Updating the Agenda

By: Fast CompanyWed Dec 19, 2007 at 12:14 AM

An update on four agenda setters.

The Mayo Clinic: Creating Patient Progress

While much of the health-care industry seems to be in an intensive-care ward, the Mayo Clinic remains the very picture of health. In 1999, the medical treatment and research center, located in Rochester, Minnesota (with branch clinics in Arizona and Florida), saw more patients and hired more staff than it did the previous year. The clinic also continued to add patient services, including a Web site that will provide worldwide access to Mayo's medical expertise. "We're seeing some very nice trends emerge, especially in terms of new specialties," says Dr. Patty Simmons, 48, a pediatrician and a board member of the Mayo Foundation, which oversees the clinic. At a time of rising costs, Mayo's capacity to add such extras is, she says, "a symptom of organizational health."

Mayo was founded more than a century ago as a "physician-led" hospital -- as an institution in which doctors, rather than accountants, make key management decisions. Old-fashioned though it may seem, this model has enabled the clinic to weather fluctuations in the health-care market. When it comes to cost cutting, says Simmons, "it's crucial that the people who make decisions actually know how those decisions will affect patients."

Meanwhile, the real challenge for Mayo lies outside the clinic -- in consumers' changing attitudes toward how they receive health care. Every day, according to Mayo research, more than 10 million patients visit health-related Web sites, and Mayo wants to tap into that trend. The clinic's own Web site, Health Oasis (www.mayohealth.org), offers a wealth of free medical advice. And this spring, Mayo will roll out a more sophisticated online offering -- an "interactive health-education" site that will help users make their own health-care decisions. According to Simmons, the site will go a critical step beyond what most sites offer: "It's for people who don't just want medical information -- they want to know how that information applies to them."

-- Paul Roberts

The Freeplay Group: Winding Up Success

The Freeplay Group spent the last year of the millennium scrambling to handle an overwhelming demand for its windup radios and flashlights -- while continuing to break new ground on its social mission.

Freeplay, based in Cape Town, South Africa, has seen its flagship product, the windup radio, become a hot item in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world. Partly as a result, the company nearly tripled its revenues last year, pulling in about $50 million -- far more than the $35 million that Rory Stear, 41, cofounder and CEO, had projected a year ago. Stear offers this index of his company's success: Every 20 seconds, somewhere in the world, someone buys a Freeplay product.

Meanwhile, Freeplay's products continue to serve as a lifeline to some of the world's poorest people, as well as to people in war-torn countries. Its engineering team, for example, is creating a science curriculum for use in distance-education programs that rely on Freeplay radios. In 1999, 50,000 Freeplay radios were donated to refugee camps in Kosovo by the British Department for International Development, the British Red Cross, and the International Red Cross.

According to Stear, Freeplay aims to double its revenues this year, and plans are under way for taking the company public within the next couple of years.

"We're trying to grow up," Stear says. "We're trying to go from being funky and by-the-seat-of-our-pants to being more organized. We want to improve on that front while passionately holding onto our entrepreneurial culture and our commitment to social justice."

-- Cheryl Dahle