Throwing Ourselves Two Million Years into Human Advancement

Divisions of Labor were born with the human ability to throw a projectile.  Research has taught us that as people learned the ability to throw sticks, stones, rocks, and weapons the social nature of life began to change. Where humans were limited in their food supply, the ability to throw objects created more efficient hunting that led to increased calorie intake. Researchers recently published the interesting findings on human development in the journal Nature.

The shoulder has developed in such as way to maintain elastic energy so that when it is released it can produce the fastest motion possible. Other species cannot do this. Where chimpanzees can throw 20 mph the human can often achieve up to 100 mph. This makes the projectiles much faster than the natural speed in the environment. This faster speed creates higher levels of food and nutrition obtainment which fosters population growth. 

The division of labor occurred because food was a commodity that could be bartered and traded. As hunters brought back more food people obtained more nutrition and had larger families, became bigger in size, and were able to focus on other activities. Where animals constantly seek food for survival humans developed the ability to collaborate and collectively share food for the betterment of all. 

Throwing also encouraged the ability to hunt from a distance creating greater spatial awareness that could have led to other projectile concepts that fostered the ideas that led to modern space flight. The more efficient humans became the freer they were to pursue other life activities. Do you think you would have the time to read this article if you were out foraging for dinner? 

The researchers looked through archeological evidence to see when humans actually developed this ability. The problem is that there is a gap somewhere in the transitional development. This means that it may also be a learned function of using the body in a new way. They cannot say with high levels of surety how the skill came into being other than it seemed to show up around 2 million years ago. Without the ability to master projectiles and the resources it harnessed we cannot be sure we would be as developed as we have. 

The Journal Article in Nature

BBC

NPR

Boston Globe

Alternative System for Assessing Student Graduation

Student data and success rates are a hot topic for university administrators. States and universities are seeking methods of accurately tracking data to better determine a whole host of issues ranging from legislature to funding. Six educational associations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been working on an alternative system they believe will be more accurate in its reflection of higher education graduation rates. 

New methods of tracking student success rates have been developed through using a sign-up service called the Student Achievement Measure (SAM). Some universities may be attracted to the alternative methods of tracking student success rates. The National Student Clearinghouse will keep track of posted data for transfer students, two-year colleges and part-time students. 

Some universities and states have argued that reliance on the Federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System is not as accurate as once thought. Students that start at one college but finish at another are left out of the total data mix and this skews graduation rates. States are seeking better methods of tracking and using student data to adjust their own policies. 

Part of the reason this has become such a concern is that the older methods of enrolling a student in one university and expecting them to stay there throughout their entire educational process is unlikely. Students are more transient, work full-time jobs, and may take courses online when compared to fifty years ago. Focusing only on enrollment and graduation from the same university leaves out a larger percentage of people that bounce in, out, and transfer as they complete their degrees. 

The advantage of a more comprehensive system is that it can influence both state and federal legislation as it offers a more comprehensive picture of graduation rates and the educational experience. For example, students who are first generation college students may not have the same financial resources as other families. Their educational approach may include a number of transfers and a few semesters out of school where such students deal with life issues. The traditional tracking system would simply drop them. With a new system it is possible to track the entire educational process and reflect more accurately their educational paths.

Another issue is that government funding is increasingly being tied to these federal statistics. Those universities that have an important role in serving non-traditional students may appear in a negative light only because the right information is not being collected. Non-traditional students are more likely unable to stop working, move into a dormitory, and have wealthy parents who finance their education while paying their bills. This means their successes will not be tracked, understood, or counted if they don’t fit under a traditional tracking model.

Student Achievement Measure

Chronicle of Higher Education

Inside Higher Education

Association Now

Using Customer Profiles to Enhance Service and Product Marketing

Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Understanding the unique and rich data that comes from their core customer base helps in creating services that truly meet the needs of those customers as well as marketing the most relevant programs to the most interested parties. It creates a higher level of sales and satisfaction spurred by the interconnectivity of customers and the organization. The customer’s needs are better fulfilled with the offering of products and services they are actually interested in. Precisely how this is done is a process that can be learned and adapted.

With the advancement of the Internet and e-commerce the use of social research to understand customer behavior becomes possible. With the increase in customer data it is possible to create greater data mining and clustering of customer profiles to understand buying patterns and behaviors (Prasad & Malik, 2011). It is through the development of higher levels of data analysis that services can become more effective and beneficial. 

Let us look at an example. Analysis of a large database finds that customers who bought airplane tickets also purchased beach related products. Yet what if these customers were also found to purchase more outdoor gear and spent a greater amount of money on outdoor activities? It would be possible to build a customer profile based upon their exploratory and thrill seeking behavior. 

In order to understand unique social purchasing behaviors requires the categorization and analysis of profile customers. It requires a method of making meaning out of the historical data (i.e. purchases over time) being presented. Qian et. al. (2006 suggests the following:

• 1.)    Standardize profiles
• 2.)    Screen out uninteresting profiles
• 3.)    Using basic functions to categorize profiles
• 4.)    Apply algorithms to the categorizations
• 5.)    Identify unique profiles for further analysis

Once the profiles are standardized it is possible to categorize their behavior into clusters. These clusters are used for additional analysis and the determining of patterned behavior. That patterned behavior indicates that there are latent psychological functioning occurring and it would be beneficial to use multiple analysis methods to better highlight their behavioral thought processes. 

