Top Technology Predictions (that affect us all) for 2013

Here they are: My predictions for 2013

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you know I am not opposed to expressing my opinion. My opinion is usually based on early signs that something is going right or wrong for the subject, but I do not take these things lightly. I truly believe what I am about to predict is going to happen. Feel free to express your own thoughts as they relate to these recruitment and technology predictions for 2013:

1.      Apple will begin its decline.

It’s been a good run at the top. But since the innovator and product marketing genius has left us in the form of one Steve Jobs, I see troubled waters ahead for this giant of the computing/device world. As Jobs’ pipeline starts to be reduced, the iPhone is no longer the revolutionary product it once was and Windows Phone 8, while no one is buying it, gets great overall reviews and Microsoft will stay with it. It is only a matter of time, I am afraid, that the Apple is reduced to but a core of its former self.

2.      ‘Bye. Bye.’ BestBuy

As with other big box stores that failed to remain relevant, I feel that BestBuy will shutter most of its large stores. The proof is in the pudding. When an electronic giant attempts to remain relevant by offering home goods such as mattresses and loveseats in its own stores rather than expanding into the home goods stores, I am pretty sure things are not going according to plan. I think the chain will keep the kiosks going and Geek Squad will become more independent of the stores.  Unfortunately and ultimately, in the end, they will go the route of Circuit City.

3.      Microsoft Resurgence

I know this is related to number one, but it is worthy to address again. Microsoft Surface and Phone will gain market share. Bing will not. (Google is doing it’s magic to make SEO challenging, yet even more intuitive for users and purveyors of goods and services online.) While the best product doesn’t always win, especially when the best product is from a smaller company; in search, smart phones, and tablets; it’s a battle of the titans, and I believe the best product will win.  There is simply nothing better than Google for search. However, Windows Phone and tablets with their tight integration into social networks and Microsoft office, along with PC integration, will do well.  After all, it took Xbox a while but, it attained heights that no one ever thought possible; leaving PlayStation and Nintendo to catch up.

4.      Requiem for RIM

This is a ‘gimme.’ Blackberry and RIM will die. They will likely be acquired for patents and the talent within. You just can’t come up with innovations like this and it be all for nothing. It’s a sad story of just how harsh business can be: A great idea thought up by some forward thinking entrepreneurs; only to be reverse engineered and squashed, without the time or resources to fight the battle.

5.      Job Boards Head ‘South’

Job boards will begin their decline; only they will hide it well. I’ve talked about how Monster was going to die. It is a former shell of itself. Even the great CareerBuilder, with incredibly valuable data may have seen its final curtain call.  They will use their partnerships with Facebook and the like to inflate numbers of browsers, but companies will be using less job boards as employee referrals, social media, and old fashioned relationships take hold as the primary way to hire. The market is turning from employer driven to candidate driven (more passive candidates) and with it so to will go the relevance of job boards.

6.      Contingent Workforce Growth

As has been the trend in the IT industry and IT staffing, overall, I feel 1099 usage will decline and contingent labor through agencies will increase.  With crackdowns on 1099 contractors, it’s not worth the risk for many small businesses anymore.  Also with the unemployment rates being on the decline, people are becoming are harder commodity to find; skilled people; and they will want flexibility and security.  For the most part that is not synonymous with 1099’s. (Although, with healthcare being a major issue, it could be that more companies go with contract labor but, if they do, the price will rise as fast as the premiums.)

So there you have it: My predictions for 2013. I’ve been wrong before; but keep an eye out for news regarding all of these topics, and those we’ve touched upon in 2012, in the coming year. I wish the best to you and yours this season.

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends.

Another Dagger in the Heart of Job Boards?: BranchOut announces $25-million in additional backing for combat with LinkedIn

BranchOut's new round of funding could heat up competition with LinkedIn

For investors, it is a small price to pay: One US dollar for each of BranchOut’s current users. To CEO Rick Marini; it’s 25-million reasons to sleep better knowing his quest to take on LinkedIn just got easier.

