Filed under: Charlotte, community services, empathy, science and technology, Uncategorized | Tags: agastha, Charlotte, electronic medical records, health care, Mohan Korrapati
screenshot via Agastha
Last month, I connected with Mohan Korrapati of Charlotte-based Agastha to learn more about his quest to lead the field of electronic medical records. The health care debate brought renewed focus on the category, but Agastha’s been improving their product for over 7 years, implementing their software in Charlotte practices and elsewhere.
5 minutes into a conversation with him, you realize that Korrapati has experienced the pains that patients face. He just wants to simplify the complexities that make existing record systems annoying and inefficient. At practices who use an Agastha solution, you probably don’t have to fill out forms over and over, or maybe you’ll get a message to let you know that an appointment is coming up. And for the staff, the system might alert them if a patient has missed a critical appointment or has been prescribed a dangerous combination of medicines.
Where other major companies like Microsoft or Cisco have just been talking about electronic health records for years, Agastha credits their fast progress to its agility and a feedback loop from providers. They seem to have built a culture of frequent prototyping and learning often found in truly innovative teams.
Filed under: Charlotte, community services, innovation | Tags: innovation, library, steak
If innovation were steak… (Part 3) – by Frank Blair
If innovation were a steak you were ordering at Longhorn’s or Morton’s, how would you place your order? Just like steak, innovation can be well-done, medium or rare.
Rare?
A rare steak is warm all the way through, but still bright red in the middle. This is innovation for those who want to try what hasn’t been tried before – the original idea that really has no precedent. This grade of innovation is truly rare, and does involve risk in the sense that things may not turn out as expected. Course corrections will have to be made to the project plan along the way in order to account for unforeseen consequences. You will likely have to create the design or workflow specifications yourself, because the idea has arisen of its own accord, and there are no models elsewhere.
Benjamin Franklin had a knack for this sort of innovation – he invented the concept of a lending library open to the public. In his time, only the wealthy had any sort of access to large numbers books. Benjamin Franklin recognized that for a community to be truly creative, everyone had to have access to the resources needed to create new ideas. In his time, that meant books.
Flash-forward more than two centuries. Now the resources needed to create new ideas aren’t just books anymore…it’s music, and it’s animation; it’s video and it’s the computer; it’s the Internet and it’s digital books.. All of these serve the same purpose as the quill pen and the printed book did in Benjamin Franklin’s day. And the library is still the place to go when you want to create new ideas.
flickr photo credit: gregor bug
At Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, we recognize this by providing space and resources for people to create, not just consume, content. Whether it is the Studio I animation studio, the “little playwright” desk at the Spangler Library in ImaginOn, or the upcoming Job Help Center at Main Library, we provide access to the resources needed by teens, children and adults to innovate.
How do you like your steak?
Filed under: Charlotte, community services, innovation, innovation trends | Tags: innovation, library, steak
If innovation were steak… (Part 2) – by Frank Blair
If innovation were a steak you were ordering at Longhorn’s or Morton’s, how would you place your order? Just like steak, innovation can be well-done, medium or rare.
Medium?
This steak has not been cooked through yet; it’s still a little bit pink.
If you are interested in this grade of innovation, look for a practice, technique or product that may be new to your industry or profession, but it is common somewhere else. There may be only one vendor offering the service, or the practice or technique may never have been implemented in your industry before
So, for example, at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, an example of “medium” innovation would the recent introduction of the new ‘enhanced’ catalog we debuted on August 8, 2009. Our customers had asked us to bring their experience into the 21st century by adding features (like relevancy ranking) that they were used to from other search engines and web portals. They wanted the ability to create and retain their own book lists, to tag books and movies, and to write reviews and rank the books and movies they are borrowing. All of these are possible from our enhanced catalog. You can check it out at: http://catalog.plcmc.org – create a “My Discoveries” account.
Want more medium innovation? Try benchmarking your products or practices against what occurs in an industry with a completely different business model. At the library we do this when we compare ourselves to retail outlets and bookstores.
How do you like your steak? Check back Monday and we’ll take a look at Rare.
Filed under: Charlotte, community services, innovation, innovation trends | Tags: community services, innovation, library, steak
Over the summer, I met Frank Blair, the Director of Research, Innovation, and Strategy at the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenberg County (PLCMC.) His background in Linguistics has taken him to many parts of the world, and he’s weaved his experience in IT and Innovation to make the city’s libraries a critical partner in our community. Frank’s an extremely engaging personality, and this week, he’s a guest on this blog to share a lesson of innovation in 3 parts: Rare, Medium, and Well-done. Enjoy!
