Every yr, ambitious students from about the planet flock to America’s top enterprise schools, hoping to learn how to create new ventures that can modify the world.
On the west coast, situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University’s Graduate College of Company attracts budding entrepreneurs with tough and useful plans. Programs like “Entrepreneurship: Formation of New Ventures” and “Managing Developing Enterprises” inspire college students to create progressive business designs that remedy genuine difficulties and fill unmet needs.
Many students in these courses want to strike it wealthy by launching the subsequent Google, Facebook or Apple. But far more and more B-school college students are expressing a new and unexpected interest: transforming the American well being care technique.
The Business Of Overall health Care
Attempting to solve the nation’s several health care problems is far from child’s perform.
It’ll take some modern answers to increase top quality of care, lower all round charges and navigate one particular of America’s most befuddling bureaucracies.
Nonetheless, the magnitude of this challenge isn’t deterring today’s younger, energetic business students. They know what they’re up against.
Previously, 2014 marks another record year for digital well being funding. (Graphic: Rock Health)
They understand that wellness care accounts for 18 % of American GDP and is developing at an unsustainable tempo. They know the common loved ones of 4 spends 25 percent of its earnings on overall health care and – at the recent charge of inflation – that percentage will climb to 50 more than the next 20 many years.
They are also aware that America’s well being care system is not creating better outcomes. Daily life expectancy and childhood mortality rates are not virtually in which they should be provided how significantly the U.S. is investing.
But alternatively of lamenting these harsh realities, today’s students inquire: “How can I make a difference?”
In my perform as a overall health care CEO, doctor and enterprise college professor, I’ve come up with 5 things entrepreneurs can do to modify wellness care for the much better: one. Get Intelligent About Overall health Care’s New Economics
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is shifting the way doctors and hospitals are paid and how they provide care. That implies entrepreneurial accomplishment in overall health care won’t search fairly the very same in the potential.
Answers will come from innovators who figure out how to supply customized, higher-good quality healthcare care at decrease charges.
The expansion of public and private wellness insurance exchanges will lead to more competitive insurance coverage merchandise. Already, they are placing downward pressure on prices.
We can count on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Solutions (CMS) to proceed limiting reimbursement charges for well being ideas in the more and more well-liked Medicare Benefit plan. This will lead to reduce physician and hospital payments while rewarding the ideas that deliver 5-star top quality and services.
Randy Reed, deputy assistant director of housekeeping at North Carolina State University, North Carolina’s largest campus, often fretted about the effects of chemicals on the 300 housekeepers as they cleaned. While nobody was ever seriously injured, he fielded several reports of rashes, occasional respiratory problems and headaches, possibly caused by exposure to the harsh smells the cleaners omitted.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a government agency, warns of this in its public safety warnings (pdf). Cleaning chemicals, OSHA states, can cause dangerous gases causing headaches, dizziness, wheezing, even lung damage. With this in mind, two years ago, Reed replaced traditional industrial cleaners such as Diversey Glance and Comet Cleaner with Orbio SC 5000 split stream water technology to clean floors, surfaces, even urinals.
This new system uses a salt-based, chemical-free process, where water passes through the system giving it an electrical charge. The solution cleans and sanitizes surfaces leaving it 99% germ free, Reed explains. “On our first trial our hygiene meter monitored the bacteria count on a urinal and found the technology removed as many germs as a regular sanitizer.”
Orbio SC 5000 uses a salt-based process, where water passes through the system giving it an electrical charge. Photo: Courtesy of Orbio
NC State is part of a larger trend in which universities, retailers, sports facilities and large corporations are not just cleaning with greener chemicals, but without chemicals at all.
Companies including Coca-Cola Enterprises in the Netherlands; ISS, one of the world’s largest commercial facilities services providers; and Chapman University, (pdf) one of California’s oldest private universities, have made the switch. Examples include sanitizing facilities with technologies such as steam vapor systems, spray and vac systems using pressurized water to remove and loosen soils along with ozonated and electrolyzed systems using electricity to turn water into a cleaning agent. The use of microfiber cloths and mops, which require only water to remove germs, grime and bacteria also make up the trend.
While industry numbers don’t yet exist, Stephen Ashkin, executive director of The Green Cleaning Network, a non-profit working with corporations to green the cleaning industry, estimates that, based on his client research and surveys, 30% to 50% of corporations and institutions across the US, now clean their facilities with eco-friendly chemical cleaners or cleaners without chemicals at all.
