CleanFreak Nanotechnology Socio-Technical Plan (completed)

 

Individual Project 5: Final Socio-Technical Plan   

William Krysinski

Colorado Technical University

CS875-2003C-01

Dr. Cynthia Calongne

September 20, 2020

Introduction

Human beings are creatures of habit. Changing those habits takes time and necessity. This necessity can occur during times of crisis, and no situation has been exploited more than Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic transmission of 2020. The US Centers for Disease Contol and Prevention states that diseases like COVID-19 can spread “very easily and sustainably” (CDC, 2020).  Cleaning surfaces to prevent the spread of a virus transmitted to an individual has always been something of a Holy Grail, and now a solution exists that will not cause the typical human to change anything about their daily habits. Forget to wash your hands, no problem. Just witnessed an individual sneeze into their hands and then open the door, still no problem. How is this possible, you may ask? Self-cleaning surfaces that use nanotechnology will continuously attack bacteria and viruses on any surface that uses this technology. We call this product CleanFreak.   

CleanFreak Scope

Viruses like the COVID-19 can stay active on surfaces for hours if not days after being introduced to a surface.  The National Institutes of Health has determined that depending on the type of surface, this virus can remain active for up to four days on stainless steel (NIH, 2020). CleanFreak nanotechnology would work in several ways. First, nanotechnology can be applied to any hard surface, from plastics, wood, metal, and composites. It can be applied during the manufacturing process or applied to the existing surfaces in any home or office setting. Once installed, human cleanliness habits will not be impacted more than the levels of what we expect today. While the results of our technology have been promising, testing still long term testing is needed to prove our technology will continue to kill bacteria and viruses on contact and is safe for consumers. A fundamental limitation is this nanotechnology that it still cannot kill airborne contagions.  ‌

CleanFreak Purpose

Preventing the spread of disease and realizing that humans do not like change is at the heart of our mission statement at Clean Freak. COVID-19 has impacted nearly 30 million people as of September 2020 and had almost 1 million deaths (John Hopkins University, 2020). Karen Rowan (2012) cited a study of US and Brazilians in public places touched a common surface (i.e. subway handrail or ticket machine), and then their faces an average of 3.6 times an hour (Rowan, 2012). This could exacerbate the spread of disease if the surface is not cleaned or even if a person’s hands were just cleaned. CleanFreak takes this into account by killing the virus, thus preventing the spread by contact.       

CleanFreak Supporting Forces

Technological forces are at the core of CleanFreak innovation. Advances in nanotechnology and polymer development have exceeded the imaginations of the entire staff at CleanFreak. Having the ability to apply our product to both existing and newly manufactured products will be a gamechanger.  Economical forces in reducing hospitalizations, time missed from work, and impact on the economy will be witnessed almost immediately during a new pandemic or seasonal virus outbreak.   

CleanFreak Formidable Forces

Since reforming habits is difficult with the human race, educational forces are significant concerns with obtaining complete buy-in with consumers of the world. Young members of society might feel invincibility since viruses and bacteria’s rarely impact them. Unproven technology is a scary proposition for others to accept, as well. One only has to look at advances in technology that caused more health concerns that improving daily life, circa 3-M Teflon coating that caused cancer in individuals. Retooling the manufacturing process and assembly lines will be a challenge for all industries worldwide. 

CleanFreak Forecasting Method 

Individuals will be impacted by all facets of society with the implementation of CleanFreak’s technology. Group decision-making must be effectively utilized at each step of change to introduce the benefits and ease of use for CleanFreak. The Delphi technique will serve a significant role in obtaining buy-in from all impacted by this technology. Questionnaires for subject matter experts in manufacturing, healthcare, economics, government, and sociologist will provide a more profound understanding of how CleanFreak will impact the behavior and the acceptance of the product.  Thrope and Holt (2008) list the benefits of Delphi include can be repeated, SMEs use their expertise to share judgments, and researchers control the information path. The results of the survey will help to drive the direction of the leadership at CleanFreak. Preventing without changing is our goal at CleanFreak, and our product is poised to change the world without even knowing change is occurring.

 

Application for Trust using the ABCD Model

Figure 1: ABCD Trust Model (Blanchard, Olmstead, and Lawrence, 2013)

Note: This figure demonstrates the trust model implemented for CleanFreak’s manufacturing and consumer process to gain and maintain trust. From “Trust Works!: Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships” by K. Blanchard, C. Olmstead, and M. Lawrence. Copyright 2013 by Harper Collins Publishing.