BranchOut is a Facebook app that connects professionals through the social media platform and has grown to 25 million usersin only two years. To put this into perspective, BeKnown, Monster’s branded version of the same kind of Facebook app (minus the value to recruiters) was launched last June and has about 177,000 users. The new funding brings the company’s total backing to $49 million.

Marini’s explains his company’s success by first lauding LinkedIn as a great product but noting it’s not very personal. He describes LinkedIn as a great resource for finding 10-percent of the workforce and compares it to meeting someone at a professional event for five minutes. He goes on to suggest that Facebook users are engaged, care about one another on a more personal level and that users will go out of their way to help one another get a job.

At 150 million users, LinkedIn is atop the social recruiting and job search ladder. However, Facebook has an estimated 850 million users; another reason why investors are willing to fork over that kind of cash. Recent reports that LinkedIn’s valuation may be overstated by as much as 30-percent and a revised target of $77 per share is more realistic, may be a cause for a little concern for the juggernaut, but more likely a bump in the road.

This news brings me back once again to the subject of job board relevancy and their likely demise. And before you roll your eyes and fire off an email to ask me why I hate the job boards or tell me that the boards are relevant and robust, sit down and have a think on the following five items of interest:

1. People are talking about LinkedIn and BranchOut. Seriously, I have not seen or heard from CareerBuilder or Monster in weeks. In fact, the last mainstream media story I read that grabbed a headline was about how Monster was laying off hundreds at its Massachusetts headquarters, the story that sparked this whole debate.

2. Monster and Careerbuilder are talking about themselves. Ala Donald Trump, the companies are trying to create their own buzz. Today Monster announced an investor conference call to discuss first quarter results and a CareerBuilder press release says the company bought Brazil’s largest job board today. They also issued another press release of the results of a study they performed about how hiring managers are using social media.

3. CareerBuilder released a study about how hiring managers are using social media. Is there an echo in here? Why would a job board want to tell people that nearly two out of five hiring managers are using social media to search for information on job candidates? Although subtle, the story, the results and the survey seem steer the reader to think of the dangers of social media more than support social media use. In fairness, CareerBuilder does great research. Their informational products are robust and have very insightful, powerful data. Quite possibly, CareerBuilder’s future will be determined by how well they leverage and manage all of that data. Then again, if social and professional networks keep gobbling up their market share of resumes, where are they going to get their data?

4. Numbers don’t lie. The market cap for LinkedIn is $10.71 billion and Monster comes in at $999.83 million. CareerBuilder is harder to nail down because it is owned by several large media companies and their collective market caps are not 100-percent attributable to CareerBuilder. An industry analyst suggests a Monster-esque $1 billion for the company. While I am not a market analyst by profession (nor should my word be taken as advice), my best guess is that CB lies somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion based on current market information. Maybe this isn’t a fair assessment given the point at which each company is in its individual life cycle, but I would say the numbers are hard to ignore and are evidence to support my point. That’s what we’re debating right: Company life cycles?

  

5. Social networks are mobile. Linkedin and BranchOut have engaging mobile apps with content that brings users to it for more than just social networking, more than just job search, and more than just information; they are true social platforms.  The job boards don’t have this kind of staying power and attention share in their mobile apps since they are currently single purpose.

Boards are losing market share while social platforms, like the early days of the boards, are growing exponentially. They too will have a lifecycle. The slightly concerning aspect of BranchOut is the fact that it runs as a Facebook app. There is growing industry sentiment that Facebook itself is becoming irrelevant and that its recent purchase of Instagram is an attempt to regain some relevancy with users.

Job boards do have a place. I use them, not mostly nor exclusively, to help find new talent and industry data. Boards are going to have to find a way to remain relevant with users and customers, and do so quickly, if they are to survive.

Is there an app for that?



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The Internet Economy and the Human Experience: Time for a Plan

Exponential growth raises economic & social questions.

It’s been 27 years since Al Gore invented the internet.

OK, I thought that might get your attention. We’ll talk about politicians and blog factual integrity later.

