Morocco & Tunisia: Summary Thoughts

I recently spent 11 days in Morocco and 3 days in Tunisia with Neilesh Patel. In Morocco we visited Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, Fez, Marrakesh, El Jedida, and Oualidia. In Tunisia we visited Tunis (Sousse), El Jem, Matmata, and Zafran (Sahara). Though I'll post specifics on my travels in future postings, here are my final thoughts on the trip:

• The Sahara is magnificent and worth exploring in more detail
• The Moroccans I met were more jovial than the Tunisians I met
• The highlight of Morocco was surfing (Rabat 1x, Oualidia 2x)
• French is a beautiful language
• The veil is disappearing in Morocco, maybe in Tunisia too
• The souk in Fez was the best and most authentic
• You must hold you nose through Souk Dajaj (the chicken souq)
• I love mint tea
• Pomme de Pain was my favorite restaurant in Morocco
• Royal Air Morocco is to be avoided

Royal Air Morocco

Royal Air Morocco, let me the count the ways in which you are the worst airlines I have ever flown (including American Airlines).

1) At JFK before departing for Casablanca, we were stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours. While this was JFK's fault for closing down most of their runways for maintenance, RAM didn't tell us what was going on; they only said that it would be our turn every 15 minutes. The crowd became very unruly and one elderly passenger became ill. Isn't there a law against being held on the tarmac for so long?

2) RAM changed the time of our flight from Casablanca to Tunis and I only found out because I called them.



3) RAM mis-entered Neilesh's passport number so they made us wait for 1.5 hours in Casablanca before we could board the plane for NYC. Even though it was RAM's error, no one apologized to us. While the air hostesses are nice, the ticketing agents are beyond rude.



4) RAM sent the wrong airplane for the Casablanca - JFK flight. As a result, people had tickets to seats that didn't exist on the airplane. For example, people had tickets in rows 8, 9, and 1o which didn't exist on the airplane. Someone was illegally sitting in my seat and he refused to move; but karma got him back when the baby next to him threw up on him.



RAM is inept, but I guess they operate somewhat of a monopoly in Morocco. Still, if you have the option of choosing another airlines for your Morocco travels, I highly recommend it.

Pay for...Health??

Is it ethical to pay patients to improve their health?

We've heard of pay-for-performance, in which doctors are paid based on the clinical outcomes of their patients. P4P assumes that while doctors are motivated by seeing sick patients become better, they are also motivated financially and will perform procedures simply for financial gain.

But should we pay patients to take care of their health? Under healthcare reform, 32M patients will be enrolled in the system. Insurance companies can not deny coverage no matter how unprofitable these patients are. Therefore, it's in everyone's best interest for these patients to get better. However, many patients take poor care of themselves by eating unhealthy foods, not exercising, not taking their medications, etc. This increases their utilization of expensive healthcare services, and causes premiums of other members to rise to cover the healthcare costs of the unhealthy patients. Therefore, if we can incentivize these patients using money, we may lower the costs of the healthcare system for everyone.

I struggle with this issue because I believe people should be motivated to take care of their own health for their own sake. If they need to be paid to improve their health, are they really worth saving?

Do the ends justify the means?

Hawaii

Last month, I went to Hawaii for Spring Break with my dad. Despite growing up in California, just 5 hours away, this was my first time to Hawaii. We spent 3 days on Oahu and 2 days on Maui. In Oahu, I met a friend for dinner, visited Pearl Harbor, took a city tour, went surfing, went scuba diving to a plane wreck, and hiked up Diamond Head. I enjoyed Oahu / Honolulu and its throngs of people. In contrast, Maui was sedate. Still, it had some beautiful scenery especially at Honolua Bay where I watched advanced surfers and on the Road to Hanna. But without a doubt, the highlight of the entire trip was surfing. I had been surfing a few times, but could only occasionally get up on the board. This time, I took a lesson, and it made a huge difference. When you learn to surf in the place where surfing began, good things can happen!

Pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=Ravi913&target=ALBUM&id=5460777726156530001&authkey=Gv1sRgCKCA8Nmk_sXMKg&feat=email

Scuba Diving:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=Ravi913&target=ALBUM&id=5460778623584763761&authkey=Gv1sRgCKDq_6fJu5X-BA&feat=email

Smartphone Decisions

I have traditionally been a late adopter of technology, especially when it comes to phones. Now I'm realizing that I want and need a smartphone. My free Nokia phone has done well for its price ($0), but I just can't keep pace with the smartphone crowd. I am seriously considering 3 phones right now:

iphone:

This is the safe choice. It's proven and its strengths and weaknesses are known. The negatives are that AT&T doesn't have a great network and that one can't multi-task on the iphone.

Droid:

Droid runs with Verizon and has a Google operating system (the Android) to support it. On the downside, it's heavy.

Nexus One:

I'm leaning towards this phone, because it seems like a cross between the Iphone and the Droid. Unfortunately, it's not yet out for Verizon. It also doesn't have as many apps as iphone, but I'm not sure how important that is.

This link has a good comparison of nexus one vs. the iphone:

http://www.ifixit.com/Misc/nexus_vs_iphone.html

I think there is no right decision here, and I'll have to take the plunge at some point.

Wharton Healthcare Conference - 2010

I went to my 2nd Wharton Healthcare Business Conference last month. A couple of
points stuck out to me:

1. The regulatory process for medical devices is about to get a little harder. In the medical device panel there was talk of a tax on medical devices and a dissolution of the 510K approval process.

2. A lot of new healthcare IT and healthcare services companies are building businesses around the theme of 'Integration'. The Thursday keynote was delivered by the CEO of TriZetto, which is in the business of healthcare integration.

The Wharton Healthcare conference is one of the best conferences on campus. I think that this is largely due to the conference's large budget. Also, the conference has dedicated team members who help run it. Furthermore, proceeds from the Healthcare Conference finance many events in the Healthcare Management program at Wharton, so it's imperative that the conference go well.

Still, I do feel that more innovation could be applied to the conference format. I am a proponent of more interaction between speakers and audience members. Perhaps the case study format could be employed. Also, participants could pre-register for breakout sessions; these participants could be assigned prep work for the session. This would enable them to meaningfully participate in the sessions.

Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference

I attended my first Wharton Entrepreneurship conference in February. The theme of the conference was ‘Entrepreneurship in a rising economy’.

My favorite speaker was Andy Dunn, Founder and CEO of Banobos, a company that designs men's pants. Andy’s spoke to a packed room and was a thoroughly engaging speaker. He ran his session as a case study, in which he took students through the process of starting a company and asked them questions about what they would do in the entrepreneur's position.

He conveyed many lessons that I found useful. Most importantly, if you’re hoping to start a business in business school, the best thing you can do is meet people and network. Also, Andy discussed the merits of having a ‘contratrian’ viewpoint. This means trying to do things the opposite of how everyone does them to separate and differentiate your business from the competition.

The e-conference was apparently less exciting than in 2009, where the keynote speaker was Donny Deutsch (from CNBC’s Big Idea with Donny Deutsch). However, I do think that the conference could be shortened to be more impactful and that the conference theme could be highlighted a bit more. As always, I recommend more ways to elicit quality audience participation. Still, I'm glad I went and enjoyed meeting several student entrepreneurs.