“The professional cleaning industry has changed,” he says. “The newer trend experts are seeing is cleaning without chemicals.” Ashkin believes cleaning products minimizing chemicals will never replace floor finishes, heavy-duty cleaning chemicals or graffiti removers, but this is a “tool in the toolbox for creating a healthy and clean environment while leaving a minimal footprint.”
Defining Chemical-Free Cleaning
The trend is so new that even the description of these products is controversial; while some call them chemical-free, others say eco-friendly. Ashkin rejects the term “chemical-free” cleaning because no cleaning product or device completely avoids chemicals.
“Chemical-free cleaning is a marketing term versus a technical term,” he says. Case in point is companies offering chemical-free cleaning products, such as Tennant, maker of the Orbio systems, which use their own technologies to define “chemical-free.”
OSHA defines green cleaning as products certified by independent organizations as safe to use and less harmful to your health and environment than conventional alternatives such as bleach and ammonia.
Wherever the definition lies, all this means good business for the big players. In April, Tennant posted quarterly results showing growth year-on-year. Other brands including Tursano, maker of the popular Lotus Pro device (similar to the split stream water technology), and the larger company Ecolab also reported positive first-quarter earnings. Makers of chemical free antibacterial microfiber cloths have good customer following as well. Norway-based Norwex, now in multiple markets including Canada, Australia and the US, sells microfiber towels and cloths, microfiber scarf clips for cleaning tablets, glasses and jewellery (instead of toxic sprays and wipes) and dry polyester floor pads for mopping.
But much of this market is in the commercial sector. Based on his client work, Ashkin estimates that residential cleaning remains only around 1-5% of the core eco-friendly and chemical-free cleaning market, probably because the conversion payback is higher for large corporations. Purchasing a chemical-free cleaning device for a commercial space can cost up to $ 5,000, a worthwhile investment, if used daily. A Lotus Pro split stream water technology cleaning device for your home averages $ 150 retail, too much for a parent worried about putting food on the table, Ashkin adds. Commercial facilities also have employees to compare costs, and review and analyze the cleaning products they buy, which the household consumer often lacks.
Homemade Chemical Free Cleaning
Another growing trend is Americans making their own cleaning products, with limited chemicals. Senior account supervisor at MMI Public Relations in North Carolina, Jennifer Fair ditched Clorox and other harsh cleaners for recipes she found on Pinterest such as pairing vinegar with baking soda. The vinegar dish soap concoction gets her shower super clean, she says. Other recipes suggest using baking soda, sprayed with water, to clean ovens.
This interest is valid given the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit group, has found through their Hall of Shame (pdf) study that 438 of 2,000 assessed cleaning products contain at least one chemical that the non-profit group Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics identifies as an asthmagen.
The worst offenders, the study claims, were those labelled as “green cleaners” such as the Simple Green Concentrated All-Purpose Cleaner (labelled as non-toxic and biodegradable) when one of its ingredients is 2-butoxyethanol, a solvent which can cause red blood cell damage and eye irritation. EWG also cites several studies showing pregnant women are more at risk for birth defects when exposed frequently to cleaning chemicals, especially window cleaner and air deodorizer sprays.
Effectiveness of greener cleaning products
Ashkin doesn’t believe home cleaning product recipes work well. “We have a romanticized view that because we can eat it, it’s good for you,” he says.
And can we say split stream chemical-free technologies clean as well as eco-friendly chemicals? Tennant doesn’t know the answer to this question, and Ashkin says it’s too early to know. However, companies are evaluating the technologies, comparing the impact to chemicals and other devices along with the wattage. He suspects the environmental benefits of chemical-free cleaning devices and technology will outshine chemical cleaners.
“Conventional cleaning requires extracting the raw materials, turning these into ingredients, shipping to a formulator who mixes everything into an effective cleaning product before putting the chemicals into packaging (with their own environmental impacts) and finally shipping to the end user. Through green cleaning those impacts go away.”
Debbi McCullough is an independent writer, editor and owner of Hanging Rock Media based in North Carolina.
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Humana Humana (HUM), one particular of the greatest players in offering wellness insurance coverage underneath the Affordable Care Act, expects increased than anticipated enrollment this year from individuals signing up by means of exchanges and from expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor below the law.
In announcing the insurer’s initial quarter earnings, Humana president and chief executive officer Bruce Broussard raised its individual business membership growth estimate to “350,000 to 500,000.” This membership growth consists of membership coming from state and federal marketplaces identified as exchanges the place Americans can acquire subsidized coverage underneath the law.
