Motiv
July 27th, 2012 | Filed under: Guest Posts | No Comments »
Image: adrianclarkmbbs via flickr
Guest post by Rebecca Horton, a graduate student studying Design Management at the Savannah College of Art and Design who has joined the Motiv team for the summer
It’s a rare occasion that a trip to the doctor’s office or the subsequent visit to the pharmacy is a pleasant experience, but last week I had not one but two “wow” moments in the realm of personal healthcare.
As a design strategist with a particular bent towards service design, I’m constantly analyzing the elements that make service experiences delightful, frustrating, or downright awful. By nature of my role as a designer, I’m more often than not critical of services for failing to deliver on expectations or overlooking user needs. So, when I have a great service experience, I take note and I tell others. Documented below are a few snippets from my latest “delights” in the healthcare arena.
The first of my two healthcare “wows” came during a visit to my neighborhood urgent care center. Upon entering the clinic, I was immediately greeted by a woman at the front desk. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, but when she asked me to fill out my information she handed me a mini laptop instead of a clipboard littered with forms. Already a bit perplexed, I sat down to fill in my information. The click-through set of forms was well designed and easy to use. Apparently developed so that customers could fill out forms before even entering the clinic for an appointment, the interface prompted me to fill in missing information when I left things blank and allowed me to easily navigate between different sections. Thanks to this handy tool, in only a few minutes my information was logged and I was back at the counter chatting about next steps. From there, I signed a few waivers using a digital pen pad as the receptionist read aloud the necessary information. With the news humming on low through a television monitor above my head, I settled into a chair in the sunlit lobby to wait to be called back. Continue Reading»
Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
November 28th, 2011 | Filed under: Guest Posts | 2 Comments »
Guest Post By Katie Waterson, Director of Strategy & Innovation, NCB Capital Impact
Innovative Partnerships address Social Challenges
It’s a fascinating time to be an innovator focused on solving domestic social problems. The challenges at the center of social innovation in the United States – improving the lives of people in low income communities through better education, high-quality healthcare, access to healthy food, affordable housing and jobs – are complex, dynamic and interconnected through an historic and often problematic set of systems, policies and funding models.
Yet it’s the complexity of these challenges that is giving way to a growing “impact investing” ecosystem comprised of venture philanthropists, micro-lenders and mission investors looking for triple bottom line returns on capital, which has been fueling new ways of approaching innovation for the social good. These models bring together thought leaders and funds from both public and private sources to create social investment opportunities with impacts far beyond what government agencies and private companies alone have achieved. It’s the success of organizations like my firm, NCB Capital Impact, KIVA, Heifer International, Grameen Bank, Acumen Fund and many others that keep me optimistic about the outlook for the United States; we can and will innovate our way out of the problems we’re facing. Keep Reading»
Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
August 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
What a fitting week to discuss M&A activity as our weekly Twitter topic! During the week, which began with Google’s announced acquisition of Motorola Mobility and ended with H-P’s proposed divesture of its personal computing unit, we came across several great reads. Here are a few:
•Finance, tech, finance, beer, finance…A top ten list of mergers and acquisitions during the last decade reflected the influence of the 2008 financial crisis Continue Reading»
Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
August 12th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
This week we tweeted on innovation within sports, a field that I greatly enjoy following and would love to learn more about. These tweets were on the money(ball):
•Two young entrepreneurs out of USC have invented a revolutionary basketball shoe that adds 3 inches to your vertical leap. The bad news? The shoe was banned by the NBA. The good news? Sales have sky rocketed since they were banned. http://motv.st/ohPc1O
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Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
August 5th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
From two political parties working together in Washington to the unusual split of Kraft into two companies, there was a lot to keep up with this week. Rather than weighing in on the negativity around the political debate, we chose to focus our attention on all the positive things going on in the world of startups. Here are some of the most interesting things we came across this week:
•Want to support businesses started by entrepreneurs 30 years old and younger? Nonprofit Our Time aggregates daily deals from businesses started by young entrepreneurs.
•A survey of 550 startup staffers completed by the folks at BestVendor revealed Google’s dominance in the realm of web and business tools used by startups (see who else makes popular tools here: http://motv.st/oMMi8Z)
•How do you tell your boss that you are leaving to join a startup company? Quora members weigh in here.
•It seems that everyone within ten feet of a word processor has a few words of wisdom for entrepreneurs and startup companies, but we think that Paul Graham’s essays are easily some of the most informative, relevant, and enlightening.
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Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
August 1st, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
by Sabrina Hu, MBA Candidate, 2011, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business
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Last summer I found myself in need of summer plans as I had dismissed numerous internship opportunities as being boring and too comfortable.
As I was catching up with a good friend from college who also lives in the DC area, I found myself very intrigued by the progress he had made on his start up idea. He had first presented me with this idea three years ago so it was really great to see the idea evolve. Not only had he won a category in the Williams James business case competition, but he had also been meeting with all the right people seeking advice on how to proceed. It seemed like things were moving forward and on the right track. The next phase for the business was taking the step to bring the idea to life either through partnerships or investors. Having just completed my first year of business school, I pitched the idea of working with my friend as his summer intern to help him continue his momentum and for me to test out my newly learned skills.
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Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
July 29th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
“Show me the money” seems to be on everyone’s lips these days, from Washington bureaucrats to investors anxious to cash in on the plethora of recent public offerings, so we found the subject of corporate finance to be a particularly relevant Twitter topic amidst such an environment. Here are some highlights:
•On Monday we wrote about Apple’s growing piling of cash – $76.2 billion at end of June – and a recent statement from the Treasury confirmed that the tech juggernaut now sits on more cash than the U.S. government.
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Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
Motiv
July 22nd, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
This week we decided to focus our Twitter activities on a topic we’re passionate about here at Motiv – Social Innovation. Below are some of the most interesting tidbits we came across:
•For DC folks interested in meeting like-minded innovators, the DC Social Innovation Project is hosting a happy hour on August 10th for its Social Innovation Spotlight Series. Motiv will be there! Thanks go to Darius Graham at the DC Social Innovation Project for sending this one our way. Learn more about his work at http://dcsocialinnovation.org and follow him @dcsocialinnov and @DariusG.
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Motiv is an innovation strategy consulting firm specializing in service design, business model innovation, and customer experience. Accelerate the possible.
