An Evaluation Service for Digital Public Health Interventions: User-Centered Design Approach

BACKGROUND: Digital health interventions (DHIs) have the potential to improve public health by combining effective interventions and population reach. However, what biomedical researchers and digital developers consider an effective intervention differs, thereby creating an ongoing challenge to integrating their respective approaches when evaluating DHIs. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to report on the Public Health England (PHE) initiative set out to operationalize an evaluation framework that combines biomedical and digital approaches and demonstrates the impact, cost-effectiveness, and benefit of DHIs on public health. METHODS: We comprised a multidisciplinary project team including service designers, academics, and public health professionals and used user-centered design methods, such as qualitative research, engagement with end users and stakeholders, and iterative learning. The iterative approach enabled the team to sequentially define the problem, understand user needs, identify opportunity areas, develop concepts, test prototypes, and plan service implementation. Stakeholders, senior leaders from PHE, and a working group critiqued the outputs. RESULTS: We identified 26 themes and 82 user needs from semistructured interviews (N=15), expressed as 46 Jobs To Be Done, which were then validated across the journey of evaluation design for a DHI. We identified seven essential concepts for evaluating DHIs: evaluation thinking, evaluation canvas, contract assistant, testing toolkit, development history, data hub, and publish health outcomes. Of these, three concepts were prioritized for further testing and development, and subsequently refined into the proposed PHE Evaluation Service for public health DHIs. Testing with PHE’s Couch-to-5K app digital team confirmed the viability, desirability, and feasibility of both the evaluation approach and the Evaluation Service. CONCLUSIONS: An iterative, user-centered design approach enabled PHE to combine the strengths of academic and biomedical disciplines with the expertise of nonacademic and digital developers for evaluating DHIs. Design-led methodologies can add value to public health settings. The subsequent service, now known as Evaluating Digital Health Products, is currently in use by health bodies in the United Kingdom and is available to others for tackling the problem of evaluating DHIs pragmatically and responsively

The Innovation Revolution in Agriculture

This open access book is an important reframing of the role of innovation in agriculture. Dr. Campos and his distinguished coauthors address the need for agriculture to feed a growing global population with a reduced environmental footprint while adapting to and mitigating the effects of changing climate. The authors expand the customary discussion of innovation in terms of supply driven R&D to focus on the returns to investors and most importantly, the value to end-users. This is brought to life by exploring effective business models and many cases from agricultural systems across the globe. The focus on converting the results of innovation in R&D into adoption by farmers and other end-users is its greatest contribution. Many lessons from the book can be applied to private and public sectors across an array of agricultural systems. This book will be of enormous value to agri-business professionals, NGO leaders, agricultural and development researchers and those funding innovation and agriculture across the private and public sectors. Tony Cavalieri, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Hugo Campos, Ph.D., MBA, has 20+ years of international corporate and development experience. His distinguished coauthors represent a rich collection of successful innovation practice in industry, consultancy, international development and academy, in both developed and developing countries.

CORPORATES ABILITIES TO REALIZE E ARLY WARNING SIGNALS OF MARKET DISRUPTIONS, E MERGING NEEDS, & TRENDS- CASE OF SAUDI WATER BOTTLE MARKET-

Commodity market resembles one of the most challenging competitive spaces across the globe, where some studies suggest that the nature of such competitiveness is driven from aspects such as low profitable margin, volatility, market size, and large capital inflows into such a space in the past two decades (Ding, 2021). The water bottle industry is considered one of the largest commodity spaces, since according to a recent study carried out by M2 Presswire (2021), the market is expected to grow from $217 billion in 2020, with 11$505 billions by 2028. In which, proper management is highly needed to maintain corporates’ competitive advantage, or even surviving the competition. In Saudi Arabia, the water bottle market is not less attractive nor less challenging. Likewise global market, the market is subject to potential disruption, emerging consumers’ needs, new trends and entrants. In which, corporates’ abilities to strategizing and acting may play a significant role in deciding corporates’ future. The importance of studying such market dynamic is not in isolation to studying interlinked managerial, corporate’s culture, and decision makers aspects, in which, understanding the dynamics and the nature of both -market and market players- may play a significant role in re-arranging the competitive forces within the competition spectrum. With such complexity in the Saudi water bottle market, AVON, stood out as a major incumbent with even more additional set of complexities. Hence the external environment poses additional layer of challenges to almost all the competitors in the sense of new entrants, regulations, products, and customers’ needs, AVON has its own internal challenges that are driven from its immediate corporate dynamics, in addition to even a unique set of challenges that are driven from being owned by a parent company called OG. Nevertheless, OG has its own dynamics that directly and indirectly impact AVON. Therefore, AVON management had to deal with these multiple challenging forces, unlike other competitors. In 2016 AVON started to experience a poor performance, as the employees’ turnover rate grew and sales started to decline, in addition to losing market share to a new entrant called Bryan. In which, OG, tried to address these sets of issues in the past, but failure was the motto. Consequently, OG decided to investigate the holistic situation to thoroughly understand the reasons behind such a performance before attempting to approach the issue again. In which, the researcher, also the insider, had seen an opportunity to conduct a study using an Action Research “AR” methodology in a unique complex-system and to help the company unfolding the hidden realities, therefore, to help addressing the solutions. Thus, through the lens of the mentioned realities, this study primarily aims to explore a Saudi Arabian company’s ability to realize the early warning signals of market disruptions, emerging needs, and trends, and most importantly, the company’s ability to understand and observe itself in relation to the external context. Consequently, to explore the impact of such realization on company’s performance. The study also aims to add to the knowledge in this field by exploring the applicability of several theories to the Saudi market. Finally, it was an opportunity for the researcher and the corporate they worked with to conduct multiple AR’s for a real practice-based problem, in which, this thesis aims to examine workplace-based issues through the lens of the theories discussed. The context had drawn the researcher to critically think of the most appropriate research question that would help uncovering the realities and aspects intended about observing and decrypt early warning signals of market disruptions. Additionally, the researcher had chosen to capitalize on their presence, knowledge, access to certain information, inability to access certain information, available data, and relationship with key actors within the systems. Consequently, the researcher had mainly conducted the research using observation and questionnaires within a research framework inspired by ethnographical qualitative methodology. Therefore, the study could be expanded using more lengthy and comprehensive research approaches. Nevertheless, the study was conducted in the Saudi Arabian market in the commodities sector and focused on a particular company operating under a conglomerate parent company. The same study could therefore be extended to cover a broader scope. This study examines the reasons behind the inability of a market incumbent in the water bottle industry to decrypt an early warning signal of market disruption. By contrast, a new entrant was able to recognize the emerging need and fulfil it faster than the incumbent. As a result, this study reveals several findings and actionable knowledge -that had been conducted already and proven high level of success-, such as the dynamic capability of the company in question and how much of the available resources were being used. Also, the study reveals that disruption innovation might not necessarily take place at the lower end of the market. Additionally, the disruption process may take place in paradigms other than those of a technological nature. For example, action and inaction by management and Boards of Directors “BoD” can lead to disruption. The study also examines the company in question from the perspective of system actors and aims to understand why it lost market share to the new entrant. The findings of this study also suggest a potential framework that can be used with daughter companies to enhance parent companies’ value-add. It also suggests a potential dynamic capabilities framework that may help daughter companies to craft disruptive strategies, and that in the sense of activating unused resources, enhancing bottom-up and cross functional communications, and observing organizational behaviour. Additionally, companies need to observe the entire space they operate in, in which they may need to adopt new mindsets including re-engineering their Resources, Values, and Processes “RVP”, and conducting back-casting that may help them redefining their responsive tactics to certain dynamics. Keywords: JTBD, Disruptive Innovations, Disruptive Strategies, Dynamics Capabilities, CPR, Parent Companies, Daughter Companies, Water Bottle Industry, Back-casting, VR