Humana is the newest in a parade of well being insurance firms, including Aetna Aetna (AET), Cigna Cigna (CI), Wellpoint (WLP) and numerous big Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans to increase their fiscal or enrollment projections for 2014 as the Obama administration final month stated it eclipsed its seven million purpose and signed up a lot more than eight million Americans in late March following a 6-month open enrollment time period.
In the initial quarter alone, Humana’s person business membership soared 55 percent, or much more than a quarter-million members, to 715,600 as of March 31 compared to 460,800 at the finish of 1st quarter 2013. “This membership development primarily displays new revenue, each on exchange and off-exchange, of plans compliant with the alterations mandated by well being care reform,” Humana said in a statement.
Those enrolled from the health law “skewed slightly to a younger population,” Broussard stated in a 65 minute conference get in touch with this morning with Wall Street analysts and investors. That statement is in line with other well being strategies that calmed Wall Street worries that the population signing up for coverage would be older and sicker and price well being ideas a lot more cash.
Insurers have explained enrollment trended younger as a lot more Americans signed up in the waning days of the open enrollment period, which ended last month.
Insurance coverage organizations for much of this quarter possessing been telling Wall Street that they are going to be able to manage the initial 12 months of risk from newly insured consumers acquiring subsidized personal overall health ideas via government-run exchanges. Beneath the law, millions of Americans can get subsidies to buy an array of overall health plan options.
For the quarter, Humana reported earnings of $ 368 million or $ two.35 per share, which beat most Wall Street analysts’ earnings expectations by a penny. Meanwhile, revenue jumped virtually twelve percent to $ 11.7 billion.
Humana also expects across the board membership gains in its government organization exactly where it contracts with states to offer Medicaid coverage to the bad and the federal government the place it sells Medicare Advantage programs that provide coverage to the elderly.
In the Medicaid enterprise, which is booming simply because practically two dozen states agreed to increase the plan to hundreds of thousands far more Americans underneath the overall health law, Humana’s Medicaid enrollment elevated virtually 77 percent in the quarter to 129,600 compared to the 12 months-ago time period.
The internet has had a huge role in shaping today’s sneaker business. The game has changed forever. And we can expect even more changes in the next next few years. This blog will explore the history of sneaker sales on the internet and then opine on what’s coming next.
History
Only recently have the sneaker retailers become serious about eCommerce. A decade ago, many sneaker retailers opted to outsource their eCommerce business. At the time this was an expeditious decision to grab easy profits with no expenditure, but it set the industry back a decade. Retailers lost years of sales data on some of their best customers. Sneaker stores gave up the ability to communicate and develop relationships with their fans on the web.
With outsourced ecommerce, the prices weren’t the same; the assortments were different; Products bought online could not be returned to physical stores. But worst of all, the retailers had no idea who was shopping on their site, where they lived and what they bought. Plus there was no way for them to communicate with these customers. It set the industry back a decade.
Online only retailers flourish
This huge strategic misstep allowed internet-only sneaker retailers to flourish. Out of nowhere, Zappos became the largest sneaker retailer on the web and they did it without the #1 brand, Nike. The online portion of Eastbay, Footlocker’s direct mail/online business, grew like crazy but the nameplate sites struggled. Other pure play online sneaker retailers took significant share. Sneaker brand sites had an open playing field.
Physical stores get in the game
In the last few years, physical store retailers realized that they had given tremendous market share to their brand partners and to the pure play competitors. Some of the physical retailers realized the missed opportunity and began to try to claw back lost share. The key brick-and-mortar players in the sneaker business have all had terrific growth in the lost three years. As an example, Dick’s posted a gain of nearly 70% in 2013 for their ecommerce business.
Internet sales drive comps
Over the last few years, sales growth on the internet has vastly outpaced the sales growth in physical stores. According to my analysis of the data from SportsOneSource.com, Sales of sneakers in physical stores grew in the low singles in 2011, but were up by more than half in on the internet. In 2012, sneakers sold through brick and mortar doors again grew in the low singles while sales on the web increased by a third. In 2013, sneaker sales in physical stores grew in the low singles while eCommerce grew about 20%.
One interesting side note is that 2013 sales on the web could have been higher but for the massive growth in marquee basketball. Mall retailers count on release shoes to prop up the smaller C&D level stores. Therefore, retailers limit how many pairs of limited releases are available on the web, in an effort to sustain the marginal stores.
