Help the Homeless and Save Money

I read a great article in the WSJ about a "housing first" plan that can both improve the lives of the homeless, particularly those that are chronically ill, and save taxpayer money at the same time. You can have it both ways! The article highlighted the results of a four-year study conducted in Chicago that looked at homeless people with chronic medical problems. The study compared two groups. The control group received "usual care", which was basically just a piecemeal system of emergency shelters and family and recovery programs. The study group, by comparison, received housing and intensive follow-up by a case manager. The wonderful result of the study was that the group that received housing and follow-up spent half as many days in hospitals and nursing homes and went to emergency rooms half as often as the usual-care group did over an 18 month period. The reduced medical care easily made up for the $12,000 cost of the housing and case-work that was provided ... and those participants are much better off in life as a result. Great result and a great model to follow in other cities.

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Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

I found this opinion piece ( Democrats aren't innocent bystanders ) interesting on how both Democrats and Republicans share responsibility for polarizing the electorate and undermining some of its faith in democracy. It references two other posts that were pretty good as well: The Disease of Delegitimization The Weimarization of the American Republic The second article is really long and heavy on history. But given all of the comparisons people make between the current times and those of post-WWI Germany, I found it interesting to dive in to understand where the comparisons are coming from and how close we really are. The short answer is that we aren't that close (phew). Seems like post-WWI Germany was incredibly fragile. This was a good excerpt that summarized it: So, unlike the 60s, you have a dynamic in which both sides are behaving like radicals, in which the establishment isn’t yelling “stop,” and in which oikophobia is more evenly distributed, relative to its Boo...

The Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Customer Development Model

When I visited FlightCaster over spring break as part of the Duke Week-in-Cities trip, Jason Freedman (founder and CEO) suggested that we all read The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank . FlightCaster went through the YCombinator program in 2009 and from what I gathered the book was required reading. I had never even heard of it and it was required reading! I just finished it and I certainly understand why that's the case now. I have to admit the book wasn't necessarily what I expected. It certainly wasn't product management 101. It turned out to be much more about navigating the start-up process rather than specifics about how to design great products. But I can't believe I almost missed out on this one. The book outlines the Customer Development model, a parallel technique to product development that is meant to guide you in the process of iterating and testing each part of your business model until you find one that is repeatable and scalable. The m...

Nine Prescriptions for Building the Duke Entrepreneurial Community

I think Duke can have one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the world. Are we there yet? Well, not yet. But there's a tremendous amount of momentum that I saw build in just the past two years while I was getting my MBA at Duke. While leading Duke's 10th annual business plan competition, the Duke Start-Up Challenge (DSC) , last year, I witnessed a near doubling of participation on campus in just a single year. The interest on the ground was clearly there and building rapidly. But now that I'm an alum, I'm looking back and wondering ... how do we rev-up the Duke entrepreneurial community even more? I read a great article by Daniel Isenberg, a professor of management at Babson, called " How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution " in the June edition of the Harvard Business Review. Isenberg outlines nine prescriptions for governments that want to create entrepreneurship ecosystems in their countries. Although he was focused on governments an...

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