You centralize so that you can decentralize...

As I explained in a post a few years ago called "The bureaucracy paradox", the American sociologist Charles Perrow famously wrote "...the more bureaucratized an organization, the more possibilities there are for decentralized decision-making...You decentralize, we might say, by centralizing."  When I first came across this statement in Perrow's 1977 article "The bureaucratic paradox: The efficient organization centralizes in order to decentralize", I have to admit that I was thoroughly confused.  In many ways, the traditional bureaucratic organization is hierarchical in nature, and decisions are made by a relatively small number of individuals who work at the top of the hierarchy.  Bureaucracy, as a word, is almost synonymous with centralization.  However, as I've experienced working in different organizations with different organizational structures and cultures, I have come to appreciate how much truth resides in Perrow's statement.

According to most authorities on the subject, when it comes to organizational structure, centralization versus decentralization refers to the locus of decision-making authority.  In a centralized organizational structure, individuals who lie at the periphery (or, as some describe it, the bottom of the hierarchy) of the organization send information to those individuals in the center (the top of the hierarchy), where a decision is made and sent back to the individuals at the periphery to execute.  Decentralization flips this around, giving individuals who lie at the periphery (the bottom of the hierarchy) the authority (and accountability) to make decisions.  Retired U.S. Navy Captain David Marquet refers to centralization as  "pushing information to authority" and decentralization as "pushing authority to information".

As with just about everything, there are certain advantages and disadvantages to centralization versus decentralization.  Proponents of centralization, as an example, will often argue that it makes the process of gathering and processing information much more efficient.  Centralization also circumvents coordination problems and organizational politics ("Not everyone is going to be happy with the decision, and that's perfectly okay").  Conversely, proponents of decentralization argue that by giving individuals at the periphery (to use the description above) the opportunity to provide input and take part in decisions increases engagement, builds trust and cooperation, and ultimately increases the chance of a successful implementation, particularly one that may be controversial.

Hala Altamimi, Qiaozhen Liu, and Benedict Jimenez studied (see "Not too much, not too little: Centralization, decentralization, and organizational change") whether the degree of centralization influences the implementation of four different types of organizational change in their national study of U.S. city governments who were confronted with a severe budgetary crisis in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.  These local governments responded to the crisis by significantly changing the organizational structure (reorganization), contracting out services previously provided by the local government (service contracting, or outsourcing), adopting new technology (technology adoption), or instituting performance management with defined metrics (performance information).  

These investigators found that neither full centralization nor full decentralization works well, particularly during a period of crisis or time of constraint.  Instead, those organizational structures that have elements of both may perform the best, particularly when organizational change is required.  Just as important was the finding that context matters.  When organizational change is likely to be disruptive (reorganization or technology adoption), an organizational structure that leans toward moderate centralization is likely to be preferred.  Conversely, if organizational change is less disruptive in nature (service contracting or performance information), an organizational structure that leans toward moderate decentralization is preferred.  

Apparently, this contingent approach to the centralization/decentralization debate has been known for quite some time.  Henri Fayol argued in 1949 that, "...the question of centralization or decentralization is simply a matter of proportion, it is a matter of finding the optimum degree for the particular concern."  Others have labeled this contingent approach, "decentralized centralization" or even a networked approach (see also, Stanley McChrystal's "Team of Teams" approach).

The best analogy may be historical.  From 1781 to 1789, the United States were governed by the Articles of Confederation, a truly decentralized model in which the 13 states (at the time) existed as more or less distinct entities with very little in the way of central oversight.  The U.S. Constitution divided power between a federal (or central) government and the state governments.  While the state governments still had significant autonomy, they were now also subject to a more powerful central government.  The Constitution gave certain "powers" (authority) to the federal government, such as authority over national defense, currency, interstate commerce, etc.  In this way, the U.S. Constitution decentralizes governance across today's 50 states, allowing decisions to be made at the local level, while at the same time, centralizing authority in the federal government to maintain unity, enforce rights, and manage national priorities.  In other words, "decentralized centralization".

I think we've covered enough for today.  I am still trying to wrap my brain around this topic, so I will likely keep coming back to it in future posts.  For now, I think the take-home message is paraphrasing what Perrow said, "You centralize so that you can decentralize..."

U.S. high school reading and math scores at an all-time low

There has been a lot of attention in the recent press on the recent report that U.S. high school seniors' reading and math scores have dropped to their lowest level in several decades.  These reports also come in the wake of a report suggesting that eighth grade science scores have also declined to their lowest levels.  The new report is known as the Nation's Report Card, and the 2024 results were released this past week by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Department of Education (incidentally, both the NCES and Department of Education underwent significant budget cuts and massive staff reductions imposed by the current U.S. President's administration earlier this year).  

Average scores were lower across all three assessments (science, reading, and math) compared to the previous test scores from 2019.  Thirty-one percent of 8th graders performed at or above what is considered a proficient level.  Twenty-two percent of 12th graders performed at or above a proficient level in mathematics, while thirty-five percent of 12th graders performed at or above a proficient level in reading.

I know that my college prep mathematics sequence required me to take both Algebra 2 and Geometry during my sophomore year of high school, which allowed me to take Calculus during my senior year.  I also know that schools are pushing Algebra 1 earlier and earlier, at least compared to when I took Algebra 1 during 9th grade.  From what I hear, schools today are starting Algebra 1 as early as the 7th grade.  I do wonder if we are pushing Algebra at the expense of other basic mathematics skills.  

The Wall Street Journal published an article and accompanying editorial on September 9th entitled "Another K-12 Education Disaster" and wrote that "a third of high-school seniors lack basic reading skills and nearly half can't do rudimentary math."  They cite multiple factors, including the widespread school shutdowns that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.  While that may be a factor, the data suggest that the trends in decrease in math and reading scores started even prior to the pandemic.  They also suggest, "An emphasis on 'equity' has led some school districts to adopt no-grading and no-homework policies in lower grades.  Schools have reduced graduation requirements and inflated grades across the board.  The result: High-school graduation rates have increased...even as students are less prepared for college."  Other experts raise concerns about absenteeism, teacher turnover, and the impact of social media, as well as school violence and the mental health crisis.