If innovation were steak… (Part 1) – by Frank Blair
flickr photo: nathanaelb
If innovation were a steak you were ordering at Longhorn’s or Morton’s, how would you place your order? Just like steak, innovation can be well-done, medium or rare.
Well-done?
This steak has been thoroughly cooked. Some believe it is the hardest kind of steak to cook, and that it is the steak for people who don’t like steak. If you are in an environment that doesn’t care for (or is hostile to) innovative practices, techniques and products, then this is for you! Of course there are people who just like their steak well-done for health reasons, or even just for the taste (go figure).
If you are interested in this grade of innovation, look for a practice, technique or product that is common in your industry or profession, but just hasn’t been implemented in your workspace yet. There will likely be several vendors to select the product or service from, or perhaps alternative procedures or manuals to choose from. The innovative thought comes from seeing the possibility of a practice, technique or product in another area or profession and realizing the possibilities inherent in customizing it for your particular niche.
So, for example, at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, an example of “well-done” innovation would the recent use of on-line whiteboard and chat technology to provide homework assistance to school-age students. Nothing is new about providing access to resources for homework in our libraries…we’ve been doing it for over a hundred years. But our environment has changed, and many of our customers, especially students, want to use our resources on-line from home. We partnered with tutor.com to provide free, online live homework help from 2PM until 10PM on school nights. If you don’t have a computer or Internet access at home, you can use a computer at the library for the same purpose. An existing service partnered with an existing library to create an innovative service for our county. You can learn more about the service from this WBT News story.
Want more well-done innovation? Try benchmarking your products or practices against others providing a similar service or product. At the library, we do this when we compare ourselves to other libraries.
How do you like your steak? Check back on Friday and we’ll take a look at medium.
Filed under: Charlotte, community services, information design, social media, Uncategorized | Tags: Charlotte Observer, charlotte.com, creative search, hyperlocal, j-lab, newsmap, social bookmarking, social media, timespeople
Since I wrote an article about hyperlocalism over the summer, I’ve been passively tracking the trend, and I thought I’d share these findings.
logo via charlotte.com
1. Wait, what happened to charlotte.com?
Last week, I stumbled on the beta news site that the Charlotte Observer just planted in the old charlotte.com site. In an attempt to retain its local readership, the site features social bookmark-like capabilities (similar to TimesPeople,) allowing users to sign on with existing Twitter, Facebook, et al. accounts. It pulls in stories from other local sources, including Yelp reviews and blogs. Time will tell how successful it will be as the data builds; I do hope it eventually introduces more visual design (a la Creative Search or even Newsmap.)
screen capture via creative search
2. You, too, can consume and create.
Looks like the creative team at the Observer is looking for hyperlocal contributors. Not sure if it’s related to the charlotte.com site, but it’s related to a grant with an organization called the J-Lab.
3. So are people moving here or what?
Remember the buzz from earlier this year about all the people trying to move to Charlotte to find jobs in this recession? Newsweek offers an interesting viewpoint on hyperlocalism that might suggest otherwise.
Filed under: Charlotte, consumer behavior, delighters, empathy, information design, Uncategorized | Tags: airport, Charlotte, delighters, familiar, gps, mental model, NY Times, parking, parking lots
I saw this lovely sign over in the Green Parking lot in Uptown Charlotte the other day and I couldn’t help but smile. It was an unexpected yet ever-so-helpful delighter designed to help me remember where I parked.
Sometimes I’ll type a quick note in my phone to remind me where the car is. Or, in especially confusing lots like the Long Term lots at the airport, I’ll even GPS-tag the location. But when you’re in a hurry, nothing beats a simple picture with a caption, “It takes two to tango” to burn the image in my head.
Besides helping me find my car, this sign also reminded me of two NY Times articles I had seen recently:
- I find myself thinking often about how to make it easier for people to try a new product or service, and sometimes it’s appropriate to bring in something familiar to help transition folks from an older mental model into a new one.
- Of course, in the spirit of planning for unintended consequences, an article about the sad possibility of losing your navigational prowess when of adapting a common technology like GPS into one’s everyday life.
Filed under: Charlotte, community services, consumer behavior, social media | Tags: center city partners, Charlotte, charlotte 2020, charlotte convention center, cltblog, social media
click for larger
Though I’m still new to Charlotte, I’ve been energized by some civic events lately, most recently with Center City Partners’ visioning workshop at the Convention Center. It was the first of 3 community workshops, inviting citizens to give input to city leaders on how to transform Charlotte by 2020.
