?Luminescence?- May 2024

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In this Edition:

• ?? Leading Light: Emma Payne
• ?? Thought Spark: WhatsApp with That?
• ?? Glowing Embers: Interesting Reads
• ?? What's Hot: News From my Practice
• ?? Fan the Flames: 3 Ways to Support my Work

?? Leading Light: Emma Payne

This month, my Mom passed away after a 5-year battle with ALS. As I've been working through my own grief, I've thought a lot about the need for bereavement support. It seems fitting to feature my conversation with Emma Payne , Founder and CEO of Help Texts. Help Texts delivers expert grief and mental health support globally, via text message. Emma is also a former graduate school classmate from my time at the MIT Technology and Policy Program . A seasoned technology entrepreneur, she has spent 25 years "skating to where the puck is going to be" in tech.

"In the US today, one-third of working age adults are grieving a recent death. They're all at increased risk for chronic illness, lost work, depression, substance use, suicide - really negative health outcomes that are very costly to our healthcare system... It's shocking that we don't recognize that bereavement care IS healthcare."

???? Curious? Read the complete interview here.

?? Thought Spark: WhatsApp With That?

Help Texts' thoughtful and timely text messages are incredibly effective, with 95%+ customer satisfaction and 86%+ retention rates. It's eye-opening that a simple text message can have such profound impact. That got me thinking. The United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. But what if... the most impactful health interventions - the ones that actually made the greatest differences in people's lives - were actually inexpensive and low-tech?

"Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against (the limits set by our biology)... but again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being." - Atul Gawande, Surgeon and Writer

Dr. Gawande is the son of immigrants from the Indian state of Maharashtra. There, government healthcare workers have been combating medical misinformation regarding pregnancy that is rife in marginalized communities in remote areas. Their tool of choice? WhatsApp. Informal direct messages, the creation of hyper-local groups, the strategic use of status messages and the distribution of scientifically-accurate visual aids - are all part of their toolbox. MIT Technology Review reports that these efforts have helped slash India's maternal mortality rate by over 60% in just 14 years.

As I've written previously, WhatsApp has been a critical tool for me over the last three years as I served on my Mom's caregiving team. It was my portal to the broader ALS patient and caregiving community in India. I learned to execute the critical aspects of ALS care - such as correctly configuring my Mom's non-invasive ventilator - over WhatsApp video calls with fellow caregivers. Bluntly, without WhatsApp, I would have lost my Mom to ALS months or years sooner.

How are YOU leveraging the simplest mobile messaging tools to make a real difference to your customers?

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?? Glowing Embers: Interesting Reads

The State of Martech 2024

The Martech landscape grew ~28% year-over-year, now up to over 14,100 products. Akash Pathak and I posted our take on the key learnings in a brief video here.

Scott Brinker & Frans Riemersma - May 7, 2024

Why Companies Get Agile Right - and Wrong

47% of companies who claim to have implemented Agile are operating under the "illusion of Agility" - they are not seeing the improvements in productivity, time to market and financial performance.

Boston Consulting Group - May 8, 2024

Everything Google Announced at I/O 2024

At its premier developer conference keynote, Google mentioned AI 121 times in 110 minutes.

Wired - May 14, 2024

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?? What's Hot: The Latest News from my Practice

• Trend: Overall, demand for digital growth marketing consulting remains mixed. Client remain cautious about their consulting spend and are continuing to seek arrangements that give them the maximum flexibility to ramp up or down as external conditions warrant.
• Insight: Increasingly, however, clients are looking to the future and asking about how AI will impact their business. Many are curious about how they can immediately leverage AI to improve their marketing operations and technology. Some are concerned about the impact of AI on aggregate demand for their services - and how they can get ahead of it.
• Challenge: I'm implementing a robust conversion rate optimization (CRO) program at one of my clients. They're relatively new to testing and feeling the unrelenting pressure of needing to deliver against aggressive goals. In this environment, they're hesitant to allocate the resources (and traffic) for the experimentation necessary to maximize the potential of CRO.

If you're seeing something similar in your business, I'd love to hear from you. What's your take?

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?? Fan the Flames: 3 Ways to Support my Work

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Hi, I'm Sohil Parekh .

I'm a Boston-based fractional executive and independent consultant.

I help lean mid-market firms unleash digital growth -

deeper engagement with more customers at lower cost.