Jacques Pelman Cinq387 Blog2

 

Jacques Pelman Cinq387 9/3/20

Step1: Facts

Lesotho is a small developing country

You are a group of 10 researchers

You have 2 weeks to conduct research

You are looking for pathogens in the water sources

Your team requires community assistance to locate water sources

Your goal is to produce publications

Chemical additives may be produced as a result of your publications

Ethical issue: Is your current research plan ethical?

It is ethical but there are solutions to make it fairer to the Lesotho communities

 

Step2&3: Stakeholders and Motivations

Researchers: want the best possible outcome of their study, efficiently find participants, make study ethical, identify and study all pathogens

Participants in the study: offer assistance to a project that could positively impact their community, potential for safe drinking water

Funders: results, return on investment, maintain reputation, stay within the timeline

People of Lesotho:

want their water to be safe to drink, protect water as one of their main natural resources, and want something out of participating in the study

University: Care about reputation and return on investment. Would like the study to stay within budget

(Lesotho)Government: keep the people safe and benefit long and short term for the people, improvement in the society/community long and short term, protect natural resources (water)

 

Step4: Solutions

 

  1. Pay the people with money

Pros: communities will be eager to help, gives them purchasing power for items they need, your team gets the help they need, many people will be likely to volunteer

Cons: unknown how much the community will want, does the community want the money(similar to taxes for public goods) or the individual people, cannot guarantee they will spend the money to help themselves, they are still susceptible to the pathogen, may cause issues within the community is some members receive monetary incentives while others are left out, increase amount needed from University/Funding Agents

  1. Don’t pay the people

Pros: save money which will please the funders and university, what “most” researchers do

Cons: communities may lack enthusiasm and may be uneasy about the research; some areas might not help you at all (waste of resources), no delays to publication

  1. Provide incentives (other than money) and education

Pros: almost Guarantees to help the people with the water issue specifically, maybe be cheaper than giving a large number of people cash, education may allow the researchers to bridge social/cultural differences

Cons: Will cost some amount of money more than just the bare minimum, may cause the researcher to take longer thereby delaying the publication, increase amount needed from University/Funding Agents and increase time needed due to added educational aspect

 

Step5: Additional Assistance

 

 

The main source of water for parts of eastern South Africa

Very vulnerable to political disputes in South Africa

Droughts are common

Water is distributed through the Lesotho Highlands Water Project

Waterborne diseases are common and the infant mortality rate is high because of them.

 

 

Step6: Best Course of Action

Option 3: Provide incentives (other than money) and education

 

Incentives will promote communities to help us locate water sources but the information we provide to them will also increase their knowledge about water safety. We will get the data we need but the communities will benefit in a way greater than monetarily. Education costs us nothing but time to provide and will help the Lesotho people in their development. I would focus on a small number of incentives and only give incentives to the people who help us. This will keep the cost down and only allow a small amount of inequality between the community. I would want to focus on education since it can be spread and helps to equalize the population.

 

Monetary incentives might be more enticing and ensure we get the support we need in the research, but it does not have a sustainable long term result. The Lesotho people will still be susceptible to the pathogens in the water.

 

No incentives at all only benefit us as we will get our research completed although we might miss out on some communities not willing to engage with us.

 

 

 

Step7: Implications

 

By educating the locals about their water issues but also solutions to protect themselves from these pathogens almost guarantees to help the people with the water issue specifically, Lesotho can continue progressing their water safety and spread their knowledge to the other regions that they supply water to. This as a whole aids in the development of their country into a safer and more stable region. Education may allow current and future researchers to bridge social/cultural differences to more easily complete research with less interference. Although this option will help most people with the least economic cost it will delay the publication.

 

Jacques Pelman Cinq387 Blog 1

Jacques Pelman                                                Cinq387 Blog 1                                                     8/25/20

Step1:

You are the designer of a new syringe for low and middle-income hospitals. You must decide between including an expensive safety feature which would allow the syringe to only be able to be used once which would cause some of the hospitals not to be able to afford the new syringe.  There is no deadline stated or anything stating that you cannot add more features.

Step 2 and 3:

You(designer)=make what is asked not to anger investors, do good for the low and middle-income hospitals, and keep the item affordable.