It's hard to avoid politics when it comes to this important issue, and the WSJ editorial staff certainly brought politics into the discussion in their opinion piece.  I honestly don't know the right answer, and I suspect that there is some element of truth to the arguments being made by both sides of the political debate.  What is clear to me (and not political) is that whatever we've been doing in the last decade or so just isn't working.  Education is too important an issue - we don't just need to get a "passing grade" with our education system (and we aren't), we should be trying to get straight A's!

The Luck Factor Part II

Last time (see "The Luck Factor - Part I"), I talked about Max Gunther's book,  The Luck Factor.  Today I want to review what Richard Wiseman has to say about luck in his more recent book of the same name.  Wiseman conducted his research over 10 years and started by placing advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who considered themselves lucky or unlucky to contact him.  Over 400 individuals from virtually all walks of life responded to his inquiry.  Over the years, Wiseman has interviewed these volunteers and asked them to keep personal diaries, complete questionnaires and personality assessments, and participate in laboratory experiments.

Wiseman writes in an article based on his research (and book), "Luck is not a magical ability or the result of random chance.  Nor are people born lucky or unlucky.  Instead, although lucky and unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their fortune."

Wiseman, like Gunther, suggests that so-called "lucky individuals" create their own good fortune via four basic principles.  He writes, "They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."  

While similar to Gunther's five key characteristics, Wiseman differs with Gunther on a few items.  Let's take a closer look.

1. Creating and noticing chance opportunities

Wiseman, like Gunther, found that lucky individuals tend to create and act upon chance opportunities (sounds very similar to Gunther's "Spiderweb Structure" and "Audentes Fortunate Juvat").  Wiseman conducted a simple experiment using both his lucky and unlucky volunteers.  He asked them to look through a newspaper and count the number of photographs that were inside.  On average, the unlucky volunteers took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky volunteers only took a few seconds to complete the task.  Why?  Wiseman had also placed a message on the second page of the newspaper that said, "Stop counting - there are 43 photographs in this newspaper."  The message should have been easy to spot, as it took up half of the page and was written in type that was over 2 inches tall!  Most of the unlucky people just didn't see the message, while the majority of the lucky people did see the message.

As an additional test, Wiseman placed a second, similarly large, message about half way through the newspaper that said, "Stop counting, tell the experiment you have seen this and win $250."  Again, most of the unlucky people missed the message, while most of the lucky people earned themselves $250.

When Wiseman conducted personality tests on his volunteers, he found that unlucky people, as a group, tend to be more anxious and tense than the lucky people.  Further experiments conducted in his laboratory suggested that the unlucky people were too focused on one task (counting the photographs) to notice the unexpected message (Is anyone else thinking of the famous "Invisible Gorilla"?).  Lucky people are more relaxed and open to opportunities, such that they are more likely to "see what is there rather than just what they are looking for..."

2.  Making lucky decisions by listening to their intuition

Wiseman's point here sounds a lot like Gunther's "Hunching Skill".  Again, lucky people are more likely to take advantage of unexpected opportunities, even if it requires taking on some additional risk.  They act upon their hunches, which creates good fortune.

3. Creating self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations

 Here is where I think Wiseman differs slightly from Gunther.  Remember that Gunther talked about the "pessimism paradox" and how lucky people are always expecting and preparing for the worst.  Wiseman suggests that lucky people take a more optimistic or positive attitude.  He suggests, "Lucky people tend to imagine spontaneously how the bad luck they encounter could have been worse and, in doing so, they feel much better about themselves and their lives."  

He mentions research that suggests that Bronze medal winners in the Olympics are typically happier with the result than those who win Silver medals.  Why?  The Bronze medal winners focus on the fact that if they had performed slightly worse, they wouldn't have won a medal, while the Silver medal winners focus on the fact that if they had just performed a little better, they might have won a Gold medal instead. 

4. Adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good

I found Wiseman's point here to be very similar to Gunther's "Ratchet effect".  Remember that "a ratchet is a device that preserves gains."  Lucky individuals seem to know how to preserve their gains and minimize their losses, even when things aren't necessarily going their way.

Overall, both Wiseman's and Gunther's research emphasizes to me, once again, that we can create our own luck.  Just to drive this home, towards the end of Wiseman's study, he actually enrolled the unlucky volunteers into "luck school" which taught them the four characteristics that he found in his lucky volunteers mentioned above.  Eighty percent of people who participated in "luck school" were happier, more satisfied with their lives, and perhaps most important of all, luckier.  Unlucky people had become lucky ones!

The Luck Factor Part I

I've never been particularly superstitious.  Even when I was younger, I never really had what some people would call a "good luck charm".  Don't get me wrong, I've read a number of studies suggesting that "good luck charms" or common sayings like "Break a leg" or actions such as crossing one's fingers do occasionally positively impact performance (see, for example, a study by Lysann Damisch and colleagues, "Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance").  I guess that I've always felt that you create your own luck, and by "create" I don't mean using a superstitious charm, saying, or action.  

I've talked about "creating your own luck" in the past (see my posts, "It's better to be lucky than good", "Good luck is the twin of hard work", and "Lucky Breaks").  However, in today's post I wanted to focus on two books that I recently came across that talk about luck.  The first one is Max Gunther's book from 1977, The Luck Factor: Why some people are luckier than others and how you can become one of them.  The second is a little more recent and was written in 2003 by Richard Wiseman, which is also called The Luck Factor.  Both books are very similar.

Gunther suggests that there are five characteristics that distinguish people that we would call lucky from people that we would call unlucky.  All five characteristics involve an attitude toward life and the people that we encounter.  In his research, Gunther consistently finds that the lucky individuals possess all five characteristics, while those who are unlucky do not.  Here are the five characteristics:

1. The Spiderweb Structure

Gunther says, "The luckiest men and women are those who have taken the trouble to form a great many friendly contacts with other people."  "Lucky" individuals go out of their way to be friendly and talk with strangers.  They form connections with other people that create opportunities.  I am reminded of Mark Granovetter's study, "The Strength of Weak Ties".  Granovetter found that our infrequent, casual relationships ("weak ties") are often the ones that are more beneficial to us than our close, frequent relationships ("strong ties"), at least in regards to accessing new information or opportunities.  It follows then that the more acquaintances we have, the greater our opportunities!  The so-called "lucky" individuals are simply taking the most advantage of the connections that they have made to put themselves in the position to be lucky.

