You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Innovation Blog’ category.
Leadership in the Time of Plague
By Shlomo Maital
New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
Even though I live in Israel, I find myself glued to the TV nightly, watching New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s addresses and press conferences on CNN. This is true of much of America, including President Trump, who schedules his own TV appearances in order not to conflict with Cuomo’s.
As I watch Cuomo, I ask myself, what is leadership? What are the key qualities of political leaders, in the time of plague? Why is Cuomo’s leadership so effective, in contrast with Trump’s and other political leaders, including my own here in Israel?
A few tentative answers. First, blunt honesty. Cuomo tells it like it is. His warnings carry weight and credibility. (Compare with, say, Trump, whose superlatives, great, terrific, perfect, ring hollow – remember, if a leader lies to us once, we will forever doubt ANYthing he or she says in future). Second, command. Cuomo has done his homework and he’s smart. He commands the numbers and the complexity of the situation and explains it clearly to people. Third, compassion. Cuomo is a touch leader, pragmatic, hard-nosed. But when he talks about his mother Matilda, and saving her if needed, and saving all us old people, he shows empathy and sympathy. Leaders have that combination of toughness and soft compassion, used in every case where appropriate. Fourth, pragmatism. Use common sense, figure out what is needed, get it done, no excuses (the Singapore formula). Fifth, Speed. Forget platitudes, we need ventilators now, hospital beds now, masks now. Look, New York State is not Trump’s favorite. We suspect he has withheld ventilators from the nation’s strategic stockpile. New York State prosecuted Trump’s so-called charity foundation. But Cuomo has not libeled or criticized Trump by name – only Federal agencies – and it has paid off. So leaders know how to pick their enemies, with care.
I want to share an approach I’ve found useful, for myself. I’m 77 years old and made lots of mistakes in my lifetime. So have we all. And it is painful to look back on some of them. So, today, perhaps a bit too late, I use this approach: When I need to make a decision, or decide how to behave, I ask myself: Shlomo, OK, how will you feel about this decision, in 10 years, when you look back on it? Will your chest swell with pride or will your stomach turn over with shame? Use this, and you can’t go wrong. This is the time for leadership – not just by our political leaders but by every single one of us, challenged by the situation and faced with choices – to help others effectively or hunker down and care only for ourselves.
And in conclusion, consider these words by Thomas Paine, written during the bitter days of the American Revolution – times that try people’s souls.
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated” Thomas Paine 1776
Substitute “life” for freedom, as we battle the plague to save lives….
Small Acts of Kindness…Are Really Big!
By Shlomo Maital
This morning, I rose early and went to shop for food at our local small grocery store. As first in line, I got to shop quickly — Y., the shopkeeper, was strict in limiting contact between shoppers and only let one or two of us in, at a time.
When I exited, loaded the groceries in the car and returned the shopping cart, a truck driver spotted me; he was delivering sanitary supplies. He cautioned me gently to use gel on my hands because the cart handle could have been infected. I think he noticed my grey hair and was concerned. I did as he said, and then – he gave me a pair of rubber gloves from his truck, and some highly prized alco-gel. I wished him well, he did the same…
This small incident touched me deeply. This truck driver is in the front line – he sees many people daily, some may be infected…. And yet, he is concerned for my wellbeing, and he doesn’t even know me. Same for Y. the shopkeeper. He too is in the front line. He makes sure we are all well stocked with groceries, including fresh fruits and vegetables, which Israel has aplenty.
These tiny acts of kindness, perhaps not so tiny, are happening all over the world. They embody a Hebrew saying, “All Israel is bonded one to another”… and I interpret that to mean, all humanity. We are NOT socially isolated, we are spatially separated and socially bonded. Tiny acts of kindness prove it.
Thanks, truck driver. And yes, I will indeed pass it forward – and so will we all.
On Dealing With Isolation: From an Astronaut
By Shlomo Maital
Scott Kelly, Astronaut
Many of us are currently in one form or another of isolation. How to deal with it? Astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year on the International Space Station – a pretty lonely place, away from his family and friends, and loved ones. How did he manage it? Here are a few of his tips, from The New York Times:
When I lived on the International Space Station for nearly a year, it wasn’t easy. When I went to sleep, I was at work. When I woke up, I was still at work. Flying in space is probably the only job you absolutely cannot quit. But I learned some things during my time up there that I’d like to share — because they are about to come in handy again, as we all confine ourselves at home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Here are a few tips on living in isolation, from someone who has been there.