 

To address the importance of trust for CleanFreak, our consumers, and our producer partners, we will adopt the ABCD model of giving and earning trust. Ability to demonstrate competency is the first quadrant represented in this model. Transparency and demonstrating expertise at the highest level will set the baseline in developing trust. Believing in our mission and spotlighting our core values daily will expose them to our customer base. Once ability and believability have been achieved, CleanFreak will begin connecting with our customers by implementing communication strategies, listening to feedback, and caring for our employees and customers on an intimate level. Finally, we will continually improve our dependability by maintaining integrity, transparency, respect, and follow-through. This model will be a continuous loop designed for rapid change and satisfaction for every stakeholder.

 

CleanFreak Analytical Plan

Hypotheses	Increase buy-in and implementation at each the manufacturing facility, and the viral infection will decrease from surface contact.
Objective	KPI	Measurement	Frequency	Segment
Brand Awareness	Social media registration	Web signup	Monthly	Consumer Commercial Government
Customer Acquisitions	Sales based on all channels	New/Returning Sales	Daily	Consumer Commercial Government
Brand Loyalty	Positive Comments Sales increase by segment	Like vs. dislike Sales by Segment	Daily	Consumer Commercial Government
Implementation	Type and number of surfaces installed	Installation	Weekly	Consumer Commercial Government

            Our goal is to have CleanFreak technology installed in all new manufacturing lines by 2050 and applied to all existing surfaces by 2040. Our analytical plan will need to include tracking worldwide usage and installation growth month over month. The hypothesis is the faster we can obtain buy-in and change manufacturing techniques to incorporate CleanFreak, the number of illnesses and deaths related to viral infection due to surface contact will be significantly decreased. We will be focused on implementing our product worldwide, increasing brand awareness, customer acquisitions, and improve brand loyalty.   

CleanFreak Anticipated Results

At first, CleanFreak will be reviled as too good to be true. There will be no way that a product can control disease on every surface with little interaction by an individual. Subject Matter Experts trusted celebrities, social media campaigns, organizations such as the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control would provide the buy-in needed to earn the trust.

Changing social norms will be the most significant benefit of the CleanFreak product. While our mission statement is geared towards preventing the spread of disease and realizing that humans do not like change, making change look seamless will be the key to the success of our product line. Having faith in knowing that one is being protected from potentially deadly diseases without harmful chemicals and embedded in every human-made surface will be essential for our success.

Starting with the protection of the most vulnerable population will be our highest priority. Implementing CleanFreak at children day-care, elderly care, and public schools will be the first areas we would test. Proving our product does work with an initial goal of decreasing virus transmission via surface contact by seventy-five percent or higher. Once proven, we will continue the rollout of CleanFreak into more sectors of daily life with a goal of saturation of CleanFreak within the next two decades.   

Conclusion on CleanFreak

The goal of the CleanFreak nanotechnology is simple. Infusion into every product or surface that a human might come in contact with daily. Removing the human factor of forgetting a surface might be infected is the ultimate goal. However, a fantastic product is only half of gaining the approval of the world community. Addressing concerns that plaque the consumer, working with manufacturers to integrate our product into future production floors, and finally integrating our nanotechnology into every surface that has been produced and is still in service today is our main focus.

The difficulty will exist in several areas to have this product meet our goal of total surface infusion. First, invoking trust with the everyday consumer that this product will do exactly what we promise. From poor manufacturing processes to reliability in the products, to the medical profession, trust is eroding everywhere for the typical consumer. Khullar (2018) stated that distrust in the medical profession had eroded more than fifty percent in the last thirty years to a staggering thirty-four percent of Americans that believe in the care they receive from the medical industry. So trust is the most crucial aspect that CleanFreak will have to address to gain buy-in from the consumers of the world.

Impacting the manufacturing processes, training manufacturing personnel, and re-tooling assembly lines to incorporate the CleanFreak product are the next exciting challenges we will have to overcome. Minimizing impact to the operations lines while keeping costs low will be the priority when working with manufacturing organizations. Creating free training for front-line workers in every language will be needed to ensure consistency in the application of CleanFreak. Finally, working with our manufacturing partners to help envelop any cost that may make it difficult to include CleanFreak in their products.

CleanFreak will partner with the experts in the fields of healthcare, social media, government, manufacturing, distribution, and any other stakeholders that will allow CleanFreak to earn trust, maintain safety and keep virus transmission via surface contact to as close to zero percent as possible.  

Potential Areas of Future Research at CleanFreak

Future research will be needed to monitor the effectiveness of future and past infectious diseases. Understanding how CleanFreak will respond to past, current, and future diseases that live on surfaces will be vital in keeping disease levels minimum.  