It’s been 27 years since the internet was initiated, and in that time we’ve seen it go from a data sharing platform for scholars and scientists to a widely used communication platform in the mid-nineties to an economic engine that has grown into the world’s fifth most economically powerful entity, only after US, China, Japan, and India. (If you were to take a leap and make the Internet a country.)

The reality of all this is that ONLY 4.1-percent of the GDP across the G-20, or $2.3 trillion USD, is attributed to the internet. Most would agree that e-commerce accounted for much more of the world’s business.  Perhaps I’m ahead of the average person’s tech adoption curve, but even so I’m pretty certain that the internet touches every single person somehow at this point. I guess I am wrong.

According to a recent bgc.perspectives report the internet is still dwarfed by the big four economies of the world. 

 If the internet is as entwined in our lives as it is now, and it’s only 27 years since domain name 00000000000001, and it’s only 4.1-percent of the GDP, what happens in another 27 years?  Does the internet take on a life of its own? The report references Ray Kurzweil’s work The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, in which the author suggest that by 2099 mammalian carbon neuro-circuits will at the very least be combined with nano-circuitry in some sort of hybrid system or all but be replaced by non-organic circuits, which denotes some compelling issues. 

The profound impact the internet has on every aspect of our economy and society is staggering in itself already.

In our own industry, having your resume online, using social networking and job boards for both job-searching and recruiting has become the mandatory path. Similar changes have already or are already going the same way.

With 4.1- percent of the GDP affecting virtually every aspect of our lives, where does it go from here?

Can it become 20-percent of the GDP or more? Will e-commerce dominate the world economy in Kurzweil’s vision of 3-D, holographic and sensory virtual reality?  Evidence of exponential growth both economically and with regard to technology certainly suggests that this is not only possible but probable. Are there that many replaceable non-internet based financial transactions available? Is there a theoretical cap to the financial growth of the internet?

I know these are all futurist type of questions. But with Intel’s first processor having only about 250,000 transistors and one 27 years later having 2¹³ as many, and with the internet approaching the world’s largest nations in terms of economic clout, is there cause for concern? Perhaps (and perhaps not) we should step back and reexamine the future.

I also know I am not the first to raise such questions. Hollywood has been all over this one but, from a layman’s perspective, maybe they’ve touched on the subject with good reason. Sci-fi fantasies like A.I. , Bicentennial Man and countless others have explored political and social effects of technology growth . Are they wrong? Or are they just that: Fantasy? Or do we need to start taking a second look at the interconnected world and start planning?

I mean to say that only 30 years ago a wristwatch mobile communications device was a thing out of the comics. I know I am going way out on the ledge of Jules Verne, Leonardo da Vinci or Dick Tracy with this. It seems right on the edge of reason, but worth pointing out. (By the way, there are several versions of wristwatch mobile devices available, many with exponential computing power over the original Intel processor of 27 years ago.) 

In the end, I am not suggesting Skynet is going to swoop in to take us and Sarah Conner out. What I am suggesting is that we, as a community of experts, need to start working with characters like the former governor of California and his cohorts to start addressing not only the economic realities of exponential growth of e-commerce, but the social and political ramifications of instant global inter-connectivity as well.

You can blame criminal elements, but counterfeit products enter markets through stupidity.

The principal of Occum’s Razor is used by most of us in our day to day lives, whether we know it or not. All things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely to be true.

There’s been a lot of speculation about counterfeit produce in US markets recently, from fake Tiffany rings on e-bay to major influxes of counterfeit drugs into the US pharmaceutical market place.

This is not robbery, it’s not theft – it’s a lesson in false confidence. At some point, someone was taken for a fool in a circumstance where they should have known better. In almost all cases, they were motivated to ignore or downgrade the risk element because they had something to gain. When we ignore the tell-tale signs of fraudulence, it’s almost always because we want to believe.

There’s a reason they’re called confidence scams. The con man doesn’t need the real product; he doesn’t even need any product at all. All he needs is your confidence. This seems like a good deal to me.

As I read these stories, I’m constantly brought back to the same question: How are so many people in this country able to ignore the advice they have been given since childhood by mothers, fathers, teachers and bosses?