This process is fairly accurate and can lead to better marketing techniques based upon profile attributes and responses to previous marketing (i.e. previous purchases).  One simply needs to draw connections between the different sets of data and tests that were conducted over time. A study by Leung (2009) found that out of 1,500 profiles analyzed that 91.73% of customer profiles were segmented correctly. 

High levels of accuracy and a process for separating and analyzing consumer behavior is a benefit that organizations should not ignore. The use of more pin pointed marketing techniques further encourages efficient use of company resources by ensuring that products are actually of interest to the customer. Social research techniques can help identifying latent psychological functions that further enhance organizational profits.

Leung, C. (2009). An inductive learning approach to market segmentation based upon customer profile attributes. Asian Journal of Marketing, 3 (3). 

Prasad, P. & Malik, L. (2011). Generating customer profiles for retail stores using clustering techniques. International Journal on Computer Science & Engineering, 3 (6). 

Qian, Z. et. al. (2006). Churn detection via customer profile modeling. International Journal of Production Research, 44 (14).

Technology as Central to New Organizational Models

Changes in the business environment have forced organizations to take new and exciting approaches to the overall development of their operations. Technology has moved to a more centralized function that fosters competitive global business strategy. As organizations seek to retain and grow their market positions they will also need to change their I.T. perspective from a business enhancing function to one co-mingled and central to the business itself. 

IT strategy has been predominately included at a functional level subordinate to operations. As part of the transformation from brick & mortar mentality to virtual perspective the IT functionality becomes a central strategic platform where other strategic considerations emulate. Constant new technology requires the ability to create a solid but adaptable platform that allows integration and removal of new applications with relative ease.

The advantage of virtual organizations is that it aligns more with a global market that is not limited by location. It is able to traverse time, space, and distance to service customers (Kohli & Grover, 2008). Such businesses have a reach that moves beyond physical restrictions as a small company into a much larger world (i.e.Alaska to China). Technological differences within these regions require adaptability that spans borders. 

As organizations partner and work in collaboration it is these new platforms that allow for digital information sharing that creates higher levels of intra-organizational efficiencies. These digital niches foster stronger market advantages (Rai et al. 2012).  The more service holes that can be filled the more seamless the intra-organizational efforts and the stronger their marketability.

Bharadwaj, et.al.  (2013) identified four evaluative themes in IT strategy to define the next generation of insights as the scope of digital business strategy, the scale of that strategy, the speed of the strategy and the source of value creation. Organizations that desire to stay ahead of the digital curve will need to have well defined strategies that capture a greater percentage of market share while creating higher levels of efficiencies among collaborating companies. This can only happen if the companies design puts technology as its very core in developing its strategic market approaches. 

IT Integration

-Use a central core platform integrated into the main strategy.

-Find niches and inefficiencies between collaborating companies.

-Integrate adaptive technology.

-Use technology to enhance market influence.

-Collaborate with related complementary organizations.

Bharadwaj, et. al. Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37 (2).

Kohli, R., and Grover, V. (2008). Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expanding Research Directions to Keep up with the Times. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 9 (1)

Rai, A, et. al. (2012). Interfirm IT capability profiles and communications for cocreating relational value: evidence from the logistics industry. MIS Quarterly, 35 (1)

OECD Reports on Canadian and U.S. Higher Education

According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Canada ranks first in percentage of educated citizens followed by the United States. Fifty percent of Canadians, forty-two percent Americans, and twenty-nine percent of the British have degrees. The Canadian population is one of the most educated among the 34 OECD and the nation s but at a higher cost.  

Canada’s post-graduate degrees such as master’s degree or doctoral degrees lag behind Korea and Japan. Younger Korean and Japanese citizens are earning higher grades which mark a fundamental shift in where higher education is being centered. With young Asians pushing hard to achieve their goals they will become new sources of discovery and revenue. There is little doubt as to the association of education with economic activity. 

The system found that those with higher degrees had about a 5% unemployment rate while those who didn’t had an 11.7%. This helps highlight the idea that education may reduce unemployment due to the variability of skills. It is these skills and general understandings that afford people the opportunity to find meaningful work. 

It may also be an indication that manufacturing and other physical labor positions are on the decline in first world nations. Cost competitiveness of manual labor is lower in developing countries such as China and India where North American companies would need to automate their operations to achieve parity. 

The report further indicated that 6.6 percent of Canadian GNP went into education from kindergarten to college while 7.3% of U.S. GNP went into education. The difference being that the majority of educational monies went to higher income student populations than in Canada. Even with higher U.S. monies American students ranked lower on international tests. 

American primary education was less developed than other nations. The key years in a child’s education, which determines in many ways their chosen paths in life, was lacking. It is possible that the declining amount of students choosing higher education and overall competitiveness upon graduation may be part of a general decline in national educational achievement. 

Fewer foreigners were coming to the U.S . for education than in the past. They were opting to stay within their countries or other places where the educational system more matches their needs. Europe was the most popular place to get a higher education. The U.S. received only 21% of the total foreign population when compared to Europe receiving 48%. 

The report should act as food for thought for higher education decision makers. The traditional educational system needs reform in order to make it more effective. From early childhood development to graduate school the system should be focused more on teaching methods that actually enhance learning. It could consider the advantages of using virtual higher educational platforms to reach out and recruit international students who can study without having to leave their home countries. 

OECD

CTV News

Washington Post

Ottawa Citizen