Effectiveness over time of the ability of CleanFreak to maintain disease control. How will CleanFreak hold up over time, continuous interactions with human skin, and impacting the integrity of the surface CleanFreak was applied.

Health concerns with the chemical makeup and application techniques of CleanFreak. For years to come, does CleanFreak have any negative impacts on the health of those that come into interaction? At what frequency is it consider risky to maintain contact with CleanFreak?

Is self-application of CleanFreak to the skin for just-in-time disease control possible?  While this contradicts our mission statement of removing the human element, we know there will be a necessity for a just-in-time application for CleanFreak. How will this be developed, and will it be as effective as the upcoming application model of CleanFreak.

 

 

 

 

References

 

Blanchard, K., Olmstead, C., & Lawrence, M. (2013). Trust Works!: Four Keys to Building

Lasting Relationships. Harper Collins.

CDC. (2020, March 17). Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) - Transmission. Retrieved

September 6, 2020, from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html

John Hopkins University. (2020). Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Retrieved

September 6, 2020, from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center website: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Khullar, D. (2018, January 23). Do You Trust the Medical Profession? The New York Times.

Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/upshot/do-you-trust-the-medical-profession.html

National Institutes of Health. (2020, March 17). New coronavirus stable for hours on surfaces.

Retrieved September 6, 2020, from National Institutes of Health (NIH) website: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/new-coronavirus-stable-hours-surfaces

Thorpe, R., & Holt, R. (2008). The SAGE dictionary of qualitative management research (Vols.

1-0). London, : SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9780857020109

CleanFreak Nanotechnology Socio-Technical Plan

Link to Video here as well: https://animoto.com/play/knygJ05t3HLtRhkaFabGpQ

De-evaluation of Blockbuster Video

 

Bill Krysinski 

Doctoral Research: Futuring and Innovation (CS875-2003C-01)

Unit 4 Discussion Board 3

Dr. Cynthia Calongne 

September 5, 2020

 

De-evaluation of Blockbuster Video

Everything changes, and nothing remains the same. The story you will witness in this discussion board is a tale of multiple market force changes from competitors, consumer habits, and, most notably, technology. Picture this, and it is 5 PM on Friday in small-town America circa mid-to-late 1990s. Your parents pull up in the parking, and the adventure begins. Your sister wants to see "Single White Female," your mom and dad want to watch "Wayne's World," and you want to see "Hellraiser III." Be kind rewind is on the door as leave the exit door of the beautiful world of Blockbuster video.

Innovation was at the heart of the business model for Blockbuster. The core of their success was in their ability to take advantage of technology such as VHS, then DVD, video game rentals, and eventually streaming services. Blockbuster survived nearly 40-years before succumbing to the changes in the way customers changed habits in consuming movies and how technology and the internet changed the way we watched movies. At the height of Blockbuster video's success in 2004, they had over 9,000 stores and nearly $6 billion in revenue (Olito, 2020). At the start of the new century, Blockbuster forego the opportunity to purchase an unknown but ultimately the nail in the proverbial coffin for Blockbuster, as they did not buy Netflix for a nominal fee of $50 million. 

Also, two years later, Redbox kiosk began to pop up around the US, and convenience was introduced at a lower price point than Blockbuster and no late fees for the consumer. This change impacted Blockbuster's bottom line by nearly $200 million when they removed late fees from their business model. Less than a decade later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, and now only one store remains open in rural Oregan.   

Consumer behavior and missed opportunities lead to the inevitable demise of Blockbuster. In terms of sociotechnical planning, understanding the various supporting and challenging forces would have allowed senior leadership to make changes based on consumer habits and technological changes that permitted these patterns in behavior to exist. Finally, flexibility is the key, and large organizations created during that time were by design not as flexible as companies that took advantage of technology.

 

References

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Olito, F. (2020, January 16). The rise and fall of Blockbuster - Business Insider. Retrieved

September 4, 2020, from Business Insider website: https://www.businessinsider.com/rise-and-fall-of-blockbuster

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A jailhouse tattoo artist, microbiologist, and European engineer walk into a bar. And the World changes!

 

While I do not condone criminal activity, I am always amazed at the ingenuity of the prisoner population. Having 24/7/365 to solve problems is a sure-fire way to cure the boredom in prison. Defining exaptation within the concrete walls of a typical prison, what object can a Bic pen or Sharpie, battery, tape, toothbrush, and a small beard trimmer motor make?  Now throw in an untrained but aspiring artist, and we have a prison-made tattoo parlor. Amazingly, those components can easily be repurposed into something that can cause reflection, strike fear in the hearts of viewers, and a sense of purpose.

Do you remember your last trip to an amusement park or state fair? Was it during the height of the summer months, and you were looking for a way to cool down? As you looked to your left, you saw the ice cream kiosk known as Dippin’ Dots. You ordered your favorite flavor and were amazed by the “Future of Ice Cream.” Nearly 40 years ago, Curt Jones was a microbiologist working in laboratory flash-freezing animal feed using one of the coldest liquids in the world- Liquid Nitrogen.  Through trial, error, lots of yogurt, and nearly 320 degrees below zero liquid nitrogen, frozen BB-sized ice cream balls were born.

It is summertime, and if you may have taken a walk in the park, just cut your grass, or a finished a stroll on the beach. You have picked on at least one hitchhiker along the way. You might not have noticed until you went to take off your shoes and socks, but that hitchhiker is now in your home. In the mid-1940s, George de Mestral saw these hitchhiking seeds and was intrigued by their properties to latch on securely to a host. This serendipitous discovery has changed to the world as he was the creator of Velcro. This multi-use fastening method is used almost everywhere today, including in space by NASA astronauts.   

A jailhouse tattoo artist, microbiologist, and European engineer walk into a bar.  Now the world is a little better for each of these inventions using serendipity, exaptation, trial, and error. These inventions occurred out of necessity and curiosity. The takeaway here improvement is all around us. There is always a better way to do something, using the power of Grit, and never giving up to solve a problem may lead to the next worldwide phenomenon.  

I want to be a Billionaire..So Freaking Bad...

Here is the list of my fifty dream items in the five categories for this week's assignment. Looking at the exercise, I found that it was more difficult for me to decide on the areas within the Job and religious areas. I am not a very spiritual or religious person even though I was raised in the Roman Catholic religion. Having visited many countries around the world, I know how important religion is in the daily lives of the rest of the world. I found the home the easiest to complete because I guess I am more materialistic than I should be. As far as education goes, many of my areas are obtainable and I should begin to take the time to reach my dreams in that area. 

 

Education:
1	I would learn Japanese and be fluent in speaking
2	I would how to play the harmonica
3	I would re-learn to code in a programming language
4	I would learn how to sail a sailboat
5	I would learn how to drive a sports car (ideally a Porsche 911 GT 3)
6	I would learn how to SCUBA dive
7	I would teach military veterans to be better prepared for the civilian world
8	I would learn conversational Polish and meet up with my Polish Family in Warsaw
9	I would research various cults to learn how influential speakers can impact the lives of the followers
10	I would become a Shaolin Monk and learn Kung Fu
Job or Research:
1	I want to become a small business owner
2	I would like to see how many jobs I could get fired from
3	I would like to run a US Air Force veterans, not for profit
4	I would like to be a professor of Computer Science  that works on overseas military installations
5	I would like to participate in the Peace Corps with my wife and children
6	I would develop a project that would help provide education to the underserved
7	I would like to train incarcerated individuals skill and provide an opportunity for normalization upon release
8	Create a methodology for students in Higher Ed to provide training for an underserved population so they can gain real-world experience
9	Create a go-fund-me like page for a single wish for anyone in the entire world
10	I would build miniature movie sets
Philosophical or Religious
1	I would like to pray in the Angkor Wat Hindu Temple in Cambodia
2	I would like to pray in the Fushimi Inari Shinto Shrine in Kyoto, Japan
3	I would like to sail with the Sea Org in the church of Scientology
4	I would like to  read the Golden Plates that Joseph Smith used to write the Book of Mormon
5	I would like to make a prayer on the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
6	I would like to make a pilgrimage to Mecca
7	I would participate in the Day of the Dead in Mexico
8	I would like to drum in the Okinawan Festival known as Obon in an Eisa festival
9	Sever as Crewe Master on a Mardi Gras Float in New Orleans
10	I would visit the "Beast-Jesus" Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) painting that was restored by Cecilia Gimenez
Travel:
1	I would take an around the world cruise with my family and closest friends
2	I would visit my US Air Force buddies wherever they live around the world
3	I would visit the Beaches of Normandy, France to visit Omaha Beach
4	I would visit my homeland of Poland to visit family that still remains
5	I would visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland
6	I would like to have a visit aboard an alien spacecraft (minus the probing)
7	See the Northern Lights from Iceland
8	I would like to explore Area-51 with an all-access pass
9	I would visit the International Space Station
10	I would like to visit North Korea and visit the Masikryong Ski Resort
Home:
1	I would like a treehouse in treetops of Belize
2	I would like to own Neverland Ranch in California
3	I would add a bowling alley and classic arcade to my basement man cave
4	I would like a glass-walled infinity pool off the cliff of Northern Italy
5	I would like an underwater master bedroom in a house in the Mediterranean
6	I would like to have a Star Wars memorabilia museum
7	I would like to own Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Pennsylvania
8	Would like to own Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT
9	I would have a garage-like Jay Leno's with a multi-million dollar collection of cars
10	I would like to have purchase Daryl Hall's House (from Hall and Oates fam) and have him perform his webcast for me and the world

Fall from grace: From Number 2 to a memory in less than 50 years - Borders Bookstore

Fall from grace: From Number 2 to a memory in less than 50 years - Borders Bookstore  

 

For nearly forty-years, Borders Bookstores, also known as Borders Group, Inc., were a hometown anchor in the brick-and-mortar space of book retailers. Borders Bookstore was founded in 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by recent graduates of the University of Michigan and brothers Thomas and Louis Borders. The Borders Brothers innovated a retail space for booksellers never seen before their first store opening. At their height of greatness in 1998, they were the second-largest book retailer in the United States, only to Barnes and Noble Booksellers, with nearly 1,200 stores, 20,000 employees, and  $3 billion in sales, $4.7 billion adjusted for inflation (Ton & Raman, 2003).   

A series of serious miss-steps spiraled out of control for Borders. Culminating in 2011, where Borders Goup, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and converted to Chapter 7 when investors were not able to be located during liquidation  (Hooper & Rawls, 2014). Societal shifts in how consumers were looking to participate in the online economy were changing the retail space. New challengers to Borders' physical storefront business model were beginning to shake up the traditional business model for the retail business. By the mid 1990's Amazon.com had started to be a significant player in the online bookstore retailer space.  Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com,  was an early adopter of the online-only storefront model. Many executives across many retail companies were either too slow or did not recognize the shift in the consumers' desire to move to online storefronts. Little attention was given to their online e-commerce presence at Borders.

Borders executives doubled down with their physical presence with international expansion into Europe, Asia, and Australia. Their major competitor did just the opposite and limited expansion to only the US market, fine-tuned their online marketplace, and developed a competitor to Amazon's digital e-reader technology. Borders' also purchased competitor Waldenbooks.  The purchase of Waldenbooks increased the physical presence Borders in America's shopping mall but was another miscalculated step by executives. They did not correctly anticipate the decline of the modern shopping mall.

                                               Sales decline of physical books (Trachtenberg, 2011)

Another substantial failure in terms of business decisions was to use Amazon Web Services for its digital marketplace. They had to share part of every sale with Amazon, significantly impacted Border's ability to be profitable. Also, Barnes and Noble and Amazon created a new technology to allow readers digital access to thousands of books via e-readers. Borders took several years to partner with vendors to make sub-par e-readers and did not make an impact on their profitability.

As an outsider looking in, complacency played a significant role in the demise of Borders Group, Inc. Focusing on what has worked in the past, not scenario planning for the future, and being inflexible due to the structure of pre-dot com industries are the factors that have led to many retailers closing their doors over the last two decades. Scenario planning has its merits in the success of looking at the future. Scenario planning, when conducted properly, needs to take into account the impact on the social effects of change. Change at the social level, seems to be an area that may be taking for granted or even ignored. The past several generations have seen dramatic shifts in how technology has changed seemingly overnight. These changes are not slowing down and the need for quick and adaptive planning to stay ahead of the curve. Alan Lakein once said, "Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now." These words summarize the power and the need to plan to avoid potential mistakes that plagued the Boroders Goup, Inc., in their last decades of existence. Whereas Barnes and Noble, with over 100 years of experience, have continued to stay positioned to serve their customers due to proper planning and execution.

 

 

 

 

References

Hooper, Will and Rawls, Mary Katherine, "Borders Group, Inc.'s Final Chapter: How A Bookstore Giant Failed In The Digital Age" (2014). Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Case Studies. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_studlawbankruptcy/38

Trachtenberg, J. A. (2011, July 20). Barnes & Noble Focuses on E-Books. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303795304576453882840821172

Ton, Z., & Raman, A. (2003). Borders Group, Inc. Harvard Business Review, 9(601–037). Retrieved          from https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/601037-PDF-ENG?Ntt=Borders&itemFindingMethod=Search

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