2. The Hunching Skill

Gunther says, "A hunch is a piece of mind stuff that feels something like knowledge but doesn't feel perfectly trustworthy...a capacity to generate accurate hunches, and then to trust them and act on them would go a long way towards producing luck."  Gunther further suggests that "lucky people...are often people who have discovered intuitively how to plumb that well of subsurface knowledge inside themselves."

3.  "Audentes Fortunate Juvat"

Gunther suggests that the common cliche, "Fortune favors the bold" is exactly right.  Lucky people know when to act on their hunches, even if it requires taking risks.  He writes, "As a group, lucky people tend to be bold people.  The most timid men and women I've met in my travels have also been...the least lucky...Boldness helps create good luck."  He adds a cautionary note that boldness isn't the same as rashness.  Lucky individuals aren't afraid to take risks, but they are careful about the risks that they do take.

4. The Ratchet Effect

Gunther says, "A ratchet is a device that preserves gains."  Lucky individuals seem to have organized their lives so that they preserve their gains and limit their losses.  Perhaps the most important aspect of Gunther's "ratchet effect" is knowing when to admit that you are making a mistake and change course.  Lucky individuals have that knack to be able to think beyond sunk costs and move forward.

5.  The Pessimism Paradox

Gunther suggests that lucky people are not generally optimistic in nature.  Instead, they lean towards the pessimistic side of the spectrum by constantly trying to prepare for the unexpected and always thinking about what can go wrong (Murphy's Law).  The lucky people expect and prepare for the worst, that way they are never surprised.  Gunther suggests, "Never enter a situation without knowing what you will do when it goes wrong."

Next time, I will cover what Richard Wiseman has to say about "creating your own luck."

Finding Joy

My very first introduction to the author C.S. Lewis, like many others I suppose, was the book, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  I remember first hearing about the book when I was in school.  One of my classmates gave an oral report on the book.  For reasons that I can't explain, I never read the book during my childhood.  As a matter of fact, I knew nothing else about the author of the book.  Much later, actually during medical school, my wife and I went and saw Shadowlands, which was a movie about the relationship between C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) and American writer Joy Davidman Gresham (played by Debra Winger).  Davidman's death from cancer challenged Lewis' faith in Christianity, which was the subject of his book, A Grief Observed.  After the movie, my wife told me all about C.S. Lewis and his books about Christianity, some of which she had to read in Catholic school.

C.S. Lewis also wrote a semi-autobiographical book, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life.  While his relationship with Joy Davidman certainly influenced this book, contrary to common belief, the title actually is a reference to the poem "Surprised by Joy" by William Wordsworth.  The book is a spiritual memoir that describes Lewis' own faith journey to Christianity and covers his early life up until around 1931 (note that he met Joy Davidman Greshman in 1952).  In the book, Lewis describes his search for what the Germans call "Sehnsucht" (loosely translated as "longing, desire, or yearning"), which he chooses to call simply "joy".  Lewis writes, "Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing."  In other words, according to Lewis, there are two components to joy - pleasure or happiness (a positive emotion) and a longing or searching (an action).

I had C.S. Lewis in mind when I first read the Harvard Business Review article, "How the Busiest People Find Joy" by Leslie A. Perlow, Sari Mentser, and Salvatore J. Affinito.  They begin the article by stating, "Research suggests that to have a satisfying life, you need to regularly feel three things: achievement (recognition or a sense of accomplishment), meaningfulness (a connection to something bigger than yourself), and joy (happiness or positive emotion) in the moment."  

According to their own research, most professionals are doing very well when it comes to the first two requirements for life satisfaction (achievement and meaningfulness).  However, most professionals fall short when it comes to the third component, joy.  Importantly, the psychologist Roy Baumeister (I've posted about his research in the past - see in particular the posts about marshmallows and radishes and his work on ego depletion) published a study about a decade or so ago ("Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life") that found that there are important differences between "being happy" and "having a meaningful life".  In other words, individuals can be happy but lead a meaningless life, while other individuals can be unhappy but living a life full of meaning.  

I tend to agree with Baumeister, which is why I like the fact that Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito distinguished between achievement, meaningfulness, and joy.  However, bringing everything back full circle, I subscribe to Lewis' theory that true joy requires both a positive emotion (happiness) and an action.  In other words, we have to look for happiness, or even more often, we have to choose happiness.  According to Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito, here is what we can do to look for and choose happiness:

1. Engage with others: We know that one of the most powerful and consistent predictors of life satisfaction is having strong, meaningful relationships with others.  Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito found that shared experiences with our friends, colleagues, and family amplify joy.  In other words, doing the activities we love with people we enjoy is much better than doing those same activities alone.

2. Avoid passive pursuits: Again, consistent with most of the research that I've found on life satisfaction, Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito found that active solo pursuits (exercise, exploring hobbies, volunteering, etc) is much better than passive activities (watching television, scrolling through social media, napping, etc).  

3. Follow your passion: Consistent with my statement above (based on C.S. Lewis), we should actively search for and in some cases, even choose, happiness.  Activities that align with what we find personally rewarding are going to boost our life satisfaction, as opposed to the ones that we do because other people tell us that they are "good for us".

4. Diversify your activities: We can only get so much satisfaction and joy from a single activity.  If we spend all of our time on one activity, we are going to find that it gives us less joy than it previously did in the past (some call this the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation).  As the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life".

5. Protect the time: Even if we find joy and meaning at work, we need to make sure to spend time for ourselves.  Free or leisure time is important too.  And importantly, people who experience more joy in their free time find more value and joy at work!

I've learned a lot about happiness and joy this past year.  I've found that we can choose to be happy, and in some cases, finding happiness will require effort on our part.  Once again, I will conclude with a quote.  C.S. Lewis wrote, "If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone."

The law of unintended consequences

There's an old saying that I've mentioned a few times in previous posts (see, for example, "Past is prologue").  I like Winston Churchill's version the best.  Churchill said, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  

It seems that the local government leaders in the Chicago suburb of Lincoln Park have forgotten their history, or at the very least, they've forgotten about the law of unintended consequences.  Apparently, 43rd Ward Alderperson Timmy Knudsen recently introduced a resolution for a privately funded pilot ("Rat Contraceptive Pilot") that will introduce non-toxic contraceptive pellets to reduce the rat population.  The pilot is being coordinated with the local government, the Chicago Bird Alliance, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Lincoln Park Conservancy, and the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Similar pilot programs in other suburbs of Chicago (Wicker Park and Bucktown) have been reasonably successful, at least so far.  The contraceptive agent is cottonseed oil, which renders both male and female rats infertile.  Importantly, cottonseed oil is not toxic to other species, at least based on our current knowledge.  Previous attempts to control the rat population have used poisonous substances that have killed other species as collateral damage or as an unintended consequence.  In Lincoln Park's case, a species of horned owl was the collateral damage.