If a deal looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

Great deals come with simple explanations. The rent for this apartment seems very cheap, but the owner needs to leave town urgently for 6 months and doesn’t have time to wait around. This hotel seems cheap, but they’ve only been open two weeks and they are attracting customers away from established competitors. Sensible and simple explanations.

If the simple explanation is either missing – or you have cause to doubt its veracity – it’s time to back away.

Most of us have seen it on the streets of major cities. There’s a guy selling designer goods out of a suitcase; the boxes are all top end brands – Calvin Klein, Ray-bans, Gucci. $10 for the 50ml bottle that sells for $70 in Macy’s. Hungry tourists crowd round to get themselves a bargain.

Now and again a furious buyer returns shouting at the vendor. They’ve opened the box and the product is a cheap imitation.

But what are they complaining about? Of course the product is fake. They’re produced for $2.00 and sold for $10.00. No other plausible explanation existed from the beginning. You can hope that they’re stolen if your conscience allows it, but even then – what are the chances?

Some research for this blog threw up some incredible message boards where people complained at length that the Tiffany ring they had bought on e-bay was not the real thing. The price was $6.00. Come on. Seriously?

The perfume is fake. The handbag is not really from Gucci. The sunglasses are not really Ray-bans and yes – the $6.00 ring is not really from Tiffany. If you paid $6.00 and expected a Tiffany ring, then you are an idiot by anyone’s definition.

So when it comes to the healthcare industry’s issue, who is really to blame for the influx of counterfeit drugs into the huge US market? (40% of the world’s prescription drugs are sold in the US.) The answer is simple. At some point the supply chain moves from illegal to legal. It moves from the criminally devious to the honestly stupid. Breaking this link in the chain is the answer to combating counterfeit produce.

At a corporate level, every bit as much as at a personal level, we are responsible for making sensible decisions. We must assess risk, identify things that need explanation and follow a sensible, logical course of action.

In every occurrence of a fake product entering a market, someone is failing to do these things. Someone is chasing a bargain or a glut – and an opportunity to benefit personally – that is blinding them to their obvious responsibility to see things for what they are.

If you don’t 100% trust the source you’re buying from, you have to be 100% sure you have the means to assess the product before you either use it or pass it on.

Buyers across the pharmaceutical supply chain would do well to keep Occum’s Razor close at hand.

Is this the Beginning of The End for Job Boards?

Last week Monster Worldwide Inc. announced it has laid off roughly 7 percent of its worldwide workforce according to a recent article by Rodney H. Brown .

This brings to mind the question whether or not this spells the beginning of the end for online job boards.

Social media and online networking sites are quickly becoming a major player in the recruiting game. Referrals, references, resumes and recommendations are like Kevin Bacon except they’re only one or two network levels away. Candidates and employers are connecting in specialized online groups and micro communities. Instant messaging and proprietary network email can often cut steps for recruiting firms and hiring managers to find the right fit for their job. Let’s call it job boards “plus.”

Could it also be that the major players in the job board game are pricing themselves out of the market?

Maybe. Maybe not.  Make no mistake the boards are still a viable source for many companies to find exactly who and what they need. 

However, one can make an argument that for specialized positions, which are growing increasingly common, the job boards lose some of their luster. Productivity gains over the years have created new jobs with more individual responsibility and that require larger skill sets.

Increasingly specific job descriptions are also an indirect result of the recession. For the past three or so years, employers have been enjoying their pick of top candidates and rejecting talent for lack of a single skill. For these types of positions, job boards are more of a starting point than a means to find the next hire.

Small companies, start-ups and recruiting firms are still recovering from the economic collapse of 2008. Many are hard pressed to afford posting fees almost 10 times higher than they were when the majors were starting out.  The boards are seemingly forcing the little guys to get creative with social media and encouraging the large companies to consider a radical shift in their sourcing and recruiting strategies.

Put all these factors together and it’s looking bleak for the major boards.