Follow a schedule: On the space station, my time was scheduled tightly, from the moment I woke up to when I went to sleep. Sometimes this involved a spacewalk that could last up to eight hours; other times, it involved a five-minute task, like checking on the experimental flowers I was growing in space. You will find maintaining a plan will help you and your family adjust to a different work and home life environment. When I returned to Earth, I missed the structure it provided and found it hard to live without.
But pace yourself When you are living and working in the same place for days on end, work can have a way of taking over everything if you let it. Living in space, I deliberately paced myself because I knew I was in it for the long haul — just like we all are today. Take time for fun activities: I met up with crewmates for movie nights, complete with snacks, and binge-watched all of “Game of Thrones” — twice. And don’t forget to include in your schedule a consistent bedtime. NASA scientists closely study astronauts’ sleep when we are in space, and they have found that quality of sleep relates to cognition, mood, and interpersonal relations — all essential to getting through a mission in space or a quarantine at home.
Go outside One of the things I missed most while living in space was being able to go outside and experience nature. After being confined to a small space for months, I actually started to crave nature — the color green, the smell of fresh dirt, and the feel of warm sun on my face. That flower experiment became more important to me than I could have ever imagined. My colleagues liked to play a recording of Earth sounds, like birds and rustling trees, and even mosquitoes, over and over. It brought me back to earth. (Although occasionally I found myself swatting my ears at the mosquitoes. ) For an astronaut, going outside is a dangerous undertaking that requires days of preparation, so I appreciate that in our current predicament, I can step outside any time I want for a walk or a hike — no spacesuit needed. Research has shown that spending time in nature is beneficial for our mental and physical health, as is exercise. You don’t need to work out two and a half hours a day, as astronauts on the space station do, but getting moving once a day should be part of your quarantine schedule (just stay at least six feet away from others).
You need a hobby When you are confined in a small space you need an outlet that isn’t work or maintaining your environment. Some people are surprised to learn I brought books with me to space. The quiet and absorption you can find in a physical book — one that doesn’t ping you with notifications or tempt you to open a new tab — is priceless. Many small bookstores are currently offering curbside pickup or home delivery service, which means you can support a local business while also cultivating some much-needed unplugged time. You can also practice an instrument (I just bought a digital guitar trainer online), try a craft, or make some art. Astronauts take time for all of these while in space. (Remember Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s famous cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity?)
Keep a journal: NASA has been studying the effects of isolation on humans for decades, and one surprising finding they have made is the value of keeping a journal. Throughout my yearlong mission, I took the time to write about my experiences almost every day. If you find yourself just chronicling the days’ events (which, under the circumstances, might get repetitive) instead try describing what you are experiencing through your five senses or write about memories. Even if you don’t wind up writing a book based on your journal like I did, writing about your days will help put your experiences in perspective and let you look back later on what this unique time in history has meant.
Take time to connect: Even with all the responsibilities of serving as commander of a space station, I never missed the chance to have a videoconference with family and friends. Scientists have found that isolation is damaging not only to our mental health, but to our physical health as well, especially our immune systems. Technology makes it easier than ever to keep in touch, so it’s worth making time to connect with someone every day — it might actually help you fight off viruses.
Listen to experts: I’ve found that most problems aren’t rocket science, but when they are rocket science, you should ask a rocket scientist. Living in space taught me a lot about the importance of trusting the advice of people who knew more than I did about their subjects, whether it was science, engineering, medicine, or the design of the incredibly complex space station that was keeping me alive. Especially in a challenging moment like the one we are living through now, we have to seek out knowledge from those who know the most about it and listen to them. Social media and other poorly vetted sources can be transmitters of misinformation just as handshakes transmit viruses, so we have to make a point of seeking out reputable sources of facts, like the World Health Organization and the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
We are all connected: Seen from space, the Earth has no borders. The spread of the coronavirus is showing us that what we share is much more powerful than what keeps us apart, for better or for worse. All people are inescapably interconnected, and the more we can come together to solve our problems, the better off we will all be. One of the side effects of seeing Earth from the perspective of space, at least for me, is feeling more compassion for others. As helpless as we may feel stuck inside our homes, there are always things we can do — I’ve seen people reading to children via videoconference, donating their time and dollars to charities online, and running errands for elderly or immuno-compromised neighbors. The benefits for the volunteer are just as great as for those helped. I’ve seen humans work together to prevail over some of the toughest challenges imaginable, and I know we can prevail over this one if we all do our part and work together as a team.