Investors= make a product that does what it is designed to do, make a profit,  and possibly do good              investors are plural and intention may vary)

Hospitals= treat patients and keep costs low

Doctors & nurses= Help patients get well and various personal agendas (plural)

Customers (patients) = want to overcome their illness and to keep their bill as low as possible

Company- keep reputation positive, do good for the low and middle-income hospitals and maximize profits

Step 4:

Put in safety feature

Virtuous framework- This is what a “good person would do” because this would prevent secondary uses and the spread of disease

Pros= releases the item with no time delay and prevents the spread of disease from secondary uses and allows for some hospitals to give vital intravenous medicine

Cons= doesn’t allow all hospitals to buy the item because of cost.

Don’t put in safety feature

Consequence based thinking- “would help the greatest number of people” because this would allow the highest amount of people to get access to vital lifesaving medicine at a lower cost than they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise

Pros= releases items without time delay and allows all hospitals to buy the item.

Cons= doesn’t prevent the spread of diseases from secondary uses

Put in different safety feature that does the same thing as the more expensive safety feature at a lower cost.

Care based thinking- “consider what this specific situation demands” because in the ideal world the goal is to not spread disease and have the lifesaving medicine accessible to the people.

Pros= prevents spread of disease from secondary uses and allows for all hospitals to give vital intravenous medicine

Cons= releases item with time delay

Step5:

Many of my peers were gravitating toward option three because it solved both problems but had a time delay which wasn’t seen as that bad of a cost to perfect the product at a lower cost.

Though it would be unclear how many people would have avoided a negative health situation if the product was released without a time delay.

In my personal experience life, I have tended to gravitate toward options aligned with consequence-based thinking models.  Many of my choices affect just me or a small number of people.  This problem can affect many people so I feel like option two which is the closes to consequence-based wouldn’t be appropriate.

Step 6:

I would choose option three. This is because I would be solving the current problem as a whole without creating new problems.  In option one, I would be creating more inequality by some hospitals being able to use the item and other not for those hospitals the current problem with no access to affordable syringes would continue.  In option two I would be creating new problems by solving the initial one.

These problems can include but are not limited to spreading diseases from using the syringes multiple times and corrupt doctors stealing the multiple-use affordable syringes for drug use.

My group and other groups had similar answers close to option three so there was much support from my peers.  The good impacts for choosing option three would prevent the spread of disease from secondary uses and allows for all hospitals to give vital intravenous medicine.  The bad impact of choosing option three would increase the time that it takes to create the product.

Step 7:

There would be many implications of my solution to the venture’s technology, economic, and environmental aspects.  The implication of the venture’s technology is that since it is different than a normal syringe there would be changes to the manual on how to use it for the hospital staff.  The economic implications of my solution are that it would be more affordable than the solution in option one.  The negative environmental implications of my solution would be the same if not greater than a traditional syringe or option one.  A way this could be solved is by making all or part of the product recyclable and to train the hospital staff on how to properly recycle the product.

LVSIF Blog 11

Blog prompt 2

Although the project is on such a small scale that it doesn’t need much funding.  In the future scaling up the project can be done with grants.  This would be a safe and easy way to see if the project can be scaled up reasonably.  Once it is proven with grants that the project will be able to be scaled up efficiently them many I would use person seed funds or public seed funds.  The easiest grants would be Lehigh research grants.  I would use personal seed funds because I would like most ownership and most profits.  I would only use Public seed funds if I cannot raise enough money from my personal fund or friends and family.

Blog prompt 3

I would need to maintain Lehigh as an essential partner to provide grant money.  Lehigh would be a short term partner since once there are profits I wouldn’t need to keep using grant money.  I will still keep Lehigh as a partner for inspiration for new ideas and other positive feedback.    The second partner that I would need is a distribution network or website to share the results. This would be a cheap service that I can buy from a company without giving any intellectual property right away.  Another partner would be a large tech firm that has large amounts of cloud storage to store my data.  This partnership would be great if I got the service for free because of the positive social impact that my project will have across the world.  The next step would be to make this positively impact people around the world.  The rest of the partnership should be the most popular social media used in the target country.

M&E Plan
My short term metrics of success are much different than the long-term ones. My short term metric of success with data collection is how diversified my data set is. This would be measured by the number of different answers. My second short term metric of success is how satisfactory the students are about the survey. This is generally measured based on if the student thought the questions were applicable to them. My long-term metric of success is how many views or reads my final paper gets. I would also try to measure my long-term success if the problems I identify in my paper get resolved or students end up not having the same problems as before. I am not too sure about how I would measure my long term success goals. Hopefully, this will become clearer when working next semester.

