Jack Sherman

Individual Prompts–

1. Give three examples of something very interesting you learned
from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.

1. Blockchains (DAOs): My friend Mish told me about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, which are basically businesses that run themselves with no human interference. The only human directions are expressed in the initial code which outlines the purpose, procedures, and performances of the DAO, and then the computer works to follow these directions for as long as it still has something to do.
2. Guitar Half-Steps: To be fair, this wasn’t exactly an alien concept to me. I was already familiar with basic music theory from my year in the Men’s A Capella choir at my high school. However, I didn’t realize that guitar players can change the whole style of their sound by playing either a half step down or a half step up until my friend Mock explained this to me. He told me how Jimi Hendrix played a half step down his entire career, which is one of the reasons he has such a distinct blues sound. 
3. Wim Hof Method: My cousins Charlie and Michael first showed me how to practice the Wim Hof breathing technique, as well as the cold exposure practices he popularized. I didn’t believe that his method was legitimate until we did the breathing exercises and I was able to hold my breath empty for 5 minutes without any discomfort. Crazy.

2. List ten things that make you feel human.

1. Exercise
2. Music
3. Family deaths
4. My dog, Calvin
5. Injuries
6. Really hard exams
7. Cold showers
8. Visiting my elementary school
9. National Parks
10.  Learning

3. Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the Impact Fellowship. Specifically discuss:

• Why should I engage? 

• • • I should engage in my work because I genuinely believe that the average American work environment is improperly structured. I do not want to work in a monotonous workspace that ignores all of my needs except for the need to be productive. At the most basic level, I should engage because I am a stakeholder of the problem I’m trying to solve. Beyond that, I should engage because I have the creative and technical capabilities to influence work environments for a huge subset of the world’s population. I am someone who gets tremendous satisfaction from making others lives’ better, so I should strive to improve the standard of living for as many people as I can, to the greatest extent possible.

• How must I engage?

• • • I must engage by leveraging my strengths and relationships to build a project which has ever-lasting effects. I need to communicate honestly with my team, and share as many of my opinions as possible while actively considering theirs to ensure that our product is both authentic and resilient. I must do market research to guarantee that our actions align with our intentions. I need to pinpoint the true position of our various stakeholders in relation to mental wellness and work, which will then allow me to develop a business model that reflects these stakeholders’ needs.

• With whom must I engage?

• • • Stakeholders! My teammates, advisors, study participants, competitors, locals. Potential customers and their employees, suppliers, investors, etc. I should also engage with researchers and organizations interested in mental wellness, biophilia, workplace standards, among others.

• What kinds of challenges, opportunities, and approaches should I care about?

• • • Considering a company called Naava just launched their “plant wall” innovation, I should care a lot about my product’s unique value proposition. I need to balance differentiation with serving a single, pre-defined purpose. I should look for opportunities by observing competitors- seeing what problems they don’t have an adequate solution for, as well as analyzing trends to predict where future problems might arise. I should understand many different approaches to solving problems, but only undertake those which don’t undermine my core values. I identify my key values as authenticity, openness to experience, appreciation, lightheartedness, and optimism

• What might my epitaph read?

• • No idea, but my three favorite quotes are about the end of life, so I’ll list those instead. They come from a motivational speech by Fearless Motivation called “One Day It Will Be Over”, and the first quote was taken from Oscar Wilde

• “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all”
• “Live each day as if it may be your last on Earth. It may be”
• “One day It will all be over. There will be two dates either side of a dash. Make sure that dash is not empty”

Team Prompts–

4. What are the technological, social, economic, and political trends that will impact (help or hurt) your ventures?

One trend that is significant for our project is the cultural shift (specifically in the US) towards mental health awareness specifically in the workplace. As a society, we have started to have conversations about the role of the workplace in mental health. After COVID, people realized that they no longer had to sacrifice mental health and time doing things with loved ones or paying attention to self care in order to have a productive work day. Offices are making a conscious effort to attract people back into the office and thus looking for solutions to prove to their employees that they both care about their mental health and that office conditions will be improved upon their return. Our partitions help with both of those things. 