Online Education Blog #5
Can Online Education Replace Conventional Classroom Teaching?
By Shlomo Maital
My granddaughter Maya asks: “Can online education replace conventional classroom teaching?”
My (Shlomo) background: The Coursera four-course specialty “Cracking the Creativity Code”, with many thousands of students, has proved quite successful; I get many emails from all over the world. It was a team effort, with great Technion support. We learned a lot. Here is a major conclusion, in response to Maya, from a much stronger expert than me:
“Michelle Weise, who blogs at Harvard Business Review, argues persuasively that the “real revolution in online education isn’t MOOCs”. Instead, it is called “online competency-based education – and it’s going to revolutionize the workforce”. She argues: Say a newly minted graduate with a degree in history realizes that in order to attain her dream job at Facebook, she needs some experience with social media marketing. Going back to school is not a desirable option, and many schools don’t even offer relevant courses in social media. Where is the affordable accessible, targeted and high-quality program that she needs to skill-up? On-line competency based education is the key to filling in the skill gaps in the workplace”. Weise’s point of view is totally consistent with the motives and demographics of current MOOC learners, who are older, many with degrees, and who seek specific skills and competencies.” *
So — for now, online education is a temporary stopgap to replace the frontal classroom teaching in schools and universities, which are for now closed.
Let’s think ‘beyond virus’ – after COVID-19. Can we use this crisis, to reflect deeply on how we learn and teach, and think about how we could do this a whole lot better? (See my blog, on life after COVID-19, https://timnovate.wordpress.com/2020/03/24/the-world-after-…ew-from-mckinsey/
Some believe the greatest invention in the history of the world was public education – Schooling for all, ALL, K through 12. I tend to agree. Now – can we broaden that invention, and make education truly for all, everywhere, at all times, all ages? This means, first, broadband for all – only half the world today has Internet. What about the other half? They deserve it too. And it can be done. The wealthy countries can help. Second, rethink education. Roadmap future skills we will need – then organize online education to provide them. Or help provide them.
Everyone talks about the Industrial Revolution 4.0. What about launching a Public Education Revolution 2.0?
Let’s think big. Let’s see COVID-19 as an opportunity to rethink absolutely everything about how we teach and learn. Let’s not just go back to our classrooms, as if nothing has changed. EVERYthing has changed. And it is up to us to change it for the good
* Shlomo Maital Ronit Lis-Hacohen & Abigail Barzilai. Paper available on request.
Know the Enemy! Understanding the Coronavirus
By Shlomo Maital
Let’s try to understand this coronavirus enemy better, with the help of experts. (from the Washington Post, by Sarah Kaplan, William Wan and Joel Achenbach). Sorry, this blog is long, 1,500 words.
How long have viruses evolved? Are they actually ‘alive’?
“Viruses have spent billions of years perfecting the art of surviving without living — a frighteningly effective strategy that makes them a potent threat in today’s world. That’s especially true of the deadly new coronavirus that has brought global society to a screeching halt. It’s little more than a packet of genetic material surrounded by a spiky protein shell one-thousandth the width of an eyelash, and it leads such a zombielike existence that it’s barely considered a living organism. But as soon as it gets into a human airway, the virus hijacks our cells to create millions more versions of itself.
OK, so coronavirus is not alive …but how come it is so darn SMART?!
“There is a certain evil genius to how this coronavirus pathogen works: It finds easy purchase in humans without them knowing. Before its first host even develops symptoms, it is already spreading its replicas everywhere, moving onto its next victim. It is powerfully deadly in some but mild enough in others to escape containment. And for now, we have no way of stopping it. As researchers race to develop drugs and vaccines for the disease that has already sickened 350,000 and killed more than 15,000 people, and counting, this is a scientific portrait of what they are up against.
How to respiratory viruses like coronavirus make us ill?