In 2013 sales on the internet at Footlocker Inc. grew about 20% while comps grew in the mid singles. Sales on the internet were 11% of all Footlocker sales. Ecommerce sales at Dick’s grew about two thirds last year, while comps were only up in the low singles. 2013 Sales from the web at DSW DSW improved about 20% in 2013, with comps flat. ECommerce was 10% of DSW results. Finally last year at the Finish Line, Internet sales grew almost 25%, with comps up mid singles. Web sales were 12.5% of Finish Line sales.
Growth of sneaker sales on the internet will continue
Based on my research, sneaker sales on the web were 16% of total sneaker sale last year and grew about 20%. In fact, in in 2012 and 2012 sales of all sport footwear on the internet grew about 20% each year. If we assume 20% growth for internet sales and low singles growth in physical stores, in 5 years, sales of sneaker on the web will approach a third of all sneakers sold.
What’s Next?
With so much of the growth in sport footwear coming from the web, retailers who do not have a fully developed ecommerce strategy will lag in comps behind the industry leaders.
Marginal stores will become more marginal. The growth in internet sales has to be coming at the expense of the smaller C&D level stores in retail chains. In these smaller stores, the assortments are the weakest and most basic. Inventories are lean. Consumers, unable to find what they want, will head to the web, further marginalizing these stores
On the web, the brands win over the retailers. Brand sites over a greater content, larger assortments and more exclusive products. These factors will drive more customers to brand sites over retail sites. Nike just announced that they had 100 million views in 7 days of their World Cup “Winner Stays” commercial. There is no way physical retailers can compete with that kind of consumer experience.
We’ll see more limited releases move to the internet. Limited releases have always been problematic for sneaker retailers. Systems have to be put into place, extra personnel hired and there is always the risk of bad behavior. As brands and retailers figure out how to handle the web traffic, we’ll see more shoes released via the web.
Post millennials and millennials are eschewing the malls. They don’t need to congregate at the food court any longer; they can do that on their phone. With immediate and robust access to every brand and virtually every store right in their pocket, there is no need to go to the mall any longer.
Using feedback from social media, brands and retailers can use that feedback loop to better tailor their assortments to what kids want to buy and when. This predictive ability will make decision making more correct and timely.
The internet has had a profound impact on the sneaker business. We are in a much different place than we were a decade ago. I dare say we are not prepared for the changes that will happen in the next 5 years.
The soft-drink market is standing by its position that Australian sugar consumption has declined in the wake of an investigation casting doubt on the claims.
ABC radio’s Background Briefing program on Sunday aired a documentary criticising the Australian Paradox, a Sydney University examine which argued that despite a rise in Australia’s obesity prices more than the past thirty many years, refined sugar consumption per person had undergone a “substantial and consistent decline”.
The review concluded the function of sugar in fuelling obesity charges was overblown.
The examine, co-written by renowned nutritionist Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, has been employed by the Australian soft-drink market to ward off public-well being initiatives aimed at curbing soft-drink consumption. A single this kind of measure was attempted in New York final 12 months when the sale of soft drinks in measures bigger than 16oz (473ml) was banned. The measure was later overturned by a state court.
The ABC’s investigation was based mostly on analysis by former Reserve Bank economist Rory Robertson, a longtime critic of the evidence backing the Australian Paradox research.
In the documentary Robertson pointed to one particular chart in Brand-Miller’s review displaying a rise in complete-sugar soft-drink revenue from 35 litres per person in 1994 to 45 litres per individual in 2006.
“In the paper they describe it as a 10% decline, which is nonsense – certainly it’s a thirty% boost,” Robertson advised the ABC.
But Australian Beverage Council chief executive Geoff Parker told Guardian Australia the controversial study was just “one of a number of distinct papers that we reference”.
“We really don’t seem to one specific source of information in figuring out our place, we seem at a selection of sources,” Parker said.
“There’s enough data out there for us to have the place that consumption of full-sugar sweets and drinks has been on the decline on the final 10 or 15 years,” he explained.
Sydney University has launched an inquiry into Robertson’s complaints, but a spokeswoman for the university stressed that, at this stage, “there have been no substantiated claims against the function of any academic at the university, nor indeed has there been any obtaining that the complaints warrant any additional investigation”.
Parker said he would await the results of the university’s inquiry into the paper just before he would think about taking it down from the Beverage Council’s web site.
