Every so often a management idea escapes from the pages of the Harvard Business Review and becomes part of the zeitgeist. In the 1990s it was “re-engineering”. Today it is “disruptive innovation”. TechCrunch, a technology-news website, holds an annual “festival of disruption”. CNBC, a cable-news channel, produces an annual “disruptor list” of the most disruptive companies. Mentioning “disruptive innovation” adds a veneer of sophistication to bread-and-butter speeches about education or health care. But just what is disruptive innovation?

The theory of disruptive innovation was invented by Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School, in his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. Mr Christensen used the term to describe innovations that create new markets by discovering new categories of customers. They do this partly by harnessing new technologies but also by developing new business models and exploiting old technologies in new ways. He contrasted disruptive innovation with sustaining innovation, which simply improves existing products. Personal computers, for example, were disruptive innovations because they created a new mass market for computers; previously, expensive mainframe computers had been sold only to big companies and research universities.

The “innovator’s dilemma” is the difficult choice an established company faces when it has to choose between holding onto an existing market by doing the same thing a bit better, or capturing new markets by embracing new technologies and adopting new business models. IBM dealt with this dilemma by launching a new business unit to make PCs, while continuing to make mainframe computers. Netflix took a more radical move, switching away from its old business model (sending out rental DVDs by post) to a new one (streaming on-demand video to its customers). Disruptive innovations usually find their first customers at the bottom of the market: as unproved, often unpolished, products, they cannot command a high price. Incumbents are often complacent, slow to recognize the threat that their inferior competitors pose. But as successive refinements improve them to the point that they start to steal customers, they may end up reshaping entire industries: classified ads (Craigslist), long distance calls (Skype), record stores (iTunes), research libraries (Google), local stores (eBay), taxis (Uber) and newspapers (Twitter).

Partly because of disruptive innovation, the average job tenure for the CEO of a Fortune 500 company has halved from ten years in 2000 to less than five years today. There is good reason to think that the pace of change will increase, as computer power increases and more things are attached to the internet, expanding its disruptive influence into new realms. Google promises to reinvent cars as autonomous vehicles; Amazon promises to reinvent shopping (again) using drones; 3D printing could disrupt manufacturing. But perhaps the most surprising disruptive innovations will come from bottom-of-the-pyramid entrepreneurs who are inventing new ways of delivering education and health-care for a fraction of the cost of current market leaders.

QUESTIONS

If every new product has a first-mover advantage, then why do products fail?

Do you view 3D printing as sustaining or disruptive technology? Choose one of the products listed and determine what the company could have done to prevent the product from failing.

Can you name another technology product that failed? Why did it fail? What could the company have done differently for it to succeed?

How are contemporary female bodies typically represented in advertisements, television, movies, and print media? How do these representations influence the way girls feel about their bodies and the way they dress? Do you think social influences contribute to development of eating disorders?

Dr. Jenner's recommendation about 6th grade girls receiving the vaccine as part of their routine pediatric visits. Is it reasoning and benefiting the children?

What barriers might seem that may prohibit the implementation of a requirement for HPV vaccinations in schools?

How these barriers could be overcome?

There queer gangs of young Socialists, youths and girls (Nazis),.... They strike one as strange. something primitive, like loose roving gangs of broken, scattered tribes...as if everything and everybody recoiled from the old unison, as barbarians lurking in a wood recoil out of sight�

It is widely believed that the more education one receives the higher the income earned at the time of first employment and over the course of a career. However, due to varying reasons, many people never complete high school and, thus, never receive their high-school diploma. Although individuals without a high-school diploma are often able to find employment, they experience economic outcomes quite different from those who finish high school before entering the workforce to earn a living. Across the nation, there are millions of individuals with families who are now working but do not possess the credentials of a high-school diploma. Many of these individuals and their families are considered to be a part of the working poor that make up a considerable portion of this nation’s labor force.

1. A student states that a decrease in the percent of 18-64 yr-olds with no high school diploma will no doubt lead to a decrease in the percent of low-income working families. Write at least two concise sentences addressing the key uses and limitations of linear correlation and use these to respond to the student’s statement. In addition, using the R-squared value for the regression equation, provide a statement about its meaning, in general, and, specifically, in the context of this project.