It's virtually guaranteed that when some change is introduced into a complex system, there will be an unanticipated or unintended consequence.  The American sociologist Robert K. Merton conducted the first and perhaps most complete analysis of the law of unintended consequences in a 1936 paper entitled "The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action".  He identified five potential causes of unintended consequences:

1. Ignorance of how complex systems actually work

2. Errors of analysis or failure to use Bayes theorem (not updating our beliefs in light of new information)

3. Focusing on short-term gains while forgetting long-term consequences (perhaps willful ignorance, in which an individual chooses to ignore the unintended effects because he or she desires the intended effects so much) - Merton called this "imperious immediacy of interest"

4. The requirement for or prohibition of certain actions

5. Creation of self-defeating prophecies 

Merton says, "Most unintended consequences are just unanticipated consequences", largely due to ignorance or errors of analysis (the first two causes above).  One wonders whether the local authorities could have predicted the risk of an alternative species, such as the horned owl, ingesting rat toxin and dying as a result.  Perhaps they were so focused on the short-term gain of reducing the rat population, that they neglected or even forgot the potential long-term consequences of killing other species (Merton's third cause above).

I can't help but wonder what the unintended consequences that cottonseed oil will have on the local community.  It seems like it would be safe to place rat pellets containing that substance in areas where rats congregate.  But, you just never know.  I can't help but think of the case I described in my post "Is this another April Fool's joke?" of mice armed with Tylenol parachuting into the jungles of Guam in an attempt to control the Brown Tree Snake population.  The mere fact that the Brown Tree Snake, a non-native species, is even on the island of Guam is yet another unintended consequence.

Health care is the nation's top employer!

The journalists Lydia DePillis and Christine Zhang wrote an article for The New York Times last month that I found very interesting ("How Health Care Remade the U.S. Economy").  I actually saw the article appear on my daily newsfeed when the article had first appeared and marked it to be read later, and I finally was able to read it.  The main theme of the article is that the health care industry has become America's top employer!

According to DePillis and Zhang, health care has been responsible for about one-third of the growth in employment in the past year and has more than replaced the loss of jobs in the manufacturing and retail sectors (see also the working paper by the health economists, Joshua Gottlieb, Neale Mahoney, Kevin Rinz, and Victoria Udalova "The Rise of Healthcare Jobs").  Today, health care workers account for approximately 13% of the total workforce in the United States, up from 9% in 2000.  Certainly the changing demographics in the U.S. have played a role here - as Americans age, they will require more care.  However, these trends could change in the next few years.  Given the recent cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, health care organizations are looking for ways to cut costs, and cutting labor costs could be one lever to pull.

DePillis and Zhang cite three factors at play here.  First, more Americans are getting access to care as the uninsured rate declined significantly following passage of the Affordable Care Act.  Second, as access to care has increased, people are using more of it.  Again, the aging U.S. population is a factor here, as chronic conditions (that require more care) increase with age.  Third, Americans are spending more on health care because they have more money to spend.  Americans now spend more on health care than either groceries or housing.

What I found most interesting about the article was the fact that the health care industry is the biggest employer in 38 out of 50 states!  Just look at the graphic below, again from data obtained by DePillis and Zhang and published in The New York Times:

The article also mentions the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the U.S. healthcare workforce (I've mentioned this a few times in recent posts, see "Will we get replaced by AI?").  What's also mentioned is the fact that health care is not efficient.  Many times, but not always, efficiency is equated, rightly or wrongly, with being smaller.  It will be interesting to monitor these health care workforce trends as artificial intelligence, the aging U.S. population, and the looming cuts to Medicare and Medicaid all converge at the same time.

Take a break...

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a book that the American entrepreneur, author, ultramarathoner, former rapper (under the name "Jesse Jaymes"), and co-owner of the professional basketball team Atlanta Hawks Jesse Itzler wrote about his month-long experience of living and training with former Navy SEAL David Goggins.  The book is called Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet.  For his next project, Itzler decided to work on his spiritual health by living in a monastery and going "off the grid" for a month (see Living with the Monks).  Itzler apparently gave up all access to social media and his smart phone during his time with the monks.

While I haven't read Itzler's latest book about giving up access to information technology, I have read a recent study (see "Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being") published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus journal.  An investigative team conducted a study in which they blocked all mobile internet access for a two-week period.  They used a cross-over design in which study participants served as their own controls, i.e. they participated for a full two-week period without mobile Internet access as well as an additional two-week period with full mobile Internet access.  During the intervention period (no mobile Internet access), study participants were able to call and/or text message on their smartphone and use the Internet via desktop computers.

Simply blocking access on the study participants' smartphones significantly improved objective measures of mental health and the ability to sustain attention, as well as subjective measures of well-being.  These effects occurred because blocking mobile Internet access increased social connection, feelings of self-control, and sleep.  As participants spent less time on the Internet, they spent more time in the "offline world" (socializing in person, exercising, being in nature, pursuing a hobby, or reading a book) and less time in the "digital world".  The investigators emphasized, "the change in objectively measured sustained attention ability is about the same magnitude as 10 years of age-related decline and about a quarter of the difference between healthy adults and those with ADHD."  Just as powerful, the observed improvements in symptoms of depression (one of the objective measures of well-being) was larger than what would be typical for individuals on anti-depressant medications and similar to the improvement observed with cognitive behavioral therapy.

I can remember a time when I went on vacation and somehow lost access to the Internet and email on my smartphone.  There was some glitch with our mobile service provider, which I couldn't address until we got back home.  I have to say that while losing mobile Internet access was certainly a change, I actually didn't miss it!  I spent more quality time on vacation, which certainly improved my subjective well-being.

Studies have suggested that more than 90% of American adults own a smartphone, and the average user spends up to 4.6 hours per day on their device.  Just as important, survey data suggests that half of all smartphone users in America worry that they use their device too much.  I've already mentioned in previous posts that experts worry that smartphones "hijack our minds" or that they've "destroyed a generation" (see in particular my posts, "Are smartphones making us dumb?" and "Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid...").  