Can lessons from cutting tobacco use apply to other dangerous industries? Photograph: Alex Segre/Alamy
This month’s 50th anniversary of the Very first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Wellness supplies a bittersweet reminder of the promise and the limitations of public wellness activism to curb corporate promotion of behaviors and lifestyles associated with premature death and preventable sickness and damage. In the half century because the report was launched, the proportion of Americans who smoke has been reduce in half. A new report in the Journal of the American Health care Association estimates that tobacco control efforts in the United States have prevented 8 million premature deaths and extended the average lifespan by on average almost twenty years of life for the men and women who did not take up smoking because of prevention campaigns, increased tobacco taxes or smoking bans. All round, the success in reducing tobacco use has additional two.three years to the daily life of the regular American guy and 1.six many years to the regular American woman.
But this progress could have been attained in far much less time had not every single preventive policy been opposed by the tobacco market and had politicians beholden to the tobacco lobby severed these ties far more speedily. These delays doomed several a lot more to tobacco-connected illnesses. And regardless of the progress in this nation, the estimated toll from tobacco in this century is 1 billion premature deaths, far more than 10 instances the toll for the 20th century. The major cause so several a lot more people will fall ill and die agonizing, early tobacco-associated deaths is that the tobacco industry has adapted the lessons on advertising and marketing and undermining regulation that it realized in the United States to emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Sadly, the tobacco sector is not alone in contributing to America’s poor health standing amid developed nations. In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings, the equivalent of more than 85 deaths every day. Yet another 73,505 Americans had been taken care of in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds. While the scientific understanding and technology to significantly lessen this toll are obtainable, like the tobacco business, the gun sector and its allies in the National Rifle Association have steadfastly blocked any progress to make guns much less accessible or safer.
Similarly, the alcohol industry contributes to alcohol relevant injuries and illnesses by aggressive advertising, expanding the density of alcohol outlets, and creating items this kind of as wine coolers and malt liquors to appeal to young drinkers. A recent examine located that between 2001 and 2009, youth publicity to television alcohol promoting elevated by 71%. Excess alcohol consumption accounts for about 4,700 annual deaths amongst underage drinkers. Another review estimated that the mixed market place worth for the alcohol business of unlawful underage drinking and adult issue drinking accounted for between 37.five and 48.eight% of consumer expenditures for alcohol.
How has it come to pass that firms now have a stronger influence on the well being of Americans than public wellness officials, medical professionals or hospitals? How have companies succeeded in convincing so several officials in the White Home, Congress and the supreme court that protecting profits is a higher national priority than guarding public overall health?
In the final decades, a corporate consumption complex has solidified its influence on American politics and the economic system. This internet of client companies, the bankers and hedge money that lend them money, the trade associations that lobby for them, and the global ad agencies that market place their goods has been in a position to use its campaign contributions, lobbying and lawsuits to accomplish its business targets even when the vast majority of Americans disagree with these. Like the military industrial complicated that Dwight Eisenhower warned about just before he left public workplace, the corporate consumption complex threatens our democracy as well as our wellness and environment.
Are there lessons from our partial successes in cutting tobacco use that could be applied to decreasing the power of the corporate consumption complicated and its brand of hyperconsumption? I propose three.
1. Efforts to reduce tobacco use succeeded when Americans came to think that the correct to breathe clean air trumped the tobacco’s industry’s right to encourage its products without having public oversight. Right now, we need to have to mobilize dad and mom to demand our children’s proper not to be shot and not to be targeted by advertising and marketing of quickly food, sugary drinks and snacks that have contributed to a 176% enhance in the prevalence of diabetes amongst 1980 and 2011.
two. Portion of the accomplishment in reducing smoking came from forcing Large Tobacco to reimburse state governments for the expenses of caring for men and women with tobacco-connected illnesses. Enacting policies that would require processed meals producers to reimburse taxpayers and victims of the diet plan-associated diseases exacerbated by their promotion of large body fat, sugar and salt diets and alcohol producers for individuals injured or killed by the binge drinking.
three. Fund independent challenging-hitting prevention campaigns developed to undo the deceptive marketing Huge Tobacco had sponsored. We can do the same issue by counterbalancing the media and ad campaigns right now focusing on younger individuals to consume bad food items and glamorize guns.
In 1964, most observers imagined it was politically impossible to defeat the tobacco business and to deliver about considerable reductions in tobacco use. Today, modifying the practices of the firearms, alcohol and processed meals industries appears a similarly challenging task. But if we can apply the lessons from tobacco to accelerate changes in dangerous organization practices, probably we won’t need to wait yet another 50 years to prevent the deaths, illnesses, injuries and rising healthcare expenses that today’s science could avert.