 

 

LVSIF Blog 10

Blog prompt 2

Although the project is on such a small scale that it doesn’t need much funding.  In the future scaling up the project can be done with grants.  This would be a safe and easy way to see if the project can be scaled up reasonably.  Once it is proven with grants that the project will be able to be scaled up efficiently them many I would use person seed funds or public seed funds.  The easiest grants would be Lehigh research grants.  I would use personal seed funds because I would like most ownership and most profits.  I would only use Public seed funds if I cannot raise enough money from my personal fund or friends and family.

Blog prompt 3

I would need to maintain Lehigh as an essential partner to provide grant money.  Lehigh would be a short term partner since once there are profits I wouldn’t need to keep using grant money.  I will still keep Lehigh as a partner for inspiration for new ideas and other positive feedback.    The second partner that I would need is a distribution network or website to share the results. This would be a cheap service that I can buy from a company without giving any intellectual property right away.  Another partner would be a large tech firm that has large amounts of cloud storage to store my data.  This partnership would be great if I got the service for free because of the positive social impact that my project will have across the world.  The next step would be to make this positively impact people around the world.  The rest of the partnership should be the most popular social media used in the target country.

LVSIF Blog 9

Business plan visual model

Ten practical lessons from the business (revenue) models of ventures we reviewed today (or others you research) as they relate to your venture.

Focus more on consumer benefits. To gather a good base of consumers focus on how your product is intended to increase the quality of life for the consumer.  Focus on this first because that is the first priority most consumers will have in mind when deciding to buy a product/service.

Help the environment.  When consumers see that the product/service consistently works and increases their quality of life they look to externalities of buying their product.  This includes both positive and negative externalities on the environment.

Keep it simple. When the product/service is simple, convenient and easy to use consumers are more likely to consume it.

Try to keep the economic impact of your product local or give back to the community.  People from different cultural backgrounds may have a different/stronger sense of community than westerners.  Keeping the positive economic impact local might increase people in the communities affected to increase consumption.

Have good business partners that positively impact the community. When the greystone bakery sells its product to Ben and jerry’s which is a company widely known for its positive impact on the community their reputation rubs off onto your company.

Hire locally if able.  Hiring locally creates a positive relationship with the community where your operations are.

This can also lead to less traveling which means less time wasted for the employee and fewer carbon emissions if using a traveling device that requires fossil fuels.

Keep your products/services multifunctional.  This gives your consumers more ways to use your product and maybe a new market for you the firm to enter into.

Teach the community how to use your product/service in the recommended way and how to teach others how to use your product.  If your firm is small it may not have a lot of resources but a free resource is the community of consumers.  This will allow other potential consumers to hear about your product through your current consumers.

When unsure about how to service communities inquire. Ask the community what its needs are and try to meet them. This is shown perfectly in the Barefoot college example.

Plan out your business with a business model to increase efficiency and to keep the business as a whole organized.

LVSIF Blog post 8

JACQUES LVSIF PROJECT BUSINESS MODEL ATTEMPT

Offer- more knowledge about the opinions of college from college-aged people

Customer segments- supply(students 17-25) buyers(university faculty)

Distribution- the internet via social media

Revenue streams- N/A

Customer relationships- friendly/professional

Key resources- social media, the internet, me

Cost structure – N/A

Partner network- Lehigh each interviewee

Key activities- maintaining data organized, writing the paper with deep analysis, managing network of interviewees with updates.

Lessons learned:

The Aravind Eye Hospital is a technological venture rooted in helping people without sight.

This aligns with the same lessons learned from the art of the start.

To keep exploitation ad negative externalities to a minimum the viewpoint of Dr.V and his company is that they are helping the community, therefore, helping themselves.

The efficiency of the company had inspiration from McDonald’s.  Instead of using the model of efficiency to create profit, he is using it to try to solve the one problem of blindness.

The success of the company attributed to the clear thinking of what the problems/challenges they were facing to address the problem.   For the Aravind Eye Hospital, it had a large population, low capital, and logistics issues.

Each step in the process of solving the blindness problem wither with glasses or surgery has one strategy to make it most efficient.  This allows the company as a whole to become much more efficient.

Even though they were serving a population that couldn’t pay.  When they did charge they charged fair prices and capitalized on market inefficiencies.  This allowed them to continue to make a profit.