Unfortunately, not all of us have the ability to put work aside and spend a month in a monastery like Jess Itzler did for his book.  However, all of us do have the ability to forego using our smartphones as frequently as we do currently.  Perhaps we could set a certain amount of time aside every day in which we refrain from using our smartphones (there is a way to do just that)?  I've already talked about how I deleted the Facebook and Twitter/X apps on my smartphone and deleted my accounts to both sites (see my post "Liberation").  I can already tell a difference.  Regardless of how we do it, the data strongly suggests that spending less time on our mobile Internet devices will make all of us feel a lot better!

Iron Horse

 They said it was a record that would never be broken.  Ever.  Lou Gehrig was a Hall of Fame first baseman for the New York Yankees from 1923 to 1939.  He was twice voted as Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player, played in the World Series seven times (winning six times), won the Triple Crown (awarded to the player who finishes first in batting average, RBI's, and home runs), and was an All-Star seven consecutive years in a row.  He had a career .340 batting average and hit 493 home runs.  He is one of only 20 players to ever hit four home runs in a single game.  He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 and was the first player to have his uniform number retired by a team, when his number 4 was retired by the Yankees.  But he is perhaps most remembered for his durability, which earned him the nickname "Iron Horse".  Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games.  

Gehrig's consecutive game streak ended on May 2, 1939.  His consecutive game record would stand for for 56 years, broken by another Hall of Famer, Cal Ripken, Jr, who would go on to break Gehrig's consecutive game record in 1995.  Gehrig stunned fans and teammates alike when he voluntarily took himself out of the line-up due to an undiagnosed ailment.  He would later be diagnosed with the incurable neuromuscular disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (now sometimes referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease").  He officially retired shortly after removing himself from the line-up, and the New York Yankees - and really all of baseball - honored him with "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" on July 4, 1939.  Gehrig ended the day with his now legendary farewell speech, in which he stated, "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got.  Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth."  

Gehrig's final words in the speech are incredibly poignant, "So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for."  Call it luck if you want, but Gehrig also chose to view all of the positives in his life instead of the negatives.  He had every reason to be angry, or even depressed.  His disease had robbed him of his career and perhaps everything that made him great.  His disease dramatically changed his life and would eventually rob him of that too.  Yet, he still looked back on his life and felt he was lucky.  He felt that he was fortunate.  Life was good.

We can learn a lot from Lou Gehrig.  Even if we may never be faced with a serious or even fatal illness, how Lou Gehrig chose to live out the rest of his life is something that we can all learn from.  You only have one life to live, so make it a good one.  Count your blessings.  Stay positive, even if or when things all around you are falling apart.

Is the Flint Water Crisis finally over?

I read an online news story a couple of days ago that said that the city of Flint, Michigan recently completed the replacement of almost all of the lead pipes providing water to the people living there.  The project was ambitious in scope, and long overdue, lasting almost 10 years from start to finish.  While the lead pipe replacement project closes one chapter of this story, the long-term public health impact of this incident is far from clear.  

I wrote about the Flint Water crisis in a brief editorial for the journal Current Treatment Options in Pediatrics in 2016.  I wrote then, "For its entire history, the city of Flint's fortunes have been closely tied with the fortunes of the automobile industry."  The automobile manufacturer General Motors was founded in Flint, and both the company and the city grew considerably during World War II and beyond.  However, when General Motors declared bankruptcy in 2008, so too did the city of Flint fall into hard times.  The city ranks near or at the bottom of the state of Michigan in almost every social (unemployment, domestic violence, violent crime, drug abuse) and public health (preterm birth, infant mortality, life expectancy) statistic.  However, it was after then Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of financial emergency in 2011 that Flint's problems with lead in the water began.  Governor Snyder appointed an Emergency Manager who was charged with cutting costs and reducing the city's $15 million budget deficit.

Flint previously obtained its water from the city of Detroit, whose source of water was nearby Lake Huron and the Detroit River.  The cost of water had nearly doubled by 2013, prompting Flint's city council to approve a proposal to switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority on March 25, 2013, which would allow the city to obtain its water directly from Lake Huron, bypassing Detroit (essentially, they were cutting out the middle man in the deal).  While the new deal would save the city approximately $19 million over an 8-year period, the new proposal would require completion of a new regional water pipeline, which would not be completed until 2016.  At the same time, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department gave the Flint city council a one-year termination of contract notice.  The city council scrambled and signed a contract to use the water from the nearby Flint River until the new regional pipeline could be completed.

Almost immediately after the switch occurred in April, 2014, Flint residents began to complain and express concerns about the color, taste, and odor of their water.  Notably, the water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department was far less corrosive than the water from the Flint River.  City officials had failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the water, possibly in yet another cost-cutting move.  In fact, General Motors had recently stopped using the Flint River water at one of their nearby engine assembly plants because the water quickly corroded the engine parts.  The corrosive water leached lead from the city's aging network of lead-based waterpipes, which had two adverse effects.  First, the lead levels in the water rose to dangerous levels.  Second, the lead and other heavy metals inhibited the chlorine-based disinfectants in the water, causing bacterial contamination.  Just four months after the switch, the city government put out a warning to residents to boil their water due to high levels of E. coli and Legionella.

As detailed in two outstanding books, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy by journalist Anna Clark and What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by pediatrician Mona Hanna, MD, MPH, local pediatricians started to report increased blood lead levels in children under 5 years of age, with neighborhoods with the highest water lead levels reporting the greatest number of cases.  Lead's neurotoxic effects can adversely impact a child's motor and cognitive development, so the disturbing increase in blood lead levels was a public health nightmare.  Dr. Hanna was instrumental in helping to make the connection between the increase in lead concentrations in the city water supply and the increase in the number of lead poisoning cases in Flint's pediatric population (notably, there were at least three separate studies establishing this link).

Somewhere between 6,000 to 14,000 children were exposed to drinking water contaminated with high levels of lead.  Children are particularly susceptible to the long-term effects of lead poisoning, so we will likely not know the true impact of this incident until several years from now.  Dr. Hanna, who is currently the Associate Dean for Public Health and and C. S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine was  named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and recognized as one of USA Today’s Women of the Century for her role in uncovering the Flint water crisis and leading recovery efforts.  She stated, "Investment in our children's future, and in their health, is not just an economic necessity, but it is the bedrock of public health and a just society."