“Respiratory viruses tend to infect and replicate in two places: In the nose and throat, where they are highly contagious, or lower in the lungs, where they spread less easily but are much more deadly. This new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, adeptly cuts the difference. It dwells in the upper respiratory tract, where it is easily sneezed or coughed onto its next victim. But in some patients, it can lodge itself deep within the lungs, where the disease can kill. That combination gives it the contagiousness of some colds, along with some of the lethality of its close molecular cousin SARS, which caused a 2002-2003 outbreak in Asia. Another insidious characteristic of this virus: By giving up that bit of lethality, its symptoms emerge less readily than those of SARS, which means people often pass it to others before they even know they have it. It is, in other words, just sneaky enough to wreak worldwide havoc.
So, we have to hand it to COVID-19 – it’s pretty darned smart. Even without a brain. All, through millions of years of evolution.
“Viruses much like this one have been responsible for many of the most destructive outbreaks of the past 100 years: the flus of 1918, 1957 and 1968; and SARS, MERS and Ebola. Like the coronavirus, all these diseases are zoonotic — they jumped from an animal population into humans. And all are caused by viruses that encode their genetic material in RNA. That’s no coincidence, scientists say. The zombielike existence of RNA viruses makes them easy to catch and hard to kill. Outside a host, viruses are dormant. They have none of the traditional trappings of life: metabolism, motion, the ability to reproduce. And they can last this way for quite a long time. Recent laboratory research showed that, although SARS-CoV-2 typically degrades in minutes or a few hours outside a host, some particles can remain viable — potentially infectious — on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel for up to three days. In 2014, a virus frozen in permafrost for 30,000 years that scientists retrieved was able to infect an amoeba after being revived in the lab. When viruses encounter a host, they use proteins on their surfaces to unlock and invade its unsuspecting cells. Then they take control of those cells’ molecular machinery to produce and assemble the materials needed for more viruses.
How does coronavirus “proofread” errors, as it multiplies within the human body?
“Let’s say dengue has a tool belt with only one hammer,” said Vineet Menachery, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. This coronavirus has three different hammers, each for a different situation. Among those tools is a proofreading protein, which allows coronaviruses to fix some errors that happen during the replication process. They can still mutate faster than bacteria but are less likely to produce offspring so riddled with detrimental mutations that they can’t survive. Meanwhile, the ability to change helps the germ adapt to new environments, whether it’s a camel’s gut or the airway of a human unknowingly granting it entry with an inadvertent scratch of her nose.
Where did coronavirus come from?
“Scientists believe that the SARS virus originated as a bat virus that reached humans via civet cats sold in animal markets. This current virus, which can also be traced to bats, is thought to have had an intermediate host, possibly an endangered scaly anteater called a pangolin. “I think nature has been telling us over the course of 20 years that, ‘Hey, coronaviruses that start out in bats can cause pandemics in humans. Such viruses usually simply cause colds and were not considered as important as other viral pathogens, he said. think of them as being like influenza, as long-term threats,’” said Jeffery Taubenberger, virologist with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Funding for research on coronaviruses increased after the SARS outbreak, but in recent years that funding has dried up.
Why is it proving so hard to come up with ‘weapons’ to fight coronavirus?
“Most antimicrobials work by interfering with the functions of the germs they target. For example, penicillin blocks a molecule used by bacteria to build their cell walls. The drug works against thousands of kinds of bacteria, but because human cells don’t use that protein, we can ingest it without being harmed. But viruses function through us. With no cellular machinery of their own, they become intertwined with ours. Their proteins are our proteins. Their weaknesses are our weaknesses. Most drugs that might hurt them would hurt us, too.
“For this reason, antiviral drugs must be extremely targeted and specific, said Stanford virologist Karla Kirkegaard. They tend to target proteins produced by the virus (using our cellular machinery) as part of its replication process. These proteins are unique to their viruses. This means the drugs that fight one disease generally don’t work across multiple ones. And because viruses evolve so quickly, the few treatments scientists do manage to develop don’t always work for long. This is why scientists must constantly develop new drugs to treat HIV, and why patients take a “cocktail” of antivirals that viruses must mutate multiple times to resist.
“Modern medicine is constantly needing to catch up to new emerging viruses,” Kirkegaard said. SARS-CoV-2 emerges from the surface of cells cultured in a lab. (National Institutes of Health/AFP). SARS-CoV-2 is particularly enigmatic. Though its behavior is different from that of its cousin SARS, there are no obvious differences in the viruses’ spiky protein “keys” that allow them to invade host cells. Understanding these proteins could be critical to developing a vaccine, said Alessandro Sette, head of the center for infectious disease at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Previous research has shown that the spike proteins on SARS are what trigger the immune system’s protective response. In a paper published this month, Sette found the same is true of SARS-CoV-2.