To keep their business sustainable they enabled their competition (other hospitals) to raise their production via consultations.  This allows more people to be treated helping the community by solving blindness.

By comparing the Aravind Eye Hospital to the NHS the cost is much lower but the other statists are much closer in numbers.  Even though there are differences between the UK and India this data shows that western countries can improve aspects of their system.

How the project started as a post-retirement project it shows that even if there is a large financial barrier there are ways to overcome it.

The business model as a whole of the Aravind Eye Hospital shows that with a good business model you must focus on some things while sacrificing others.  In this example, they sacrificed the lots of money usually made in the healthcare industry for efficient/high-quality care for people who usually cannot afford it.

LVSIF Blog 8

The art of the start was very compelling to me since I want to start a successful business in the near future. There were way more than five compelling takeaways from the Art of the Start but I will try to summarize them all while focusing on the most important five.
The first compelling take away was the reason for starting an entrepreneurship project/business.
Those three things are “making meaning”, Right a wrong” and “keeping something good”. My previous thoughts were to “make money” and “make something revolutionary”.
My previous thought process was fundamentally flawed in the way it prioritized money first instead of the product that I would be making. This changed my way of thinking and now I have to revisit all my ideas so a can capitalize on them properly
The second compelling take away was the reason for a mantra and not a mission statement this showed that whenever I create my business I need to focus on all of the employees as part of my business and they all need to be fully informed about how and why the business exists no matter where they are placed in the company or their education levels.
The third compelling take away was the reason to focus on people. In the early stages of entrepreneurship, one of the most valuable assets is the team dynamics. So as a leader trying to create an entrepreneurship based business means I have to focus on creating the most efficient and diverse team.
The fourth compelling take away was the presentation information explained throughout the entire speech. This includes the 10 20 30 rule where following this rule forces you to know what you are talking about while being efficient and concise in your presentation. Another thing that falls into this category is the charts whereas an entrepreneur you strive to create exceptional value to customers and to provide a unique product or service.
The last compelling take away was the business model and hiring strategy. The first part is to have a good business model. The three things that he said to have a great model is to “be specific”, “keep it simple” and to have “milestones”. Be specific refers to answering the what, when, why and how for everything about the business. Keeping it simple refers to keeping the answers to the questions previously mentioned simple and easy to understand by everyone allowing for clear and concise feedback. Milestones refer to having big goals accompanying little goals for the business.
The measure of finding out if a goal is big is if after you achieve it you will want to tell your family about it.
Two smaller takeaways that I got from the speech are to observe consumers that use your product/service in unintended ways and to hire infected people. Observing consumers that use your product/service in unintended ways allows your business to capitalize on making products/services to meet the needs of these consumers. Hiring infected people refers to not only hiring people with good work experiences, educational backgrounds but who are also better than you and love the company/product. For customers flatten the learning curve for all products/services and to embrace evangelists of all types.
Since I am not creating a product or service I will focus on the way I deliver my interview questions.
Now that I am moving away from in-person interviews will be using Google form for completing interviews more efficiently. I will be working on a small piece of writing that accurately describes the project/interview so that people can efficiently understand what the project is about and how to complete the interview. So the main concepts of the value proposition that I am using are accessibility, convenience, and usability.
I help young people in college or out of college express their opinions about college and higher education by creating a structured interview/survey.
My total available market is all people obtaining an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree or are between the ages of 18-22. My total addressable markets are people within my social circle who are willing to take the survey.

LVSIF Blog 7

Summary of the exercises

Exercise one:

My resources are quite low for this project I only have myself, the professor, and the internet. The two things I’m sure I’m doing well is the fact that I am quite effect when doing the interviews and that I am good at coming up with great questions. I will continue to make this a reality by drawing back on my previous experiences and analyzing them. I will continue to take in constructive feedback and looking at new and interesting ways to implement the feedback into my project. My untapped strength is optimizing my interviews and making them more efficient for online versus in real life. I will tap into this strength by collaborating with Salma and other members of the team about the organization and what the end goal of the project should look like. I feel like my blind spots are thinking the people would want to participate in an online interview without any incentive. I will address my blind spots by actively following up with the people who I ask to take the survey. I feel like the biggest challenges are to overcome my procrastination and to overcome my natural disorganization. 