The major job boards will begin to realize that getting back what they’ve already lost is significantly more difficult than sustaining their momentum would have been.  It’s easy to lose sight of keeping your momentum when everything is going great.  Now that the tables have turned, seemingly overnight to a candidates market, simply lowering fees again will not bring back what they have lost.  We know that economically jobs and housing are tied together, so just as plummeting housing prices did not bring back the real estate boom, reduced job board fees will not bring back the companies who have already been alienated.  Once bitten, twice shy… 

Is it the beginning of the end? No one knows for sure. That little voice in the back of my head says it might be headed in the same direction as Tom Brady’s Hail Mary in last night’s game.

Candidate has great skills, ideal experience and strong references? Well done, you’re half way there.

If you made a new hire today, there is a 46% chance that they will be gone in 18 months. This statistic, which is alarming enough in itself, is compounded by the fact that 89% of these failures will be attributed to attitudinal factors. Put simply, half the people you hire will not survive in the job you gave them, mostly because they have bad attitudes.

Now a bad attitude may conjure up images of laziness or insubordination, but there are other more common faults that fit into this area, including a lack of coachability, emotional intelligence or motivation.

Turnover in the modern workplace is a major problem for productivity and where failure occurs, it is only occasionally due to a lack of hard skill.

Ask anybody with hiring experience, in any sector, anywhere in the world and they will tell you that the best way to lower turnover and increase tenure is to hire the right people in the first place.

What this recent study (the basis of Hiring for Attitude - a new book from business coach Mark Murphy) suggests is that far too many employers are basing their hiring practices on simple check lists of hard skills, at the expense of a genuine assessment of a person’s suitability. The result? A short term success that spells long term disaster.

Talascend hires thousands of people every year, for our own staff and for our customers. What everyone here will tell you first and foremost is this…

The interview is the most important part of the entire hiring process.

Here are our five tips for getting it right.

1.       Don’t duplicate the role of the resume and references.

Let the resume and references establish the candidate’s skills and credibility. If they claim to be academically qualified, capable of a specific role technically and that they have worked in the role for five years at these two companies, then – If it all checks out via transcripts and references – it’s a safe assumption that they can do the job, so you don’t need to focus too much time on their hard skills.

2.       Move quickly to the important part

You’ll want to spend a short time satisfying yourself that their track record is deserved, but once you have, move quickly on to the soft skills that are going to determine whether they succeed or fail with you. How will they behave within a team? (and most importantly your team.) What motivates them? (and are their needs consistent with what you can offer?) How are they likely to respond to pressure?

3.       Don’t be awkward asking personal questions

 It’s easy to understand why interviews tend to focus heavily on hard skills; it’s much safer territory for the interviewer and interviewee. Tell me about your experience using the new ABC software. How much time have you spent conducting site reviews?  These are a lot less awkward to ask than questions that drive at emotional intelligence and very few hiring managers have had the training they need to conduct a rounded interview. 

4.       Get Help

There are a number of great resources available to navigate this terrain. There are templates available online, your HR department is likely to be very helpful. There are also external devices like psychometric profiles, which some employers swear by. Staffing agencies that you work with will be happy to help you; it's in their interest for your interviews to go well – ask them what they can offer.

5.       Act now, before the next 46% doomed hire joins you

Whatever you do to address this issue, do it sooner rather than later. We all understand what 46% turnover means for our teams, projects and businesses. 

We can all do better than this; we simply have to do better if our operations are to thrive and grow. Your next coin-toss hire could be sitting in your building right now. 

Education, not legislation, is the key to lower healthcare spending.

In 2005, the British chef and media personality Jamie Oliver launched a highly successful campaign to raise awareness of the poor quality of food being served in British schools. The result was to transform the way Britain thinks about school food, delivering healthier, balanced meals and most importantly, educating children early about the benefits of eating properly. Oliver himself was awarded an MBE by the Queen (a civilian medal of honor for service to the country.) His approach has been used with great success across Europe.

Then he came to America.

You can watch the details of Oliver’s treatment at the hands of US school employees he met and the US media in general on YouTube (‘We don’t want to eat lettuce all day, who made you king?’) sufficed to say he was shot down in flames from minute one, and he returned home having failed completely.