A Function-based Relevance Model for Making Sense of Technological Change in the Context of a Firm

Industrial Engineerin

Study of turboprop systems reliability and maintenance costs

The overall reliability and maintenance costs (R&MC's) of past and current turboprop systems were examined. Maintenance cost drivers were found to be scheduled overhaul (40%), lack of modularity particularly in the propeller and reduction gearbox, and lack of inherent durability (reliability) of some parts. Comparisons were made between the 501-D13/54H60 turboprop system and the widely used JT8D turbofan. It was found that the total maintenance cost per flight hour of the turboprop was 75% higher than that of the JT8D turbofan. Part of this difference was due to propeller and gearbox costs being higher than those of the fan and reverser, but most of the difference was in the engine core where the older technology turboprop core maintenance costs were nearly 70 percent higher than for the turbofan. The estimated maintenance cost of both the advanced turboprop and advanced turbofan were less than the JT8D. The conclusion was that an advanced turboprop and an advanced turbofan, using similar cores, will have very competitive maintenance costs per flight hour

From data to value: A nine-factor framework for data-based value creation in information-intensive services

Service is a key context for the application of IT, as IT digitizes information interactions in service and facilitates value creation, thereby contributing to service innovation. The recent proliferation of big data provides numerous opportunities for information-intensive services (IISs), in which information interactions exert the greatest effect on value creation. In the modern data-rich economy, understanding mechanisms and related factors of data-based value creation in IISs is essential for using IT to improve such services. This study identified nine key factors that characterize this data-based value creation: (1) data source, (2) data collection, (3) data, (4) data analysis, (5) information on the data source, (6) information delivery, (7) customer (information user), (8) value in information use, and (9) provider network. These factors were identified and defined through six action research projects with industry and government that used specific datasets to design new IISs and by analyzing data usage in 149 IIS cases. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of these factors for describing, analyzing, and designing the entire value creation chain, from data collection to value creation, in IISs. The main contribution of this study is to provide a simple yet comprehensive and empirically tested basis for the use and management of data to facilitate service value creation

Connecting Researchers to Repositories IMLS Project Report

Abstract: Despite a general consensus that making research data available is beneficial to many stakeholders, data sharing/curation is still not performed as an integrated step in most research lifecycles or common practice in the academic setting. Given many efforts over the last several years, why aren’t repositories used more by researchers? This question was explored in two workshops meant to consider the next steps in developing the Data Curation Profiles (DCP) Toolkit. It identifies a unique approach to help efforts to increase data deposits in research data repositories from an entrepreneurial perspective

Alignment of Leadership to Constructs of Governance in Independent Schools

This qualitative phenomenographic study articulates the different perceptions of independent school heads of school and executive board leaders in their understanding of key constructs of independent school governance, especially as the understanding may change during a crisis. The five constructs of independent school governance are the separation of governance and management activities, maintaining the confidentiality and trust of the board room, the relationship between the board and the head of school, maintaining a strategic mindset, and general board operations. The review of the literature examines the dynamics of leadership through historical crises of an economic nature, endogenous crises, world health crises, and crises caused by natural disasters. Different models of governance and management frameworks, including negotiated order theory, trust versus control theory, the chair-dominated board, the head-dominated board, and democratic management are also reviewed. With the backdrop of the current COVID-19 pandemic crisis, this study examines the effects of crisis on the alignment of understanding between heads of school and board chairs of key constructs of independent school governance