Health care reform? We need to change our thinking, too…

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We are on the road to recovery in health care- or are we? This year we passed two bills: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act  (known as the “Senate bill”), and the “House Bill”, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872).  However, neither of these bills really reformed healthcare- but they did address the healthcare insurance issue.

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More about Vision, Mission, Goals- the order of development is critical

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Last week, I differentiated between what is our Vision, Mission, and Goals.  We  tend to focus on those goals- we have something in mind, hone in on it, and drive relentlessly to complete it.  We put together these goals to achieve the success we desire in our lives. Others may have goal(s) in mind, but life (or lassitude) helps divert them (or us)  from focusing and completing that goal in a reasonable amount of time (and reasonable is in the eye of the beholder). But, we all understand that we need to develop goals, plan to achieve them, and get what we want from life.

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So you want to start your own business? Are you really ready?

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I keep reading that more people should be starting their own businesses, mostly in reaction to the current employment levels.  I am certainly not against the foundation of new enterprise- but there needs to be an acknowledgment of the pitfalls involved.  Most new businesses fail within the first three years- so it’s not a panacea, it won’t (necessarily) solve your financial dilemnae.

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Big Oil- can’t live with them, can’t live without them (at least, for now)

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You might think that when we (start to, continue to ) invest in new energy-producing alternatives, we will solve our “big oil” problem. NOT!  We need gasoline and/or diesel fuels for the foreseeable future. Our transportation system relies on liquid-based fuels.  Yes, we can convert these vehicles to electricity (with major improvements to the existing technologies), but the transition will be much slower than you would think.  If we had sufficient supplies of electric vehicles (and they were reliable) and outlawed (not likely at all) the sale of all gasoline powered vehicles tomorrow , it would be at least 10 years before there would be a noticeable drop in gasoline consumption.  (Consumers don’t trade in all their cars every year, consumers buy used cars, etc.)

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Barriers to Entry

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With homage to Arthur Lipper, a mentor and friend

While running a medical device manufacturer (this is a vagary in our regulatory environment; in any other country this venture would have been a pharmaceutical operation), we routinely analyzed our operations and updated our business plans.  We had an outside Board, who provided us with invaluable insight- and a counterbalance to our (inherently inward bound and) parochial focus.  Whenever we considered a new option or product addition, Arthur always asked, “What are the barriers to entry by our competitors?” That valuable lesson (among many others provided by Arthur, Bob Boyle [a’h], and Bill Weissert to us) is one I want to share with you today.

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Risky Business: Part 2

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Yesterday (Part 1), we discussed why we need risk assessment- and alluded to why we fail this process.  We really do not understand risk, at all. The chance that a nuclear reactor will experience catastrophic failure in any given year is pretty low; but the probability of a nuclear accident happening anywhere is much higher.  The same is true when one considers a terrorist attack or even possibility of another BP oil spill.  And, the wild card in every calculation is human error (or stupidity).

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Risky Business: How we perceive risk- and how we must do MUCH better (part 1)

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I said I was going to discuss risk last week; today seems like the perfect day to do so. Yesterday was the anniversary of the (almost) Iranian Revolution. The younger generation (about ½ of all Iranian citizens) were dismayed at the election “results” (not likely to have been as advertised), and for a few weeks, took to the streets and tried to change the way the country was governed. It failed (at least as of today). Most of the leaders understood there was risk to this position; I am not sure they understood that risk meant that their government would callously kill them. Likewise, the Tiananmen revolution in China- it’s not likely that these folks expected 3000 to be killed. Or, to date things back further, the students from 1968 did not believe that the Chicago police would “billy-club” and beat them. These are political- not technological- risks.

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