The Sleeping Bag Solution

From time to time in this column, I like to share examples of business or life solutions found in new books or elsewhere that can yield some lessons for Inside Reference Data's audience.

"Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate Business," by Shane Snow, published last fall, contains numerous interesting examples of how leaders and innovators in business, science, sports and the arts found shortcuts and ways to leverage experience from one field in order to get ahead of the norms in their work or their efforts in other fields.

Of particular interest is an example Snow gives about how a low-cost incubator was developed for premature babies in impoverished areas. As consultant Jane Chen started to work on how to address the problem, she found that trying to reduce the costs of the traditional baby incubator most people picture in their mind's eye—a large, transparent plastic box with gloves reaching inward and sockets for monitoring vital signs—often was attempted by making small changes to the choice of plastic, the size of the box or other minutiae, to cut its costs.

Thinking about the problem, Chen decided to step back and start from scratch, and came up with a different way to achieve the purpose served by the plastic box incubator—to keep a premature baby constantly and consistently warm. With that in mind, she created "Embrace," a sleeping bag-like insulated pouch with a pocket for a rechargeable heating pad. "Embrace" could be produced for about $25, while the plastic box incubators used in hospitals typically cost at least $2,000 each.

So, is it possible to take this literally "outside the box" sort of thinking and apply it to data issues? Consistently, we hear about data operations that have become big and unmanageable. Naturally, for financial industry data management, as well as trading and other functions in the industry, systems and services characterized by some cost and complexity are going to be the norm. Is it possible to slim down such systems by anywhere near the extent done by the "Embrace" incubator?

At our annual awards, Inside Reference Data and Inside Market Data honor those in the data management field who are trying to do just that. Voting on the awards is now open and will run through March 31, as will our call for entries to be evaluated separately by a panel of expert judges. So if there are more service providers out there who are making such strides, now is the time to recognize them.