Recent discussion about the growing cost of healthcare delivery remains focused on the level of investment necessary to keep the nation healthy, but to endlessly debate legislation and government investment misses the long term issue entirely.

The spiraling cost of healthcare in the US may be the direct result of defensive medicine, malpractice and government mandated programs like EHR, but there is no question where the real answer to reduced health care spending lays – healthier people.

It is education and not legislation that is the real answer.

The British chef and campaigner for healthy food 

in schools suffered a series of media beatings.

When Jamie Oliver was sent packing so emphatically by a firmly united front of American education workers, local media and national TV personalities, this country missed a major opportunity to start the move toward lower healthcare costs. 

Regular exercise, healthy eating and the limitation of obviously dangerous practices like smoking and heavy drinking are the keys to lower spending. This begins and ends with personal choices. The earlier we begin to encourage these choices the better.

One of the many reasons David Letterman gave Jamie Oliver (a long time friend of his incidentally) for why he would fail was the power of fast food chains. They’re not going anywhere, he says.

A typical McDonalds in London

McDonalds is not going away, but it can be forced to evolve. In the UK, it has. Gone are the gaudy red signs and plastic furniture, in favor of subtle dark green and high-spec leather chairs. Salads are not an after thought, they are a key part of the menu, as are many other healthy choices. You can still get a Big Mac if you want one, but McDonalds knows its future success depends on delivering more healthy options because they are simply what the consumer wants.

We the people are in charge of what fast food chains serve. We have the power in the long term to reduce the cost of healthcare in this country through the way we live. It’s happening in other countries, we could make it happen here.  

This would dramatically shift the debate about healthcare spending. 

Wagging the PhoneDog: Why your business needs a Social Media policy now.

“We weren’t equipped to have a policy on this stuff.  It was all brand new. The lines were blurred.”

This is not a phrase any corporate HR department wants to hear. In a world where new technology is constantly redrawing the boundaries between employer and employee, blurred lines and an absence of policy spell trouble for everyone.

The words belong to Noah Kravitz, the employee at the center of the now infamous PhoneDog situation. 

You can read the Mashable article for background, but the Cliff notes read as follows: While employed by PhoneDog, Kravitz built a 17,000 strong Twitter following under the name ‘PhoneDog_Noah’. When he left PhoneDog he took the account with him. He maintains that the account belongs to him; PhoneDog disagree and are suing him for $2.50 per follower. 

To say that opinion is divided on the subject would be putting it mildly. Debates have erupted across online and offline media and there are certainly convincing arguments on both sides.

What is still occurring to most people is that we need to jump out in front of this issue and work out what we can do today to limit our exposure to similar cases involving our own businesses.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about your company and social media, along with some lessons already available from PhoneDog’s predicament. 

Who is using Social Media within your business? And what happens if they leave?

It may not be enough to know the ‘who’. PhoneDog knew they were paying the guy to do it, they just hadn’t thought it through. There was no exit strategy.

What are they using it for?

Is it personal use that references the corporate brand, or is it corporate use that has a personal touch? This will be the essence of the PhoneDog case.

Why are they using it?

If you don’t see a business value in an instance where your brand is referenced by an employee in social media, you should ask for it to be removed immediately.

Is there any success you could take advantage of?

17,000 followers is a major asset. You can bet that if PhoneDog weren’t concerned enough to cover the downside, then they surely hadn’t fully appreciated the positive possibilities.

What steps can you take to iron out any ambiguity?

Anything you can do to create clarity will protect you. Formal agreements signed at the point of hire will make things clear for everyone. You have far more leverage early on than you do further down the line when an employee realizes the value of what they have created.

Naming conventions for your company on Social Media will also be advantageous. ‘JohnSmith’ will unequivocally point to John Smith’s ownership. ‘ABC_Inc’ will be equally clear. ‘ABC_John’ will be problematic.

Regardless of which view ultimately wins through in the legal battle – the message for employers is clear enough already: Roll out a clear policy that leaves as little room for ambiguity as possible; you will be in a much stronger position when it’s your turn. And your turn is coming.

Thinking about moonlighting in 2012? Here are five questions to test your ethics

by Josh Kaplan

Last year, Microsoft relaxed their rules governing employees developing products outside work. This very popular change allowed staff to develop applications for Windows products and enjoy the financial benefits. The result? Through 2011, 840 employee designed apps were published to the marketplace. That’s value added for Microsoft’s offering, value delivered to the customer and extra money made by committed staff with good ideas.

Moonlighting has always been an ethical gray area. Opinion remains hugely divided as to what is and isn’t ethical when it comes to making money on the side of a full time job. Here are five things to ask yourself before you pursue outside opportunities.

Does it feel right?

The simplest test is probably the best one. Look in the mirror. Would you want your favorite schoolteacher to see you do this? When you explain this to your teenage nephew, are you going to be able to tell the absolute truth and be comfortable? If you find yourself trying to justify something that most people would think was disingenuous, it probably is. And if there’s a real ethical issue, you’re going to find a load of other issues attached to it.

Do you know where you stand legally?

It’s not all ethics. There is a lot of legislation and it varies from country to country and from state to state. Ultimately you could have problems over ownership of the ideas you have while you’re employed. If it comes down to a legal battle, you may lose what you’ve developed. 

Are there mutual benefits?

As with the Microsoft example, if you’re benefiting your employer and their customers, you’re likely to find yourself on firm ground. Why wouldn’t they bless your efforts if it’s in their interests as well?

Are there opportunities you haven’t thought of?

Your employer may have more than a blessing to offer. They might be prepared to invest if they can see the benefits. Think about opportunities to get funding and support for your ideas. It may be best for everyone.

Will it be worth it overall?

You need to balance the various risks and rewards and consider every aspect of what you’re planning. Are you looking to replace your day job or just supplement your income? Imagine what success would look like and decide if the things It will take to get there are worth it. If you jump without looking you could find yourself working very hard and not seeing a return on your investment of time and resources. Ultimately, you’ll be starting your own business. The vast majority of new businesses fail because entrepreneurs get carried away with a vision and don’t look at the daily reality before they start. That includes finding small ways to test the market as you go along so that you're not wasting time pursuing an idea that the market simply didn't want, or that someone else already tried.

When all is said and done, a great idea will benefit someone. If you think you’ve got one, pursue it with all the effort and commitment it deserves. Just make sure you’re setting yourself up to succeed before you start. 

Two reports, one conclusion: EHRs need more support in implementation

by Josh Kaplan

A report released today by AmericanEHR partners is not the first to highlight major shortfalls in EHR uptake across physician practices. It’s not even the first this week. A study by healthcare research firm SK&A, released Tuesday, provides more cause for concern.

Physicians have until 2015 to make 'meaningful use' of 

EHR systems

Most of the findings from both reports are predictable: EHR uptake is proving more difficult in smaller practices with fewer physicians; double the number of patients and you double the level of adoption; satisfaction is higher wherever the respondent has been involved in the EHR selection process.  No surprises in the bulk of the findings.

However, some of the stand-out statistics are genuinely shocking:

(1) 21% of physician offices are unaware of EHR government incentives.

These incentives, provided for by the 2009 stimulus package, include $64,000 dollars over six years for Medicaid and $44,000 over five years for Medicare. Physicians become eligible for the incentive by demonstrating ‘meaningful use’ of EHR Technology.  

(2) 73% of physician offices without an EHR have not determined any time frame for EHR adoption.

In 2015, hospitals and doctors become subject to financial penalties through Medicare if they have not adopted electronic health records, yet the vast majority have not even considered a timeframe for implementation.

(3) 49% of respondent physicians received less than the 3-5 days recommended training on EHR systems.

Moving from adoption to meaningful use and ultimately to genuine added value requires proper training and this is not being received by half of the physicians responding.

As 2012 approaches, the majority of physicians’ offices remain disengaged and ill informed. Even those that have adopted EHRs are not providing sufficient training to make the systems effective.

If EHR adoption is to reach targeted levels, it’s vital that those implementing the systems know when, why and how they should do it. That means having a timescale for implementation, knowledge of the incentives and penalties and ultimately, a plan to properly train the end user.