“This gives scientists reason for optimism, according to Sette. It affirms researchers’ hunch that the spike protein is a good target for vaccines. If people are inoculated with a version of that protein, it could teach their immune system to recognize the virus and allow them to respond to the invader more quickly.
“It also says the novel coronavirus is not that novel,” Sette said.
And if SARS-CoV-2 is not so different from its older cousin SARS, then the virus is probably not evolving very fast, giving scientists developing vaccines time to catch up.
“In the meantime, Kirkegaard said, the best weapons we have against the coronavirus are public health measures, such as testing and social distancing, and our own immune systems.”
Man oh man – this baby is a formidable enemy. And it’s not even alive. Maybe we all-powerful all-knowing human beings should be in future a little more modest about who we are and what we can do.
Creativity Is the Answer: Oxford’s New Ventilator!
By Shlomo Maital
Prof. Andrew Farmery OxVent: simple, effective
In times of crisis, like the ones we are living today, resources and time are scarce – but creativity is plentiful. For example: Creative British doctors and scientists who have designed a primitive, simple, easy-to-produce ventilator, which SONY may mass produce. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo said today that his state has 10,000 ventilators, but it needs 30,000, as the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in his state – and the US Federal Govt. (FEMA) has sent…400 of them, even though there are 20,000 of them in an emergency US stockpile.
[A ventilator is a device that pumps air into the lungs of coronavirus victims, who struggle to breathe].
Here is the story.
Interviewer: “In just one week, a team at Oxford University and King’s College London have built a simple ventilator that could potentially save thousands of lives as part of the UK and the world’s fight against coronavirus. The OxVent is a rapid prototype ventilator that could keep people breathing while they battle the worst impacts of COVID-19. Andrew Farmery of the University of Oxford, one of the people involved in its development, talks about its past, present, and potential. … How are you?
Prof. Andrew Farmery: ” I’m very well, although slightly knackered. It’s been a very long week. It’s been absolutely incredible, from nothing a week ago when we first had an idle chat Monday morning last week, to this afternoon, when we pitched it to the Cabinet and the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency). We’re waiting to hear whether they think it’s a goer or not.”
Farmery: “It’s laughably simple in some ways. It’s a compressible bag, a bit like a child’s rugby ball. It’s a compressible squeezy bag – the sort you use to resuscitate patients who have collapsed from cardiac arrest. Ambulances carry them around. But we’ve trapped it inside a rigid Perspex box and we inject compressed air into the rigid Perspex box that squeezes this bladder and pushes air out through some valves which we already have, and inflates the patient’s chest. There’s a second set of valves that allows gas to come out of the patient’s chest and also out of the rigid Perspex box. So it’s a sort of electro-pneumatic device. The air is injected into the box through what’s called a solenoid valve, which is controlled electronically, and we can regulate the flow of air compression gas that goes into the box, the speed with which it goes in, how much time is allowed for inspiration and expiration. We can control the pressures generated in the patient’s airway. All the things you would want, and we’re just doing it with this simple feedback controller.”
Farmery continues: “As well as an academic, I’m also a consultant anaesthetist, so I deal with ventilating patients every week. That’s what I do. The design had come out of what the clinicians want. We were slightly worried at the start when Boris [Johnson, UK PM] announced Land Rover and JCB were going to be making ventilators. I was slightly alarmed that they knew sod-all about ventilators and nobody had really taken the opinions of people like me and doctors and anesthetists around the country.”
“The electronics is based around a very simple circuit board called an Arduino – basically a tiny little circuit board used to teach kids about coding and electronics. It’s basically a toy, but that’s what the prototype is based on. We might even base the whole thing on that. It depends on whether we can knock PCBs out quickly enough. So the control engineers are still working on that, refining it. You’ve got to tell the solenoid valve what to do and then you’ve got to measure and monitor the pressures at various points with sensors to make sure that the solenoid is doing what you told it to do. That’s classic control engineering and they love that sort of thing, and they’re off on it already.”
SONY is exploring the possibility of making 5,000 of the new ventilators weekly I hope the design can be shared with other countries, including my own, Israel.
Online Education Blog #4
5 Tips from Harvard Business School
By Shlomo Maital (with Maya Taya Arie)
Tips from Harvard Business School for online educators:
5 Essentials Tips for Teaching Online
For educators who have never taught online before—and for those brushing up on the basics—online teaching expert Bill Schiano shares his top five tips for creating a successful virtual classroom experience.
