 2006, a survey ...found that 80% of corporations surveyed acknowledged that their businesses were exposed to significant foreign exchange risk. However, only 42% of these corporations indicated they employ currency hedging techniques to manage risk."[4]

Even worse, the recession provides an incentive for central banks to engage in these programs as a method of making domestic goods cheaper abroad in order to obtain growth, effectively "stealing" growth from other countries as those products become more expensive.  Occasionally, this may result in "economic warfare"[5] where countries react to the monetary actions of another.  Again, this means increased uncertainty for global firms and academic studies suggest that even in the best of times, currency risk is not compensated with higher returns.[6]

In order to mitigate these currency risks, global firms should:

• Perform a complete supply chain analysis.  Firms can use technology and business intelligence to identify key components of their portfolio of raw materials.
• Look for over-exposure of raw materials from one country or one currency and then analyze the risk of that currency due to domestic policy as well as economic stability.  Also included in that risk are ripple effects of policy/ economic variables in markets that the supply market is dependent on. 
• Identify materials in the supply chain that may be dependent on the value of a currency, like oil, that will require hedging strategies such as futures and options.   This may also be a good time to perform a sustainable supply chain analysis in order to identify raw materials that are risk from environmental impact or regulation. 
• Finally, if the firm itself is a step in someone else’s supply chain then they need to analyze how currency risk can affect their customer’s desire or ability to continue purchasing. 

• Perform a customer segmentation analysis.  Again, technology and BI can help a firm segment their customers to identify if large portions are in markets at risk and how it may impact sales.
• Identify overexposure to clients that pay with volatile currencies. 
• Just because customers may be using the same currency as the manufacturer, if the manufacturer’s customer’s customers are unable to operate because they are tied up by currency swings, then that will impact that manufacturer as well.

• Identify other parts of the firm that operate abroad or are dependent on foreign exchange. Many firms today have divisions, such as call centers and manufacturing plants, which operate in a different market than HQ.  Firms need to analyze the risk to these operations in the case of a significant currency price swing that may affect payroll or capital expenditures.   

• Look at the balance sheet to determine specific assets and liabilities. Firms that have borrowed money or lend money (even within their own firm but to divisions in other countries) face challenges with currency swings.  Using standard financial services principles, a firm can look for risk to Accounts Receivable or identify liabilities they may need to renegotiate. 

• Maintain extra cash on the balance sheet.  Successful companies in past recession have kept "3 to 10 times the normal level of cash assets on their balance sheet[7]", but those recessions were neither as deep nor as long, and did not have the increased volatility of system of tit-for-tat by central banks.  Maintaining extra cash is a necessity in order to prepare for shocks. 

• Hire a risk mitigation specialist.  Whether in-house or external, if the firm buys or sells goods in multiple countries, has operations, borrows or lends money, stores money in banks, or invests in multiple countries, then they need a specialist who knows how to use hedging tools such as derivatives.

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57333882/will-the-feds-move-to-help-europe-hurt-the-u.s./

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#After_2007

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14/obama-says-enough-s-enough-on-china-s-undervalued-yuan-as-hu-pushes-back.html

[4] http://www.slideshare.net/wugbp/currency-hedging-strategies-western-union-gbp

[5] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11608719
[5]http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Portfolio/dp/1591844495/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322972520&sr=1-1

[6] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currencyrisk.asp#axzz1fDgo3FY5

[7] http://www.npr.org/2011/11/28/142839186/should-ceos-have-to-buy-company-stock-with-their-own-money

New Client Flow in the Lumana Program

When I first arrived in Ghana, we had developed new metrics for evaluating potential clients, new surveys for villagers, and a whole host of new procedures.  As Cole, Karin, and I set out to begin spreading the word of our program and knocking on gates to deliver surveys, we ended up with a lot of data and long list of people wanting to sign up for loans. 

So, as those survey clients began to come to our office and asked about joining our microfinance program, we weren’t sure who to accept and how to group everyone.  How did we make sure everyone completed our education classes? How did we build in enough checks and balances that we could remain objective and protect ourselves?  Our “do-it-first-codify-it-later” approach worked for our first class of 30 clients.  But by the second class, we had well over 300 people showing up and enough teachers to run a class of at least 80.  This required a much more sophisticated design for managing the information in an efficient way and getting people through the application process as easily as possible.  So, I leaned on my Information Systems 460 class from the UW Foster Business School and created a process flow diagram. 

The first thing I mapped was a basic outline of the process a client went through from the time they met with us to the time they completed a loan cycle. I then identified the places that could make a person ineligible for our program (the circles) so we could create ways of helping them fix what they needed to and get back in.   I also needed to pinpoint all the decisions (diamonds) along that our Ghanaian Field Officers might encounter so we could provide adequate employee training. 

I broke it out into 3 phases, one for the application process, one for the education process, and one for the loan cycle process.  This provided a clear idea of how our clients “flowed” through our program, the strengths and weaknesses along the way, and became the foundation for points on our self-designed credit rating system. 

click for a larger image

Fund Manager of the Decade

In studying for a finance job interview, I was bushing up on fund managers and came across this Morningstar article listing the finalists for their “Manager of the Decade Award”.  Interestingly, they point out that “[o]f all domestic-equity funds… barely a third have positive 10-year returns.”.  Unfortunately, I won’t be graphing that data, but I did find a table in the article that was in desperate need of graphing.

*Click on a manager’s name and it will highlight the shape on the second graph. Or click on an asset class and it will display the managers.  Hover over the shapes to view details. 

Powered by Tableau

RT @nprNews: State Tax Revenue from Taxing Cocaine and Marijuana

I recently saw this tweet on NPR news about a study published by a Harvard economist.  However, the NPR article only contained a table of data, so I thought it would be fun to map it out.  Just as the article says, almost every state would profit more from taxing cocaine that from marijuana.  However, what might have been difficult to see in the original table is that most states are clustered together with roughly the same revenue amounts, but the real winners would be FL, TX, CA, and NY.  Please note the author mentions the number of users would likely rise if the drugs were legalized, but estimates don't account for this. 

*If you click on a state on the map, it will highlight the shape on the the other graphs.  If you click and drag your mouse on the scatter plot it will highlight the states. 

Real Time Economics

The Wall Street Journal has come out with a Real Time Economics page with “real time” graph of the US Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.  It’s nothing special in terms of data visualization, but it is interactive and I trust them to update it regularly. 

Social Media Stats

This is a great video that lays out just what kind of an ROI people are beginning to see.  Can't wait to see how this technology evolves in 2010.  http://ow.ly/1b3c5