After nearly $400 million in both state and federal spending, the city of Flint has finally secured a clean water source and laid modern, safe, copper-based pipes to nearly every home in the city.  The late Reverend Allen C. Overton of Concerned Pastors for Social Action, one of the plaintiffs in the subsequent federal lawsuit said, "Thanks to the persistence of the people of Flint and our partners, we are finally at the end of the lead pipe replacement project.  While this milestone is not all the justice our community deserves, it is a huge achievement."

For me, the story of the Flint water crisis perfectly illustrates the critical linkage between public health and medicine.  As the health economists David Cutler and Grant Miller suggested in an article published in the journal Demography in 2005 ("The role of public health improvements in health advances: The twentieth century United States"), "clean water was responsible for nearly half the total mortality reduction in major cities" during the late 19th and early 20th century.  Similarly, Marcella Alsan and Claudia Goldin published an article in the Journal of Political Economy in 2019 ("Watersheds in child mortality: The role of effective water and sewerage infrastructure, 1880-1920") and concluded that one-third of the decline in child mortality from 1880 to 1920 was directly related to investments in clean, safe water.  As I have stated many times in the past, health delivery is not just about health care.  The so-called social determinants of health account for anywhere between 30-50% of reported health outcomes, particularly mortality.  As these studies - and the Flint water crisis - prove yet again, you can't drive improvements in health by focusing only on health care.  

The world is changed...

I am going to borrow the Elvish queen Galadriel's opening monologue to the 2001 movie The Fellowship of the Ring (the first movie in Peter Jackson's epic masterpiece trilogy, The Lord of the Rings):

The world is changed.  I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air...Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it...

Okay, perhaps the last part is a bit of an exaggeration, as most of the changes that I am going to talk about in today's post are not all that old.  Apparently, the Gallup Poll has been asking the same question every year since 1939: "Do you have occasion to use alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine, or beer, or are you a total abstainer?"  You can tell that the question was first written in 1939, as we wouldn't ask that question in the same way in 2025.  What is surprising is that the number of Americans who say that they do "have occasion to use alcoholic beverages" hit an all-time low of 54% in this year's survey, which came out earlier this month.  Just as important is that the decreased consumption coincides with a growing belief that moderate alcohol consumption is bad for one's health, which is a majority view for the first time in the history of the survey.

Alcohol consumption, even among young adults, has been steadily declining since 2023, when 62% of Americans reported drinking alcohol, which decreased to 58% in 2024.  The trend towards decreased alcohol consumption coincides with the latest research reporting that, contrary to previous opinions, any degree of alcohol consumption may negatively affect health.  Importantly, the decline in alcohol consumption does not appear to be caused by a shift towards other drugs, such as recreational marijuana, which is now legal in about half of U.S. states.

The alcohol consumption patterns among those Americans who do drink are also shifting.  A record low of 24% of alcohol drinkers say that they had a drink in the past 24 hours, while 40% say it has been more than a week since they last consumed alcohol (the highest percentage since 2000).  The average number of alcoholic drinks consumed over the past week has decreased to 2.8 drinks/week, which is the lowest reported since 1996 (and decreased from 3.8 drinks/week in last year's survey).  

Americans appear to prefer beer over liquor and wine, which is consistent with the pattern over the last six years.  Wine remains in third place, though there are differences in age and gender.  For example, in general, men prefer beer over wine and liquor, while women generally tend to choose wine over beer. This is perhaps surprising given the so-called "French Paradox" and prior research suggesting potential heart-healthy benefits to wine consumption (see my post, "Raitis tammikuu").  

The French population, as a whole, consumes a diet that is much higher in saturated fats (think of all the cheese and butter that they consume compared to Americans - one blogger basically said, "They eat butter like it's a food group...Their cheese selection could stock a small grocery store."  Yet,  compared to the French, Americans have much higher rates of heart disease and obesity.  The classic explanation has been that the anti-oxidants in wine, specifically compounds known as polyphenols (including one called reservatrol), are "heart healthy".  However, Dr. Kristie Leong recently wrote a blog on Medium ("Why French people eat butter and stay lean (the paradox that broke nutrition science)") that suggested other factors are responsible for the "French Paradox".  Dr. Leong says that the explanation isn't what the French people are eating, but rather how they are eating:

1.  French meals average 22 minutes compared to 14 minutes for Americans.  Eating slower gives our brains time to tell our stomachs that we are full.

2.  French portions are 25% smaller than American servings, yet satisfaction levels are identical.  Dr. Leong says that a typical French dinner plate is about 9 inches in diameter compared to a typical American dinner plate, which has a diameter of 12 inches.  That three inch difference translates to a 44% increase in surface area available to pile food on the plate for Americans.  

3.  French people stop eating when they feel satisfied, while Americans stop when their plate is empty.  Given the differences in plate sizes mentioned above, Americans are just going to eat more, regardless of whether they feel full or not.

4.  French food culture prioritizes ingredients over convenience.  They eat a lot less processed foods compared to Americans.

5.  Americans eat an average of 2.2 snacks per day.  The French?  Less than one.  

6.  French culture prioritizes leisure in ways that seem almost alien to Americans (lunch breaks are sacred, vacation time is mandatory, and work-life balance isn't just a buzzword).  Less stress leads to better health.

7.  French wine consumption averages one glass per day, typically with meals.  Americans tend to binge drink, and alcoholic beverages tend to have a lot of calories.

As I've stated previously, more recent research suggests that "no amount of alcohol is safe", which is becoming the majority belief, at least according to the Gallup survey.  More importantly, there is a lot more to the "French Paradox" than just wine consumption.  The French have better dinner habits than Americans, which according to Dr. Leong is playing the most important role here.

It will be interesting to monitor the trend towards decreased alcohol consumption in the future.  I suspect that we will start to see studies reporting on the economic impact of decreased alcohol consumption very soon.  And perhaps we will also see a consolidation in the beer, wine, and liquor industry?  Time will tell.  But clearly, the world is changed...  