- Make eye contact.
If you want to engage students, you’ve got to be looking at that camera. Make your notes easy to see. If I’m looking down at my notes, you’ll see my bald spot, but you won’t see my eyes. You’re not engaged with me. Try posting a photo of your students near your webcam—remember that you’re talking to people, not a machine.
- Involve your students as much as possible.
Make your class session as interactive as you can. If you’re planning to just lecture, then record the lecture and make the recording available asynchronously instead. In a live session, remind yourself at least every 15 minutes to intersperse some form of interaction—be it taking questions, running polls, or calling on students to share examples, so it’s not just you speaking.
- Bring your best self.
As much as you can, engage yourself and show your passion. Maybe it’s with your hand gestures and vocal intonation, or maybe it’s with the conviction of your words. Remember why you became a teacher and use that energy, that sense of purpose, and convey that passion to your students. It’s even more essential online because you need to be bigger when you’re online—you’re often competing with more distractions and students who feel like they can go on mute and tune out.
- Remember that online connections are real connections.
Decide what the tone of your class is going to be—casual, formal, or somewhere in between. That’s going to help you decide what your assignments will look like, how you’re going to introduce your students to one another, and what it’ll feel like to be part of the community you’re building. The more you can build that community, the more your students are going to feel invested in the course, and the more likely they are to engage in the work. You want everyone in the class to want everyone else to be better. Many of your students will want that strong sense of connection, too, because they’ll miss being able to physically go to campus and talk to people.
- Embrace the opportunity.
You now have the opportunity to work with students online, which means they have an opportunity to learn online—this is going to help them develop skills that will be extremely useful to them in their careers. As more and more work gets done virtually, being comfortable interacting virtually and getting acclimated to the tools they’ll use in online courses will be helpful to them long term. Keep that big picture in mind whenever you’re struggling—and know that, with practice, you can absolutely translate your physical classroom skills to an online environment.
Excerpted from “Adapting Quickly to Teaching Online,” a webinar by Bill Schiano, Professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University.
The World After COVID-19
By Shlomo Maital
What happens after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides? Two McKinsey (global consulting company) experts Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal provide some insights. This blog is rather long – warning!
They describe a five-stage process we need to manage: In order: the five R’s — Resolve, Resilience, Return, Reimagine, Reform.
First point: Everything, everything will change.
“It is increasingly clear our era will be defined by a fundamental schism: the period before COVID-19 and the new normal that will emerge in the post-viral era: the “next normal.” In this unprecedented new reality, we will witness a dramatic restructuring of the economic and social order in which business and society have traditionally operated. And in the near future, we will see the beginning of discussion and debate about what the next normal could entail and how sharply its contours will diverge from those that previously shaped our lives. Collectively, these five stages represent the imperative of our time: the battle against COVID-19 is one that leaders today must win if we are to find an economically and socially viable path to the next normal.”
The authors then note a five-stage process for moving forward:
Step One. Resolve “ …a toxic combination of inaction and paralysis remains, stymying choices that must be made: lockdown or not; isolation or quarantine; shut down the factory now or wait for an order from above. That is why we have called this first stage Resolve: the need to determine the scale, pace, and depth of action required at the state and business levels. As one CEO told us: “I know what to do. I just need to decide whether those who need to act share my resolve to do so.”
Step Two. Resilience. “A McKinsey Global Institute analysis, based on multiple sources, indicates that the shock to our livelihoods from the economic impact of virus-suppression efforts could be the biggest in nearly a century. In Europe and the United States, this is likely to lead to a decline in economic activity in a single quarter that proves far greater than the loss of income experienced during the Great Depression. In the face of these challenges, resilience is a vital necessity. Near-term issues of cash management for liquidity and solvency are clearly paramount. But soon afterward, businesses will need to act on broader resilience plans as the shock begins to upturn established industry structures, resetting competitive positions forever. Much of the population will experience uncertainty and personal financial stress. Public-, private-, and social-sector leaders will need to make difficult “through cycle” decisions that balance economic and social sustainability, given that social cohesion is already under severe pressure from populism and other challenges that existed pre-coronavirus.”
