• May–June 2021
• Article

As companies respond to intensifying competitive pressures and challenges, they ask more and more of their employees. But organizations often have very little to show for the efforts of their talented and engaged workers. By selecting fewer initiatives with greater impact, companies can make their strategies more powerful. A strategic initiative is worthwhile only if it does one or more of the following: It creates value for customers by raising their willingness to pay. As your company finds ways to innovate or to improve existing products, the maximum price people will be willing to pay for the offering rises. It creates value for employees by making work more attractive. Offering better jobs lowers the minimum compensation that you have to offer to attract talent to your business. It creates value for suppliers by reducing their operating cost. As suppliers’ costs go down, the lowest price they would be willing to accept for their goods falls. As companies expand the total amount of value created for their customers, employees, and suppliers, they position themselves for enduring financial success.

• May 2021
• Article

Context: In response to growing concerns over rising costs and major variation in quality, improving value for patients has been proposed as a fundamentally new strategy for how healthcare should be delivered, measured, and remunerated. Objective: To systematically review the literature regarding the implementation and impact of value-based healthcare in urology. Evidence acquisition: A systematic review was performed to identify studies that described the implementation of one or more elements of value-based healthcare in urologic settings and in which the associated change in healthcare value had been measured. Twenty-two publications were selected for inclusion. Evidence synthesis: Reorganization of urologic care around medical conditions was associated with increased use of guidelines-compliant care for men with prostate cancer, and improved outcomes for patients with lower urinary tract symptoms. Measuring outcomes for every patient was associated with improved prostate cancer outcomes, while the measurement of costs using time-driven activity-based costing was associated with reduced resource utilization in a pediatric multidisciplinary clinic. Centralization of urologic cancer care in the UK, Denmark, and Canada was associated with overall improved outcomes, although systems integration in the USA yielded mixed results among urologic cancer patients. No studies have yet examined bundled payments for episodes of care, expanding the geographic reach for centers of excellence, or building enabling information technology platforms. Conclusions: Few studies have critically assessed the actual or simulated implementation of value-based healthcare in urology, but the available literature suggests promising early results. In order to effectively redesign care, there is a need for further research to both evaluate the potential results of proposed value-based healthcare interventions and measure their effects where already implemented. Patient summary: While few studies have evaluated the implementation of value-based healthcare in urology, the available literature suggests promising early results.

• 2021
• Working Paper

Does the #MeToo movement affect the gender orientation of ideas and who develops which types of ideas? We examine these questions in the context of Hollywood. Since #MeToo affected the entire industry, we use variation in whether producers had past collaborations with Harvey Weinstein to discern the movement’s impact. We find that relative to non-associated producers, there is, on average, no significant change in the likelihood of developing female-protagonist stories by Weinstein-associated producers after #MeToo compared to before, despite the fact that they now work substantially more with female writers. This is because, among projects by Weinstein-associated producers, female writers are significantly less likely than male writers to work on female-protagonist stories after #MeToo. Moreover, compared to their non-associated counterparts, the depiction of female protagonists by Weinstein-associated producers after #MeToo is less traditionally feminine. Overall, our findings suggest that #MeToo may have helped mitigate the frictions and biases that prevent female talent from exploring parts of the idea space that are typically associated with men and may have shaped the nature of female-oriented works.