I do not have a set plan on overcoming my biggest challenges but I plan on collaborating with similar people to see how they have overcome these challenges.  

Exercise two:

Since I don’t have official group members I can only talk about the people who are working on the project at the same time as me. One of the people I never had a conversation with her so I do not know her at all. The other member helped guide me through the first part project since it was confusing and I felt as if it was too open-ended. Salma because she brought up interesting ways to look/approach the problem. Salma also shared her questions which were a big help since I did not have anything to compare my questions previously. She helped me optimize my questions and clarified the direction of the project thereby making me more efficient by not wasting my time on menial research.

Exercise three:

Start- Organizing my ideas more efficiently and Frequent contact with Professor Brunstein. I will try to accomplish this by contacting him with any questions that I may have instead of putting off the questions for the weekly status report.

Keep- Interviewing people regularly and Keeping track of all my results. I will continue to accomplish this by reaching out to people that are not in my immediate social circle. 

Stop- Procrastinating on small details and Stop over thinking the end goal/big picture of the project. I will make this happen by asking the professor more questions about the end goal of the project and the best way to organize the data.  

 

Plan

Since I do not have an official team I will try to keep the plan more focused on the project as a whole and my individual plan.

Small goals: Learn something new and useful, make new professional connections get a good grade is both classes. I will accomplish this by taking notes, being fully present in all class meetings and asking all the professors/professionals in-depth questions about the material. 

Big goals/Project goals: Learn and understand more about the viewpoint of college from interviews of college students. I will accomplish this by gathering a large number of people with a variety of viewpoints on higher education.

Roles: 

Salma(collaborator and qualitative expert)- She has been doing this project for a year longer than me. So I feel she has more expert in the organization of the data and how to go about doing a professional interview/survey.

Professor Brunstien (Coordinator)- The main expert with all the knowledge and experience. He should be able to answer all my lingering questions about the research. Although, he tends to leave the project very open-ended allowing me to “use my best judgment”.

Me (interviewer and project worker)- The main person doing the bulk of the interviews and groundwork allowing for further analysis from people with more skills/knowledge than I.

 

Processes: create and optimize questions, do the interviews, organize the data, analyze the data, lastly create the opinion-based paper.

 

LVSIF Blog 6

Yes, my work does need IRB approval.  My activity does involve research and it involves human subjects.  My research is interviewing people.  The purpose is to extract information about decisions about higher education with a focus on first-generation students. Although I am doing research on humans, I am not doing any research on any vulnerable populations.

When I would present, I will have a title/introduction slide. This slide would serve to introduce me. The second slide would be an introduction to the problem I am trying to address. I would probably introduce a couple of attention-grabbing statistics about higher education. Next, I would have a slide that proposes my question to the audience. Then I would propose an outline of my project. The next slide would explain why I chose my specific methods of obtaining results. Then I would have a slide explaining how I would organize my results. The next slide would explain the conclusions I will draw from my data and possible future research using my research. The next slide would be about the flaws of my research. The second to last slide will be about how I will address the flaws of my research. The last slide will be a question slide.

LVSIF Blog post 5

Ten things that make me feel human are eating, sleeping, learning, loving, thinking, feeling, working, relaxing, talking and expressing myself.

I feel like I should engage with my audience for many reasons. One of the main reasons is to educate people about higher education.  I also want to educate people about the reasons why people don’t go to higher education.

I will engage with my audience with interesting questions and try to get the most useful information from them.  I will engage with my readers with interest information and results drawn from my data.

I must engage with the people I interview and my readers alike.

The challenges I care about is how to connect and make my readers feel comfortable with me.   If they aren’t comfortable with you as a person, they won’t want to tell you sensitive information.  I also have to overcome to challenges of time management.  People’s schedules can be hectic and there may be complications to set up interviews.  The opportunities that I should care about is the opportunities to diversify my sample of students.  People tend to gravitate towards similar people so I will take opportunities in my life to meet new people.  The new people I meet I will try to incorporate them into my research.  I should take a gentle approach and not force the person to be uncomfortable.  When the person is uncomfortable it will be difficult to obtain the correct information.

 

My epitaph might read

“As I dream of a better world

What does that actually mean?

Mean what it shall, makes no difference to me.

As I continue to doubt everything I see.

Whatever that means.”

Please don’t read too much into it. I just see big laws protecting the environment being enacted but I’m still seeing the effects of climate change.