Step Three. Return. “Returning businesses to operational health after a severe shutdown is extremely challenging, as China is finding even as it slowly returns to work. Most industries will need to reactivate their entire supply chain, even as the differential scale and timing of the impact of coronavirus mean that global supply chains face disruption in multiple geographies. The weakest point in the chain will determine the success or otherwise of a return to rehiring, training, and attaining previous levels of workforce productivity. Leaders must therefore reassess their entire business system and plan for contingent actions in order to return their business to effective production at pace and at scale. Government leaders may face an acutely painful “Sophie’s choice”: mitigating the resurgent risk to lives versus the risk to the population’s health that could follow another sharp economic pullback. Compounding the challenge, winter will bring renewed crisis for many countries. Without a vaccine or effective prophylactic treatment, a rapid return to a rising spread of the virus is a genuine threat. In such a situation, government leaders may face an acutely painful “Sophie’s choice”: mitigating the resurgent risk to lives versus the risk to the population’s health that could follow another sharp economic pullback. Return may therefore require using the hoped-for—but by no means certain—temporary virus “cease-fire” over the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months to expand testing and surveillance capabilities, health-system capacity, and vaccine and treatment development to deal with a second surge. See “Bubbles pop, downturns stop” for more.”
Step Four. Reimagination. “A shock of this scale will create a discontinuous shift in the preferences and expectations of individuals as citizens, as employees, and as consumers. These shifts and their impact on how we live, how we work, and how we use technology will emerge more clearly over the coming weeks and months. Institutions that reinvent themselves to make the most of better insight and foresight, as preferences evolve, will disproportionally succeed. Clearly, the online world of contactless commerce could be bolstered in ways that reshape consumer behavior forever. But other effects could prove even more significant as the pursuit of efficiency gives way to the requirement of resilience—the end of supply-chain globalization, for example, if production and sourcing move closer to the end user. The crisis will reveal not just vulnerabilities but opportunities to improve the performance of businesses. Leaders will need to reconsider which costs are truly fixed versus variable, as the shutting down of huge swaths of production sheds light on what is ultimately required versus nice to have. Decisions about how far to flex operations without loss of efficiency will likewise be informed by the experience of closing down much of global production. Opportunities to push the envelope of technology adoption will be accelerated by rapid learning about what it takes to drive productivity when labor is unavailable. The result: a stronger sense of what makes business more resilient to shocks, more productive, and better able to deliver to customers.
Step Five. Reform. “The world now has a much sharper definition of what constitutes a black-swan event. This shock will likely give way to a desire to restrict some factors that helped make the coronavirus a global challenge, rather than a local issue to be managed. Governments are likely to feel emboldened and supported by their citizens to take a more active role in shaping economic activity. Business leaders need to anticipate popularly supported changes to policies and regulations as society seeks to avoid, mitigate, and preempt a future health crisis of the kind we are experiencing today.
“In most economies, a healthcare system little changed since its creation post–World War II will need to determine how to meet such a rapid surge in patient volume, managing seamlessly across in-person and virtual care. Public-health approaches, in an interconnected and highly mobile world, must rethink the speed and global coordination with which they need to react. Policies on critical healthcare infrastructure, strategic reserves of key supplies, and contingency production facilities for critical medical equipment will all need to be addressed. Managers of the financial system and the economy, having learned from the economically induced failures of the last global financial crisis, must now contend with strengthening the system to withstand acute and global exogenous shocks, such as this pandemic’s impact. Educational institutions will need to consider modernizing to integrate classroom and distance learning. The list goes on.
“The aftermath of the pandemic will also provide an opportunity to learn from a plethora of social innovations and experiments, ranging from working from home to large-scale surveillance. With this will come an understanding of which innovations, if adopted permanently, might provide substantial uplift to economic and social welfare—and which would ultimately inhibit the broader betterment of society, even if helpful in halting or limiting the spread of the virus.”
Online Education Blog #3
Become Whom You Teach
By Shlomo Maital & Maya Taya Arie
Nietzsche once wrote, insightfully, “Become who you are”. I’d like to adapt that slightly: For online educators – Become whom you teach.
My granddaughter Maya asks: “Try to imagine that you are a student, what tools would you find most effective when learning virtually?”
Maya, that is a super question. Perhaps the most basic of all.
As a management educator, one of the hardest things I teach is to become customer-centric. I used to do an exercise with my managers: Please, stand up and speak about your product, as if you were a customer. Your product disappears, your business is broke. What do your customers miss most?