1. Reference(s): The Working Poor Families Project. (2011). Indicators and Data. Retrieved from http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/indicators/ 2011 Data Jurisdiction Percent of low income working families (<200% poverty level) Percent of 18-64 year olds with no HS diploma Alabama 37.3 15.3 Alaska 25.9 8.6 Arizona 38.9 14.8 Arkansas 41.8 14 California 34.3 17.6 Colorado 27.6 10.1 Connecticut 21.1 9.5 Delaware 27.8 11.9 District of Columbia 23.2 10.8 Florida 37.3 13.1 Georgia 36.6 14.9 Hawaii 25.8 7.2 Idaho 38.6 10.7 Illinois 30.4 11.5 Indiana 31.9 12.2 Iowa 28.8 8.1 Kansas 32 9.7 Kentucky 34.1 13.6 Louisiana 36.3 16.1 Maine 30.4 7.1 Maryland 19.5 9.7 Massachusetts 20.1 9.1 Michigan 31.6 10 Minnesota 24.2 7.3 Mississippi 43.6 17 Missouri 32.7 11.1 Montana 36 7 Nebraska 31.1 8.7 Nevada 37.4 16.6 New Hampshire 19.7 7.3 New Jersey 21.2 10.1 New Mexico 43 16.2 New York 30.2 13 North Carolina 36.2 13.6 North Dakota 27.2 5.9 Ohio 31.8 10.3 Oklahoma 37.4 13.2 Oregon 33.9 10.8 Pennsylvania 26 9.4 Rhode Island 26.9 12 South Carolina 38.3 14.2 South Dakota 31 8.7 Tennessee 36.6 12.7 Texas 38.3 17.8 Utah 32.3 9.9 Vermont 26.2 6.6 Virginia 23.3 10.2 Washington 26.4 10.2 West Virginia 36.1 12.9 Wisconsin 28.7 8.5 Wyoming 28.1 8

Hyde Park Elementary has plans to build a new playground in 2017. They received a $120,000 government grant to be used for building the playground. They are hoping to break ground in May 2017 and complete the project by the start of school in September. Before they can start the project, however, they must dismantle the existing playground that has become unsafe based on current safety standards. They are also planning to complete soil testing once the existing playground is dismantled as a number of residential properties in the community have tested positive for soil contamination. Due to recent news articles, parents are very concerned about the potential for soil contamination and are demanding a full test to ensure their kids are not playing on a contaminated playground.

Sonya Muhammed, the school principal, has compiled the following estimates related to the new playground:

The costs for installation, resurfacing, landscaping, and soil removal are the costs quoted by professional contractors. Sonya was approached by the president of the student council, Josh Schwinn, who has volunteered the council’s time for installing and landscaping the new playground. This will save the school approximately $25,000 in costs and Sonya has decided to accept this offer as two of the council members who will be helping are journeymen carpenters.

The school has two options in terms of dealing with the contaminated soil. The first option is to not partake in the soil testing and to simply resurface the play area with a poured-rubber matting that can cover the entire play surface. This will cost, as Sonya indicated in her estimates above, approximately $55,000 – a large chunk of the playground budget. The other option is to perform the soil testing. A municipal worker has estimated that there is a 40% chance that the soil is contaminated. If this is the case, the school will either need to resurface the area for $55,000 or it can have the contaminated soil removed and replaced for a hefty cost of $73,000 plus the cost of gravel. However, there is a 60% chance that the soil will not be contaminated. Sonya is wondering what they should do and has asked for your help.

REQUIRED

Prepare an analysis of the potential project costs for the following scenarios. Note: There is no need for gravel in the resurfacing scenario.

1. Resurface ground without doing soil testing .
   
2. Complete the soil testing. In this case there are two outcomes:

1. remove/replace the soil if contaminated.
2. resurface if contaminated.
   

Use the probabilities provided by the municipal worker to determine a weighted cost for each of these outcomes.

3. What option would you recommend for the school? Why? Are there other non-financial considerations that you need to include in your decision?

The sales prices of homes (in dollars) from a random sample of 10 zip codes in the United States are recorded in the following table.

1. At the 0.10 level of significance, is there evidence of a difference in the mean selling price for homes between 2001 and 2002?

ii.Determine the p-value in (i) and interpret its meaning.

The Excel data for this assignment shows the annual energy usage in kWh for a random sample of 250 detached single-family homes in the Southeast. A contractor building a new housing development in Town A hypothesizes that mean annual energy usage will be below 16,500 kWh per household. Use the data to run a single mean hypothesis test and calculate a test statistic in Excel. In your method summary, state the hypothesis and your assumptions. In your resulting conclusions, state your conclusion regarding the hypothesis in words, using a 99% confidence level.

The Mean of the data is 14651.548

The Standard Deviation is 7980.99357

2-3 paragraph response. Describe two distinct reasons why someone who has never used a drug in his or her life might refuse a test at work. Convert those reasons into well-founded ethical arguments.