Friday, February 7, 2014

Confusion

Pitt has a consulting case competition open to postdocs and grad students, which I will be participating in.
So of course, the first thing I did (after quickly registering for the thing... this sounds like fun) was to Google "health care innovation cases consulting". One of the results that came up was this:
"A technology and services division at this global health care and life sciences company was seeking to define an innovation framework with supporting processes to enable it to realize organic growth goals. An initial analysis of the division’s product portfolio revealed a significant gap between its current five year forecast and five year objectives. Portfolio analysis also revealed that a disproportionate amount of resources are being allocated to sustain aging product lines. The client was looking to stimulate its innovation engine and close this performance gap with new product revenue and profitability contribution.

Err.. okay... Wtf is that?? What the hell are these people talking about?

In that whole paragraph of jargon, multiple ridiculous terms leap up, but I challenge any rational person not to blink at the terms 'organic growth' (what's inorganic then?) and 'innovation engine' (do real people in real life talk like this?)

Then, you click "download case study" in the hopes of some illumination and get this:



Do your eyes glaze over as you read their key process elements list? Can any average, English-speaking person comprehend what in the world they did?

I once attended a talk by the great George Gopen on how to write. Should Dr.Gopen ever feel the need to include another paragraph in his list of bad writing examples, I would like to present the above as a potential candidate. I would especially hold up the last point in that list as a stellar example of a sentence that seems to be constructed of fairly serious-sounding words and yet, makes absolutely no sense at all.

Sorry, Kalypso consulting. Maybe you are very good at your work. But you don't seem to know how to advertise your worth.


No comments: