Alex Bogusky
Interest: Environmental Systems
Specialty: Marketing/Public Relations
Location: Boulder, CO
If saving the world can't be fun, who is going to do it? I'm a husband and father of two children. I worked in design/advertising for twenty plus years and had a blast building an brand advocate agency called CrispinPorter+Bogusky. Today I'm over the moon to be part of the team working on COMMON. Harnessing the power of design and "thinking wrong" creativity to create socially minded ventures through events and community. Pinch me.
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Alex Bogusky posted on the forum topic Ads2Art+COMMONArts in the group
COMMON CANVAS: 11 months, 1 week ago · ViewThat’s a great idea example of the kind of thing that would work.
A
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Alex Bogusky posted an update: 11 months, 1 week ago · View
Adam,
You might want to speak with the COFFEE COMMON guys. They have found that their collective story as roasters has had much more traction as a collective.A
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Alex Bogusky posted an update: 11 months, 1 week ago · View
We’re actually working on something like this right now. We’re doing a two-day MBA on COMMON Media. Because we’re prototyping some new processes we didn’t make it an open event or ask for participants. Lot’s of good ideas yesterday. Very similar to what you’re thinking.
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Alex Bogusky posted an update: 11 months, 1 week ago · View
Adam,
We’re working on new section of the site where we can offer really focused assignments to small teams. I’m wondering if there is something in this seed idea that could serve as inspiration for something like that.
BTW. We have Rich from Abbondanza coming on the show. They sell and save seed and want to make a seed bank.
Alex,
Maybe we could ask everyone in the CS community to go document the seed racks at their local garden store.
Another idea would be to crowd source some input on the panel idea we are presenting for http://www.seedalliance.org/Seed_Growers_Conference/
Either of these things would be useful. But perhaps we need to zoom out to the vision level and leave some of this tactical stuff for later?
AB
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Alex Bogusky posted an update: 11 months, 1 week ago · View
I know you spoke to Isaac. Is this something you want to rebrand as a common event.
Like a common creatathon? That might be fun. We’ve been doing three day and two week events but i see no reason why this wouldn’t fit under the tent. They sound fun and we’re always looking for ways to have fun and make a little trouble. -
Alex Bogusky posted an update: 11 months, 1 week ago · View
We’d like to see a COMMON incubator evolve as well. They are generally attached to capital (VC) and in exchange for the incubation the capital partner takes a portion. Usually 6 percent. The focus of COMMON is not to own the companies that are born of the process and share the brand but we recognize the need for capital and so we hope that it will be an option down the road.
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Alex Bogusky joined the group
Common Incubator 11 months, 1 week ago · View
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Alex Bogusky posted on the forum topic Ads2Art+COMMONArts in the group
COMMON CANVAS: 11 months, 1 week ago · ViewSo we experimented with this with ads2art with Bcycle. The key is to create a way to buy the media or get it donated. The media companies set aside a portion of media for PSAs. Could and does art deserve the status of public service? When there is so many issues it feels doubtful. So …
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Alex Bogusky posted an update: 11 months, 1 week ago · View
This is well thought out. Thanks for the level of detail. It makes is really easy to see how it could happen. Couple questions:
Do you see yourself as the entrepreneur?
Would you like to pilot this in Phoenix?
If yes to the above, do you feel like you have the beginnings of a team there around you?
Building a team is critical to success in these things. -
Alex Bogusky joined the group
Common Kitchen 11 months, 1 week ago · View
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Alex Bogusky posted on the forum topic Towards more ethical, less fast fashion consumption in the group
common cloth: 11 months, 1 week ago · ViewThe whole idea if fashion has an interesting design implication. One of the designers who was working on the eco index suggested that they were considering making fashion an element of sustainability. With a classic black garment getting a higher score than something in a neon plaid for instance. This might be an element of …
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Alex Bogusky joined the group
COMMON Financial Advice 1 year ago · View -
Alex Bogusky posted on the forum topic Ads2Art+COMMONArts in the group
COMMON CANVAS: 1 year ago · ViewI was reading through what you posted because i had been thinking about COMMON CANVAS. Glad you like it. It’s easy enough to do on a one by one basis as my wife and I are doing with Bcycle baskets but to make it ongoing and a platform for there to be hundred of likeminded …
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Alex Bogusky submitted the idea
COMMON CANVAS 1 year ago · View -
Alex Bogusky posted an update: 1 year ago · View
Thanks for the idea.
Couple thoughts and questions on COMMON Hype.
To be a COMMONcm company there has to be a social mission. Meaning that this blog idea would need to benefit a stakeholder that is not currently being benefited by similar blogs. So that needs to be fleshed out.
In addition the companies in COMMONcm share the brand so the community will want to play a part in deciding if COMMONcm HYPE fits the brand values. Just putting the site up is indeed rabid prototyping but doesn’t fit with that ethos.
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Alex Bogusky posted an update in the group
We Role Cycle Works: 1 year, 1 month ago · ViewDid you see this as something you want to rebrand as COMMON?
Alex,
That would be a BIG Yes!
I can shoot you a link to the deck if you like.
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Alex Bogusky posted a new activity comment: 1 year, 1 month ago · View
You might want to go buy some seeds this weekend. Just to see what you can learn from that experience. I have a feeling it will not be very fulfilling. And I’m curious how elastic the price of seed might be since the value right now is purely as a commodity. You might find there is a lot of room to do seeds better from an experience design POV.
In reply to - Alex Bogusky posted an update in the group COMMON SEEDS: I wonder if there is any data on the consumer seed market? It seems to me this will be a huge sector as rooftop, community, school and backyard gardens multiply. · View -
Alex Bogusky posted a new activity comment: 1 year, 1 month ago · View
I do like it. Caught my eye right away. Very Common. Very organic.
In reply to - Marty Butler posted an update in the group COMMON SEEDS: I just designed the avatar/ logo. Hope y’all dig it (pun). · View -
Alex Bogusky posted an update in the group
COMMON HEALTH: 1 year, 1 month ago · ViewDoing something in health has an inherent goodness.
What I’m missing here is how this reaches a new stakeholder.
A social enterprise needs to benefit a group that was not previously benefiting.
If you can figure that out you’ll gain a lot more traction with the COMMON Community
Creating the behavior of ”healthy living” is not at all a simple task, especially in low educated, low income areas. However, whereas most enterprises in this field focus on selling goods and services to those who will MOST LIKELY engage in health, we look to inspire those who are the LEAST LIKELY. Reaching new stakeholder is the entire purpose of this initiative.
You can read below to see the proposed solutions that my business partner and I have been working on relentlessly for 2 years. But we are only 2 people. The purpose of COMMON HEALTH is to unite the great thinkers you have assembled to work together in designing these solutions.
Here is what we are fairly certain needs to happen in order to influence healthier behavior:
COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS
For the last decade or so, products and services in health have been attempting to get people to inspire themselves to be healthy. We don’t think that works, and $2.47 trillion in health care spending proves it. Personal trainers, nutritionists, yoga instructors, therapists… anyone who is educated in prevention and/or really cares about you, need to become the new doctors. I am calling them: COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS. People need to start seeing COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS being just as, if not more important than seeing a physician. You wouldn’t perform brain surgery on yourself, maybe we aren’t capable of choosing our diet for ourselves either.
The problem is that preventative service is too expensive. To fix this problem, a few things need to happen. 1.) A competitive marketplace of these individual service providers needs to develop. Right now, these providers are operating in infrastructures where some 70% of the money being spent on the service goes to the corporation managing the provider. This balance needs to be tipped in the opposite direction to lower the price of the service. 2.) Government aid is currently being allocated to doctors who TALK to their patients about being healthy. Talk is cheap. The money should be going to COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS who MAKE their patient healthy. 3.) Health care is a broken incentive structure. Why care about your health when health care is going to pay the bill when you get sick? The problem is that it’s much more expensive to treat the problem then it is to prevent it, and we are running out of money. The idea of health care needs to be focused on spending money to be healthy, rather than saving money in case you get sick, or a balance between the two. Luckily, health care companies are beginning to realize this. COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS need to act as agents, to report healthy behavior to health care providers who will compensate those who are making progress towards health.
GAMING MECHANICS
The previous example shows how we can lower the cost of preventative service, gaming mechanics provide a framework for how to influence the behavior of new stakeholders. In order to understand why gaming mechanics are such a powerful solution, I would suggest watching this video and thinking about the utilization of these tactics to inspire healthy behavior. It is a little long (1 hour) but I think the strategies discussed can help in ALL common ventures.
1. Talk is NOT CHEAP if it comes from the right person – in the introduction you have this bit: “Personal trainers, nutritionists, yoga instructors, therapists… anyone who is educated in prevention and/or really cares about you, need to become the new doctors.” – personal trainers, nutritionists, yoga instructors, therapists DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU on a personal level, so they don’t care about you any more than doctors do. Which is to say there’s not going to be a significant change if we redirect government aid from doctors (who actually make their patients healthy, more than yoga instructors and other personal trainers do) to COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS, the way you identified them. Personally, I believe when it comes to education, you should rely on the educated few to spread the wisdom among the uneducated lot. And that can be done through clever, uninhibited social campaigns that address the educated people on two different levels:
1) on the one hand, you want an emotional, altruism-driven approach: convince them to educate their families and friends.
2) on the other hand, there’s the selfishness-driven approach: convince them that educating WHOEVER they come into contact with is all to their advantage, because the more aware people are of the benefits of prevention, the less exposed to viral infections all of us are.
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2. When you talk about prevention try not to focus on money and you’ll get better results THAT DON’T DEPEND ON HOW GENEROUS THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS:
“Health care is a broken incentive structure. Why care about your health when health care is going to pay the bill when you get sick?” – does it feel right to be sick? I don’t think so, I’ll always choose to pay more than to get sick more often. Also, you’ve mentioned chronic diseases – well, that’s indeed something we should focus on. First of all, even if you get treatment for free, you can’t be cured, you can’t live a normal life, sometimes you can’t even have children or the risks involved are (and should be) discouraging. More than that, chronic diseases prevent you from getting treatment for other diseases you may confront with – this is the point where money is of no help at all.Correct, talk is not cheap. Talk is actually extremely expensive when it does not effectively measure the behavior that the funds allocated towards preventative medicine strive to influence.
I am currently in discussion with a government representative focusing on preventative medicine. We are working on the idea of creating an online profile system, that through some form of moderator (common health provider,) records their healthy behavior through check-in’s to gyms or personal training session and also makes record of the types of food they have purchased. The goal is to take the funds being used for doctors to talk to their patients about being healthy, and make it cheaper for the individuals who ACTUALLY make record of healthy behavior. This decreases the risk to the health care funding provider by guaranteeing that the money being spent is actually being spend on the result desired. Also, by using these funds to make engagement in exercise and diet cheaper, you are actually incentivizing the behavior, not just the discussion of the behavior.
The goal is not to eliminate physicians from equation, but to create a balance. Physicians do (or should) care about ones health. But their education and specialty is to treat someone AFTER they get sick. Do doctors check to make sure you aren’t smoking? How do they make sure you are actually exercising? Are they going to create shopping lists full of organic foods for you? Currently, the physicians closest solution to preventative medicine is a ”physical,” which for most people only happens ONCE A YEAR! What happens during a physical? They ask you if you smoke and exercise, then measure the damage you have already accumulated. The goal of COMMON HEALTH PROVIDERS is to create a network of people interact with their patients on a very consistent, daily or weekly basis. These CHP’s could potentially be anyone, as long as they retain responsibility of measuring the patients day-to-day health habits. The whole system is based on a point system. You get points when check in to the gym, you get points for every healthy item you purchase, etc. The more points you get, the cheaper your health care premiums are because you are actually proving that you are a low risk. Then, if you run into a problem that is not associated to your own unhealthy behavior, the physician detects this (who also has access to your COMMON HEALTH profile) during your physical and the insurance funds are provided to account for it.
That’s very true, too, talk gets expensive when the wrong people are paid to do it, doctors are not trained in communication and there’s no logic in having them do the talk on preventive medicine anyway — they interact with people that either already have the habit of checking on their health or already have got to the point of constantly needing a doctor, so that’s limited or wrong audience from the very beginning, because the talking is either useless or late for the party.
And yes, that online system could do a great job IF it is correctly AND ATTRACTIVELY presented, it has to generate sort of a ”fashion trend”. For many years now people have focussed on the idea that one should not feel bad about being overweight, for instance. That kind of mentality needs to be challenged, because this hysteria of not inducing an inferiority complex has led to actually encouraging unhealthy eating habits and sendentary lifestyle. So while we’re not trying to make anyone feel bad about themselves, nobody stops us from motivating them to want a good-looking, much healthier body.
Yes. We have been really digging into the idea of ”Gaming Mechanics.” Game mechanics have the power to turn the engagement and tracking of healthy behavior into a fun game. This video is kinda long (1 hr) but it really shows the power of gaming mechanics and how it can motivate people to do things by creating a fun, game-like experience.
Great debate… glad we’re talking.
There are two aspects to this that I need to emphasis though…
1. Personal Trainers do care about you on a deeper more personal level, more often than doctors. There are many reasons for that, which I won’t get into now, but personal trainers MUST make a personal connection with their client and care for them, or the client WILL disappear. I care about all of my clients very deeply, and I can confidently say that about most personal trainers as well… it’s a part of the job… and that’s why we’re called ”personal” trainers, and not just trainers. How often do you see your doctor? Because I don’t see my personal training clients any less than 3 times per week, and most of them have been with me for more than 2 years. How do you NOT have a personal connection in that amount of time together?
2. I agree that there needs to be some sort of standardization in education for this to truly take flight. Is it possible to build a technology based infrastructure with all the checks and balances that ensure data tracking is accurate and legitimate? Yes. I believe it is… but it is something we would have to create. Currently, professionals need to be involved, especially when big money is involved (on both the insurance company and corporate sides). What will the requirement for education be? A masters degree? Who knows.
Currently there are requirements to be approved to provide services that your insurance company will cover (PPO, etc.). It is a protocol for these insurance agencies to be sure their money is being spent in the right places.
But the answers will truly only come when negotiation with the companies agreeing to participate in our overall purpose takes place.
Justin, while spending a lot of time together provides the perfect ground for close connections, not spending that time together does not mean you’re less connected — for instance, I never skip my daily running session, but I have a much closer relationship with my surgeon, whom I meet once or twice a month, than with my coach. Quality vs. quantity. The surgical intervention was a far more intense experience than the habitual early morning runs. So if I had to take any advice, my surgeon’s word would definitely weigh more. Our different points of view on this say one very important thing: there’s no general rule. So I guess there’s no radical solution.
I am a strong supporter of worksite wellness programs. It is a place-based strategy in which employee communities are well defined, rich relationships exist and one stakeholder, the employer, has a strong incentive to improve employee health. Those are all critical success factors. And well designed programs are getting positive results.
Still, having employers responsible for such a large component of our health care system is just a very awkward legacy of a post World War II strategy for attracting employees. If anyone were to design, de novo, a health care system, no one in their right minds would put the employer in the middle of it, or even worse, the employer-insurer nexus. Since this is what we’ve got, it makes sense to work with it, but I’d really like to think more freely as we try to create something that supports an environment in which we do not have to hold a carrot out in front of people to get them to do what is in their own interest.
Thanks so much for introducing the Game Mechanics video. That suggests some very exciting ideas. Also exciting is the book ”Nudge” by Thaler and Sunstein. That book suggests ways in which an understanding of behavioral economics can lead us to making it easier for people to make choices which are in thier own interest, but which often are made otherwise.
I agree, Steve. We have taken a step back with our strategies and solutions based on the same desire; to take the power of health care incentives out of institutions and place it in the hands of the individuals. We realized that the ”carrot” shows signs of short term success, but what happens when you take away the carrot? We have been throwing around some interesting ideas internally.
I am going to pick up ”Nudge” today. Can’t wait to read it.
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Alex Bogusky posted an update in the group
Common Cycles: 1 year, 1 month ago · ViewStatus on COMMON Cycles MBA #001. The group has been curated and we’re excited about our three days together. We plan to stream the whole event as well so for those who are interested you can participate online. Ideas that come in from the chat on the stream will be integrated into the work each morning.
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