Blue Lights

You tend to hear all kinds of crazy stories (and believe them) when you are young!  When I was growing up in Indianapolis, we used to hear about a haunted house known as "The House of Blue Lights".  The house was the former residence of an eccentric local millionaire and philanthropist named Skiles Edwards Test, who died in 1964.  The story goes, at least the way that I heard it, Test kept the house decorated with blue Christmas lights all year round.  That doesn't seem too eccentric, but I also heard that he kept his deceased wife in a glass coffin inside the house, also surrounded by blue lights.  While the former story was mostly true, the latter was definitely not.  Incidentally, the house at the northeast side of Indianapolis had nothing to do with the popular boogie-woogie blues song that was released by, among others, Chuck Miller, Chuck Berry, and George Thorogood. 

Well, it was exactly the story of "The House of Blue Lights" that came to mind when I read a recently published article in The New York Times.  Journalist Caroline Hopkins Legaspi wrote an interesting article that summarizes a lot of research on the effects of blue light on sleep (see "Why do screens keep you up? It may not be the blue light.").  Smart phones primarily use blue light for their displays, and there are all kinds of studies out there suggesting that using your smart phone before going to bed is the absolute worst thing that you can do, primarily because of the adverse effects of blue light on circadian rhythm.  Blue light has a shorter wavelength and higher energy than other colors, which allows for better visibility, particularly with bright ambient light.  Blue light is naturally emitted by the sun and plays a role in regulating our body's natural sleep-wake cycle (the technical term for which is called our circadian rhythm).  Blue light helps us feel alert and awake during the day, though too much blue light at night has been reported to inhibit the release of melatonin, which is a hormone that helps us sleep.

Caroline Hopkins Legaspi suggested that the relationship between blue light and sleep is not as straightforward as we think .  She reported research by Lauren E. Hartstein, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona that suggests that the content of what's on the screen before bedtime is probably more important than the type of light used by the smart phone.  Some of us are perhaps more sensitive to blue light than others, while others just don't seem to be affected by blue light.  Finally, Dr. Hartstein questions whether it is appropriate to generalize findings from sleep studies performed in a laboratory versus what actually happens when those same individuals are at home.

So, what can we conclude from the available research?  First, scrolling through social media or playing video games before bedtime probably aren't helpful for our circadian rhythms.  Second, many of us just can't seem to "calm our brains" at night, and reading a book (not a suspense or murder mystery) or watching a television show (again, not a murder mystery) could actually help in these situations.  Third, if you aren't having any trouble falling asleep, even if you are checking things on your smart phone, the smart phone is probably not causing any problems.  As Dr. Hartstein says, "If you are able to fall asleep quickly, you sleep well throughout the night, and you feel rested the next day, then that's great.  You don't need to constantly adjust your behaviors."  In other words, if you want to bask in the glow of blue light, just like ole Skiles Edwards Test did, it's probably okay to do so.  Just don't put your dead wife in a glass coffin, and definitely don't listen to haunted house stories before bedtime!

The "Walkman Effect"

The psychologist Stanley Milgram wrote an essay in the journal Science in 1970 called "The Experience of Living in Cities".  In the essay, he talked about the concept of overload from systems theory, which refers to a system's inability to process inputs from the environment when there are too many inputs for the system to cope with.  He wrote, "City life, as we experience it, constitutes a continuous set of encounters with overload, and of resultant adaptations...One adaptive response to overload is the allocation of less time to each input."  He then referred to the sociologist, Georg Simmel, who pointed out as long ago as 1903 that individuals who live in cities come into contact with so many other individuals that in order to conserve their cognitive attention, they largely keep to themselves or maintain only superficial relationships with their acquaintances compared to those individuals who live in more rural areas.  

We've known for a long time that individuals who live in cities tend to keep to themselves, at least when compared to those individuals living in rural areas (see my recent post, "The Quiet Commute").  One of my high school friends wrote a novel called East Fifth Bliss.  The author says of the protagonist in the novel, Morris Bliss, "Morris rarely converses with the neighbors.  A greeting, good morning, or 'Hey, how are you?' at most.  Rarely more.  A crowded city is often isolating."

While cognitive overload is an important factor, particularly when it comes to living in a crowded city, what's also clear is that technology has also had an adverse impact on how we interact with one another.  The writer Jonathan Haidt in particular writes about the dangers of social media and the adverse impact that social media has had upon society today in his book, The Anxious Generation.  Haidt's book is still relatively new (it was published in 2024), but the concerns about technology's adverse impact on society are not - look no further than the Sony Walkman, a portable cassette player first introduced in the late 1970's.  

At the time it was first introduced, the Sony Walkman was revolutionary in concept.  Shuhei Hosokawa published an essay about the Walkman and its impact on society in the journal Popular Music in 1984 entitled "The Walkman Effect".  Hosokawa claimed (and I think he was correct) that the Walkman created a private auditory space within public spaces, allowing users to detach from their environment and mentally withdraw into a private world of music.  

Of interest, the original model of the Walkman played cassette tapes and included a second earphone jack as well as an extra set of headphones.  There was a curious orange button labeled "Hot Line" that when pushed, allowed the two users to speak to each other through a microphone.  According to Akio Morita, one of the Sony co-founders, the company was anxious about the solitary nature of their new product, and they included the orange button to provide an emergency "share" feature.  

In other words, the company that released the Sony Walkman was concerned enough that the new technology would further isolate its users that they created a feature to try to create "togetherness".  Ironically, the orange button was soon removed and the Sony Walkman became hugely popular, primarily because of its solitary nature (hence, the "Walkman Effect").  

I remember when the Sony Walkman first came out.  As a matter of fact, I owned a later model of the Walkman and used it literally all the time.  What's clear to me (again) is that our tendency for self-imposed isolation is not a new phenomenon.  It was there before social media, the smart phone, and the Internet.  And to be honest, we've been talking about these issues since the time of the ancient Greeks (see my recent post, "Today's Phaedrus moment").  I even bet that the earliest humans were once sitting in a cave, lamenting a younger generation of cavemen and cavewomen who were spending too much time alone drawing pictures on the cave walls.

Technological advances often bring welcome changes to society.  However, as with just about everything else, there can be drawbacks to technological change too.  I don't pretend to have all the answers here, but I do think that we need a more balanced discussions about the pro's and con's of technology, particularly social media, the smart phone, and the Internet.

One more time on the elites...

