Mark Nelson's Profile

In principle the model is likely to work best in the short to medium term where:






- there is a reasonably short gap between interventions and measurable results.






- there are very tangible financial gains, for example the very high costs associated with prison places, as well as with crime






- the numbers of players are small, ie one primary national department, a local authority, finance body and other agencies working on contract.






All models bring some common challenges:




• Measurement - agreed baselines and metrics that are not vulnerable to economic downturns, national policy changes (eg new crimes being legislated), and shared analysis of lifetime costs and benefits associated with different actions and client groups.
• 
  Action - all depend on there being a credible menu of actions to implement which significantly outperform existing ones, and they also depend on the presence of an implementation capacity. In most cases this is likely to involve a mix of public, private and voluntary organisations - in none of these fields does any one sector have a clear advantage in terms of performance.
  
• Risk - handling downside risks, including not only the risk of failing to achieve targets but also other risks, eg political risk (if some of the interventions are overruled by elected politicians).

Instead of attacking
isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an
isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.

Now if you are much of a mathematician you know that the effort to generalize
often means that the solution is simple. Often by stopping and saying, ``This is
the problem he wants but this is characteristic of so and so. Yes, I can attack
the whole class with a far superior method than the particular one because I was
earlier embedded in needless detail.'' The business of abstraction frequently
makes things simple. Furthermore, I filed away the methods and prepared for the
future problems.

why I think the tactic works so well with Apple is because they actually believe what they’re saying. Just watch Steve Jobs in that video. It sure seems like he’s damn sure that what he’s talking about is amazing. He’s excited about it. So is Phil Schiller and the others on the Apple team. And that excitement translates on a level unseen.

You’ve undoubtedly seen used car commercials where the used car salesman uses superlatives as well to the nth degree. But the difference is that he’s not genuine. Do you think he loves the junky cars he’s trying to pass off to you? No. Contrast that with Jobs. Do you believe that he loves the Apple products he’s trying to pass off to you? Yes.

B.J. Fogg