Beyond the topic itself, I really enjoyed with the structure of the workshop. The consulting group (MIG) and project leaders provided multiple ways to take part: via Post-It notes and comment cards, through verbal feedback, and even through streaming video and social media, thanks to the CLTblog folks. They visualized comments and ideas on a large mural, which I know from facilitating ideation sessions, keeps folks engaged and contributing. The meeting ended with a survey called an “Idea Lab” where we voted on 20+ concepts using green, yellow, and red sheets of paper, a method I’ve seen to evaluate product designs and even election debates, but it was neat to see it used as a temperature gauge for urban planning. It all made for an optimistic night, where we felt free to think about positive change for a few hours.
I wish that more citizens came out to participate, particularly those with more diverse viewpoints outside of Uptown. Though I’m a big fan of green spaces and walkable cities, I’m sure that there are others who could make the case for investing in other kinds of projects.
Follow all the action on Charlotte 2020 here. I understand the survey and all the presentation materials will be available on the site soon.
Filed under: Charlotte, community services, information design, innovation, social media | Tags: apps, big apps, Charlotte, crowdsourcing, mashup, netflix prize, new york city, uservoice, washington dc
311 app logo via Apps for Democracy
I’ve been intrigued by a crowdsourcing challenge New York City is sponsoring that invites developers to submit solutions for new city apps in exchange for fame and a cash prize. They are not the first to host such a contest – Washington DC did one last year. For a mere $50K, these “non-profits” were able to solicit 230 resident insights and 47 applications in 30 days!
These challenges is that they blend two good innovation ingredients together:
- An attempt to understand what kinds of apps would be useful to consumers by collecting insights and needs. The last thing my iPhone wants is an App that doesn’t solve a problem that people care about. Both the DC and NYC contests leverage UserVoice to do this.
- A data mine for developers. Big cities have lots of data that probably doesn’t get used, but if applied in a good context, you could end up with interesting results. Making the data available promotes transparency and probably helps developers test their apps. This reminds me of the super-successful Netflix Prize, where the company provided real data to help contestant programmers improve its recommendation algorithm.
I know that there are lots of clever developers in Charlotte. I wonder what unique apps would help our own residents? I know I could have used one today that tells me where the closest Wi-Fi signal is both free and strong based on where I am.
Filed under: Charlotte, science and technology, social media | Tags: area 15, assumptions, barcamp charlotte, social media
What fun! Not knowing what to expect, I attended the first half of BarCamp Charlotte today over at Area 15. Reflecting on my newbie experience, I realized I arrived with a few assumptions, all of which were handily proven wrong.
1. I thought the informal nature of the setup would be frustrating. I’ve been working in a corporate setting where meetings and agendas are arranged months in advance. But in this format, participants pitch whatever topics they want to talk about, either as an expert presenter or as a discussion leader. Then the rest of us vote on which ones we want to see. Despite a few logistic glitches, I found this free-wheeling format to be invigorating and liberating. And wonderfully innovative.
2. I assumed the topics would only be about SEO and/or social media. Not so. Though there were plenty of extremely relevant sessions about those things, the floor is open to many others. Like the kid who taught folks how to make balloon animals. Or setting up photo-voltaics in your home.
3. I figured the average age of the participants would skew young. Boy, was I wrong on that one. Of the 200(?) or so folks at the event, there was a wide range represented. The mix in the room was impressive: small business owners, enthusiasts, and random interested friends (like me) of all levels of expertise and backgrounds.
Filed under: branding, Charlotte, social media | Tags: airdye, BOLT Group, designers accord, monty montague, sustainability, time magazine
About a month ago, Charlotte-based Bolt Group played host to the latest gathering of the Designers Accord, which Time magazine recently described as a “Kyoto Protocol of design” and is a coalition of design firms and companies who are looking to advance sustainability in their work by sharing best practices and successful case studies.
I met up with Monty Montague, Bolt’s principal, and he highlighted his firm’s efforts in helping their eco-friendly client Airdye build up their branding presence (and ultimately, customer base) using viral marketing techniques. He talked about the unique challenges of addressing multiple audiences: contractors and designers in both the fashion and interior design industries.
Find a wrapup of the local event here and find Bolt’s own blog here.
It happens here: Consumer-centric Innovation in Charlotte and beyond 