An additional trend that we may benefit from is the new-found appreciation for nature. During Covid, many people turned towards outdoor activities as a means to be entertained. This new fascination with the benefits the natural world brings us is now more intuitively seen. While we still require research, the intrinsic value of nature will be more intuitively grasped and we will spend less time explaining the actual value of the plants in the office and more time on logistics when presenting. 

Jack Sherman

1. Does your work require IRB approvals…right now? At a later
stage? If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy. If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and identify situations when you might need IRB approval.

We might need IRB approval in the near future to conduct a psychological study which measures stress levels for people surrounded by and away from natural greenery. We expect our study to be an example of research, since our study will systematically control levels of exposure to the EcoRealm product, and we expect the findings of our study to be relevant beyond the scope of Lehigh. These findings should be generalizable to all co-working spaces and corporate office environments, which is the market we aim to serve, as well as educational and (potentially) medical facilities. 

Additionally, our study involves human subjects. We need private knowledge from our participants to standardize the data and compare stress before and after exposure. We will likely find it useful to understand pre-existing mental health conditions from our subjects, in which case this information must be provided with consent. Although we could observe people at the EcoRealms without intervention, the psychological nature of our study makes it hard to determine any conclusions about the effectiveness of our product without direct intervention.

Despite our future study meeting the first two criteria for IRB  review, it is unlikely that any study we conduct will exceed minimal risk, so we can expect to be either deemed exempt or given an expedited review. The purpose of our study is not to present subjects with extreme stressors- it is quite the opposite. Our product tries to combat common daily stressors like those of work and school responsibilities. It is within the very nature of our product for us to be concerned with ordinary, daily activities that are experienced by a large percentage of the population. Although we could decide to heighten the stress levels of our future subjects to see how effective the EcoRealms truly are, it doesn’t make sense for us to experiment with anything that wouldn’t be a routine occurrence at a normal, nine-to-five job.

2. Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

A design process that is uniquely designed for our product will begin as an in depth analysis of the problem at hand. Our group has identified the negative emotions that surround the typical cubicle workplace environment. In order to further expand on this problem we identified we continued to do research on ways in which the work environment could be improved to improve the well being of people. The group before us explored different methods of how this could be achieved. However, ultimately after the brain streaming phase, there was a selection made for utilizing plants as a solution. Currently we are working on the other half of the design process, by focusing on creating a prototype of our product and testing to see if it is in fact improving the lives of people. The design process currently also heavily involves communication as we are focusing on increasing our network to try to help our idea set flight into an actual business. 

3. Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them.

1. Maintainer: We plan to have our EcoRealms maintained by a group of maintainers that will come in about once a month to ensure the plants are running smoothly.
   1. Personality Traits: Will have an interest in plants and be well educated on their different types of needs and how to maintain them.
   2. Values: Will value the company and value also the goal of the company to improve the well being of our customers. 
   3. Region of Country: Depending on where the EcoRealms are located, but as we hopefully expand to more offices around the U.S we would have to increase the amount of maintainers we have. 
   4. Benefits Sought: Will obtain a well paid job that involves working with nature.
   5. Education: Will range in education level as long as the maintainers are experienced with the EcoRealms maintaining systems. 
2. Competitor:
   1. Interests:  companies that may try to overtake our ideas and design by replicating it similarly. 
   2. Motives: might want to utilize the idea of the EcoRealm towards their own advantage.
   3. Urban/Rural: Our competitor could range from any geographical location but probably an office space as well. 
   4. Benefits Sought: To take advantage of the fact that we haven’t been able to get anything patentable in our product 
   5. Brand Loyalty: Definitely no brand loyalty if they are going to be stealing our product idea.  
3. Architect:
   1. Occupation: Would work in partnership with the corporation offices that we have installation in.
   2. Interests: Interests in architecture and design. This would contribute to the fact that corporations would buy our product and then rearranging
   3.  them depending on the desire of the office space.
   4. Brand Loyalty: I would say most likely would be loyal to the brand because they would work in collaboration with us.
   5. Education: would range as it depends on whichever architect or interior designer that the corporation has.

4. Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.

One way we can begin to validate our project concept is by meeting with people who are more experienced in the field that we are trying to go into. For example, since our project already has mapped out our idea fully and has started to bring it to life, we can validate what we are working on by seeking advice from organizations that specialize in helping small start ups such as Venture Lab that is a part of Lehigh University. Through these conversations we will be able to learn more about what we should continue to do to validate our project concept.

In addition to this, we can also validate our business model by continuing to conduct research on our product. We plan to create an actual example of what our product will look like and test it in local corporate office spaces in the Lehigh area. This would be an extremely valuable way of validating our project because it will give us valuable feedback on the effects our product has on corporate office spaces. After all, we want to ensure that our product is improving emotional wellbeing in the work place. 

Lastly, I would say that attending conferences and applying for grants that can fund our project will be another way that we can continue to navigate if our project concept will be effective in the real world. If we are able to successfully apply for grants and attain them, this will be an effective way to validate the project we are currently working on. 

Jack Sherman

1. List the top 20 questions your team needs to answer to advance
the venture forward. Categorize the questions if necessary.

1. Why does the world need our project? Does it?
2. Should we tailor our project to meet the research goals outlined in potential grant opportunities?
3. How can we improve the office space environment?
4. What is unique about our project?
5. While it makes the most sense to be geared towards offices, is there a day where we can be geared towards other consumers? Does this matter? 
6. Removing practical limitations, what is our ideal target market
7. What is the most important step in making our product a reality and beginning to manufacture it? 
8. How much do we need to focus on sustainable sourcing?
9. How can using beneficial microorganisms remove the necessity of adding an excess of nutrients into our hydroponic systems? 
10. What plants do we need to focus on implementing? How feasible is the idea about the native plant incorporation and would this assist our systems in running smoothly? Could this be applied regionally (for instance cacti in AZ)?
11. How important is it that our product is self-sustaining?
12. How can we enhance our product design to attract our target audience?
13. How can we get a stable form of funding for our project?
14. Where do we see our project in 5 years?
15. How should we set up our pricing model?Pricing model?
16. How confident are we that our preliminary research on the relationship between stress and plants is accurate
17. How important is it to focus on IP rights and Copyrights right now? Will the Indiana company be an issue?
18. Why do we think people would buy our product? 
19. How can we measure the effect of well being our product is providing to people working in corporate offices?
20. How much info on Biophilia is out there for us to utilize?

2. Develop and Visualize the Theory of Change (Logic Model) for your venture. Please submit a crisp visual.

 

3. Develop a Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) plan for your venture. Identify short-term and long-term outcomes.

For the Outputs and Outcomes you identified:

What are your metrics of success?

• Employee health data (sleep scores, heart health, etc)
• product circulating in market for corporate workspaces
• number of employees with access to natural workspaces
• employee turnover rates (within individual companies)

How will you measure them?

Short-Term

• Case studies- surveys on employee mental health
• HR reports
• Full and completed Biophilia Psych Study 

• Manufacture a final prototype
• Sign a Manufacturing Contract 
• Collaborate with companies around the Lehigh community and expand corporation connections 
• Expand research on how to make hydroponic system completely autonomous

Long-Term

• Ecorealm has nationwide relevance and a visible impact on office stress and productivity 
• Transforming the well being of employees by improving corporate office spaces 
• Implementation of product in most office spaces in the US, expansion to international customers has begun. 

What SDGs does your project target? What might be reasonable indicators for those SDGs?

Goal 3: Good Health and Well Being 

• Indicator 1: Mental health improvement within the office spaces that have EcoRealm partitions. This can be measured through HR surveys of employee satisfaction, and we will look for a decrease in the percentage of employees mentioning stress in their individual reports.
• Indicator 2: We hope to see significant increases in the number of job applications sent to companies that incorporate EcoRealm partitions into their workplace.

Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure:

• Indicator 1: The product used to place the plants will impact on how they feel—uplifting their mood— when working near this structure.
• Indicator 2: Designing a structure that is easily portable to use in different locations which allows more people to enjoy and experience the EcoRealm in their space.

Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

• Indicator 1: Improved community wellness due to a more peaceful work environment. Economic Measure? Significant increases in spending due to increase in work → increase in $$ → increase in surplus spending
• Indicator 2: Less office building turnover between companies. 

Crystallize the larger challenge your venture seeks to address, the specific problems you are targeting, and the kinds of opportunities you hope to leverage.

Our big dream would be to improve mental health in modern society. We hope to revolutionize the modern workspace with nature. 

Our venture mainly seeks to address to eliminate the box office mindless workspace that most office spaces in the country consist of. We seek to improve the work office environment by adding natural plant life in order to enhance the working environment. Not only would we improve the mental well being of the people who work around our EcoRealm, but we would also help the company by making the workers benefiting from the EcoRealm work more efficiently. These more efficient workers would lead to improving the success of the company. We hope to leverage opportunities to implement the EcoRealm into different workplaces ranging around the country, starting of course in the Lehigh Valley. 

An opportunity we are hoping to leverage in order to gain clientele is the conditions generated by the recent pandemic. The Covid pandemic has removed many people from the office and as a result, decreased productivity. The incentive for employees to  come to in person work will be increased in a positive and enriching work environment, hopefully via our EcoRealm.  We expect that company executives will be eager to implement these kinds of incentives in order to get more employees coming back into the physical workspace. We might consider targeting companies/offices with long term lease agreements or complete building ownership where not having employees work in person is a waste of resources. Under these circumstances, EcoRealm plant partitions may face lower barriers to enter the market.

Identify the two most important social, economic, and environmental bottom lines that matter to your project.

• Social: Improving emotional well being and mental health. Introducing nature as a path to better mental health. 
• Economic: Increase in employee productivity, therefore increasing success of a company and overall health of the economy. Focuses on economic development rather than just growth, which means the end goal is to raise global living standards, not just real GDP or some other singular metric. 
• Environmental:  Product that uses (hopefully) ethically sourced materials (actual frame, monitors, plants, fertilizer) and c2c design meaning that the plant structures can be refurbished and put into offices over and over with a base structure instead of contributing to landfill.
• Purpose: Revolutionizing the modern workplace by introducing nature in order to improve mental health. 

Describe ten cultural factors that might impact your project at various phases in its lifecycle.

Negative:

• Cramped, packed office spaces may be too small to fit an EcoRealm in.
• Profit orientation in United States economy, not interested in employee well-being
• Societal biases against the cleanliness of plants
• Resistance to change – people like tradition
• Overcoming pushback from potential clients who might doubt our credibility

Positive: 

• Growing awareness of the benefits received from nature 
• Shift towards mental health awareness and self care would make most companies’ HR departments concerned about the well being of their employees. 
• Greater focus on employee satisfaction and retention within companies. 
• Company emphasis on bringing employees back into the office-recent prioritization of workplace participation.  
• Dense urban communities looking to restructure existing space rather than expand

Give three examples of cultural practices that can be leveraged to address community / market problems.

1. An example of a cultural practice we could use to our advantage is the idea of having a typical nine to five job in which employees go into the office to work. This would benefit EcoRealm as it would support the idea of people going into work instead of the shift of working from home. 
2. Many corporations use cubicles, which separate employees and imply that work should be done solo. Changing this cultural practice with the implementation of plant partitions surrounding multiple desks might encourage employees to collaborate more.
3. Changing the dialogue around mental health and work going against each other. Implementing EcoRealms that support mental health at work and start a positive relationship between the two.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GXPlu0AkklMe4BjnYmqqQhG7X4OE6J-hp868yl7Enbg/edit?usp=sharing

EcoRealm Goalsetting Retreat