I wanted to finish off the discussion on elite individuals from my two previous posts last week, "What makes elite individuals elite?" and "The 40% rule", hopefully generating less controversy (see "Controversy") than the last time.  Specifically, I wanted to re-visit the topic on whether elite athletes are born with elite skills and physiologic tools that make them markedly superior to everyone else or whether they develop those elite skills and physiologic tools with practice and training.  In other words, is it "nature" or "nurture".  There is also a third possibility that it's a combination of both "nature" and "nurture".  The author David Epstein wrote a fascinating book on this exact subject called The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, which I've mentioned a few times in related posts from the past (see "What makes a champion?" and "Peak").

It would be helpful to start out with a brief discussion on something that is known as the mammalian dive reflex.  I first learned about the so-called dive reflex during one of my undergraduate biology courses (I think it was a class called "Comparative Animal Physiology").  The dive reflex is a normal and protective physiologic response to water submersion.  It's found in almost all mammals, which includes, of course, humans.  When mammals (or humans) dive underwater, they have to hold their breath, which causes the concentration of oxygen in their bodies to decrease.  That's usually not good!  However, the body responds to being submerged in water by lowering the heart rate (bradycardia), slowing down or even stopping the normal breathing reflex (bradypnea or apnea), and shunting blood flow from the arms and legs to the brain, heart, and kidneys to preserve the body's core functions (increased peripheral vascular resistance).  All of these responses decrease the body's consumption of oxygen, allowing mammals (and humans) to survive, for at least a time, underwater without a source of oxygen.

As you will no doubt acknowledge, some mammals are much better at diving underwater than humans (think about how long whales and dolphins can hold their breaths underwater compared to humans).  These mammals evolved, through natural selection, bodily mechanisms to help them dive underwater for much longer periods of time.  As it turns out, some humans are better at diving underwater than others.  Dolphins and whales developed a robust dive reflex over thousands of years, but what about humans?  As it turns out, two distinct populations of humans have appeared to develop remarkable adaptations over time that allow them to hold their breath underwater for much longer than most of us.  These populations are the Bajau people of Southeast Asia (known as "sea nomads") (see "Physiological and genetic adaptations to diving in sea nomads") and the Haenyeo people of Korea (see "Genetic and training adaptations in the Haenyeo divers of Jeju, Korea").  Both populations have appeared to develop over thousands of years genetic modifications that allow them to dive underwater for long periods of time.  In the first study, the Bajau people were shown to have increased spleen size, providing a reservoir of oxygenated red blood cells during diving.  In addition, they appear to have inherited a specific gene modification that affects the so-called dive reflex.  The second study showed that the Haenyeo women divers also have developed a superior dive reflex (pronounced bradycardia) compared to everyone else who lives in Korea.

The scientists in both studies suggest that their results provide convincing evidence that the Bajau and Haenyeo divers evolved their remarkable adaptation to diving underwater over thousands of years.  I find these results incredibly remarkable, as it suggests that "nature" is playing a major role in their abilities.  However, the studies I mentioned in the two posts last week ("What makes elite individuals elite?" and "The 40% rule"), as well as a number of studies mentioned in David Epstein's book The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance suggest that "nurture" plays a major role as well.  In other words, rather than an either/or when it comes to the "nature versus nurture" debate, it's a both/and!  Elite athletes are the result of great genes and practice, practice, practice!

I mention all of this, as one of the most frequently debated topics in leadership and management is whether leaders are born with a unique ability to practice the art of leadership, or do they develop those skills with practice and training?  Most of the studies and articles on leadership that I've read strongly suggest that great leaders develop their skills over time with extensive education and training.  That's certainly reassuring, but given the discussion on elite athletes above, I am still left to ponder if we will ever find a so-called leadership gene.  Stay tuned for more!

A Kodak "moment"...

Pay close attention over the next few days on what is happening with the Eastman Kodak Company.  I've read a couple of news stories suggesting that the 133 year-old company's demise is imminent.  Just this past Wednesday, media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC reported on the company's ongoing financial struggles, specifically pointing out statements that company representatives made in a quarterly earnings report that the company didn't have "committed financing or available liquidity to meet debt obligations coming due within 12 months."  

If these reports are true, it would be a tragic end to a company that was once one of the stalwarts of American industry.  Kodak was the fourth most valuable brand in the U.S. (after Disney, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's) with just over $15 billion in revenue as recently as 1996.  The company declared bankruptcy in 2012 (see the graphic below from The Economist magazine).

Following declaration of bankruptcy in 2012, the company shifted from the photographic film business and focused on commercial printing, packaging, and advanced materials and chemicals (including pharmaceuticals).  The company sold off most of its businesses and patents.

Kodak has been the subject of countless business articles, case studies, and graduate theses on disruptive innovation (see, for example, the Harvard Business Review article, "Kodak's Downfall Wasn't About Technology").  Kodak's core business was selling photographic film.  Once cameras went digital, people became less interested in film.  And when cell phones became cameras, digital cameras became much less popular.  

The ironic twist in all of this was that an engineer at Kodak actually invented the digital camera.  Kodak's response at the time was to focus on their core business.  Therein lies the reason for all of the articles and case studies!  It's a classic example of Clayton Christensen's "disruptive innovation", how a smaller company with a new, often simpler product, can initially target low-end, niche markets, gradually improve, and ultimately displace leading companies.

The company recently issued a press release that countered the claims made in the last few days, stating that it had no plans of ending operations or filing for bankruptcy.  Whether this is true or not, remains to be seen.  I will be watching with great interest to see how this all plays out.

Controversy

A reader commented on my last two posts ("What makes elite individuals elite?" and "The 40% rule") pointing out the controversy surrounding Diana Nyad's 2013 swim from Cuba to Florida.   I certainly knew about this controversy before writing both posts, and after reading some of the reports, I am still not sure who or what to believe.  If you are interested, you can read both a Time magazine article and an online post by the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) that came out around the time of the release of the 2023 Netflix movie Nyad.  Of note, Nyad's swim has never been officially recognized by WOWSA.

I used Nyad's swim to highlight peer-reviewed and published research on the biological basis of willpower, suggesting that we can be trained to perform beyond our own self-perceived physiological limits.  Whether Diana Nyad completed the entire swim across the Strait of Florida without assistance is a question that will likely be never fully answered.  That being said, as a former competitive swimmer, I can still appreciate the extraordinary willpower and perseverance of anyone who swims in open water for more than a few miles.  I do not feel that a retraction of either post is warranted, as both posts used Nyad's story as an introduction to a much more important and recognized concept.  However, I will in the interest of full transparency point out the controversy surrounding Nyad's swim.