Sounds simple? But most managers had a very hard time, especially senior ones, who had not seen or heard a customer in years.
Same goes for us educators, especially at the college level. Take me, for instance. I’ve been teaching in college for well over 50 years. There are two generations between me and my students. Do I really understand them, their needs, their thinking, their preferences? And do I really try to?
Some 23 years ago, Harvard Business School Professor Dorothy Leonard, along with Jeffrey Rayport, wrote a fine article, “Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design”.* Her main point: You can ask customers what they want. Mostly they do not know. Or, you can observe them and empathize with them, BECOME them. And then when you are in their shoes and skin, figure out their needs.
So, Maya — Online education is triply quadruply hard, because I do not have students in front of me, face to face. But I do have them on screen, with ‘chat’… So, I can think hard, who ARE these people, what do they want and need, what interests them, what do they want to learn? NOT – what do I know and have to teach them? And how are they responding?
And I do know this – After years of teaching economics and crunching numbers, the most effective teaching tool is – stories. Stories! Real people, real events, real conflict, real decisions. So this will be the subject of our next blog – Teaching online, by the effective use of stories.
- Harvard Business Review, Nov.-Dec. 1997.
Getting Back to Work – But How?
By Shlomo Maital
Thomas Friedman
So far, this tiny virus, COVID-19, has caught us napping. We are all playing catch-up, making policy moves (like “shelter at home”) just a trifle too late, or a lot too late, as in unfortunate Italy. And we are making huge mistakes. Italy drafted its aging pensioner doctors and medical staff – the most vulnerable group of all – and many have sadly died. This should not have happened.
So, can we for a change think ahead a bit? With people at home, rather than at work – how can we get them back to work? Economists are pretty quiet these days (except, loud mouths, like Arthur Laffer or Larry Kudlow) but maybe we do have something sensible to contribute?
Tom Friedman, NYT Op-Ed coumnits, wisest of persons, says: “can we more surgically minimize the threat of this virus to those most vulnerable while we maximize the chances for as many Americans as possible to safely go back to work as soon as possible?” He has a solution, based on the experts with whom he consulted.
Economists crunch numbers. We have far too few good numbers on COVID-19. Dr. John Ioannides, Stanford U., mentioned by Friedman, writes:
“The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco. At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact. Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm”.
And in a NYT Op-Ed, “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?”, Dr. David Katz, Yale University, writes that “as the work force is laid off en masse (our family has one adult child home for that reason already), and colleges close (we have another two young adults back home for this reason), young people of indeterminate infectious status are being sent home to huddle with their families nationwide. And because we lack widespread testing, they may be carrying the virus and transmitting it to their 50-something parents, and 70- or 80-something grandparents. If there are any clear guidelines for behavior within families — what I call “vertical interdiction” — I have not seen them”.
Katz asks, “When would it be safe to visit loved ones in nursing homes or hospitals? When once again might grandparents pick up their grandchildren?”
Here is his proposal: In short, focus on the most vulnerable, protect them – and get others back to work:
If we were to focus on the especially vulnerable, there would be resources to keep them at home, provide them with needed services and coronavirus testing, and direct our medical system to their early care. I would favor proactive rather than reactive testing in this group, and early use of the most promising anti-viral drugs. This cannot be done under current policies, as we spread our relatively few test kits across the expanse of a whole population, made all the more anxious because society has shut down. This focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing. Healthy children could return to school and healthy adults go back to their jobs. Theaters and restaurants could reopen, though we might be wise to avoid very large social gatherings like stadium sporting events and concerts. So long as we were protecting the truly vulnerable, a sense of calm could be restored to society. Just as important, society as a whole could develop natural herd immunity to the virus. The vast majority of people would develop mild coronavirus infections, while medical resources could focus on those who fell critically ill. Once the wider population had been exposed and, if infected, had recovered and gained natural immunity, the risk to the most vulnerable would fall dramatically. A pivot right now from trying to protect all people to focusing on the most vulnerable remains entirely plausible. With each passing day, however, it becomes more difficult. The path we are on may well lead to uncontained viral contagion and monumental collateral damage to our society and economy. A more surgical approach is what we need.”
Can we rethink our policies and strategy? Can we add some thought about economics to the public health/medical policy mix? Can we think ahead of the virus, instead of chasing it and falling behind? Can we truly think cost-benefit, systemically, holistically?
TIMnovate 