This is an interesting graphical representation of the US workforce: Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/american-workforce-100-people/ on Visual Capitalist. It is very cute, but does not do a good job at communicating the actual data (percentage breakdown by sector). Also, since this graph tries to make the point of diversity, the characters in the illustration do not represent the gender and race balance of the work force. One idea to tackle this. Add multiple dimensions of data: sector, gender, etc. to the characters, and then render multiple iterations of the 100 people, each time gr ..read more

If the time window if your presentation gets cut you have 2 choices: fewer words, or more words per second. Pick fewer words ..read more

AI is turning the semi conductor industry upside down, and I saw this interesting graphic comparing the market caps of Nvidia and Intel, which look very different from a few years ago. The circles are cute, but are softening the contrast between the 2 numbers. Two dimensional surfaces look closer together than straight bars, see below. This is also the reason that I prefer to use stacked columns over pie charts ..read more

I was talking about prioritizing your time a few days ago and remembered a time prioritization tool that was suggested to me while at McKinsey. It turns out it is called the “Eisenhower Matrix”. I added it as a template to SlideMatic. They key insight here was to be really rigorous and actually don’t do unimportant, not urgent tasks. The problem though was that all requests added to my desk were important and urgent ..read more

During our very short (see yesterday’s post) speaking slot to launch a new partnership for 9xchange, we used the slide below. Deal making in healthcare is inefficient because everyone needs to kiss too many frogs in order to uncover their prince. It got stuck in people’s head, and during the following presentations, presenters kept on referring back to frogs in their own talks. Free publicity ..read more

When speaking at a conference and you get offered two possible speaking slots: early in the day and very short, and later in the day and a lot longer. Which one to take? Easy, the early/short one. Attendance at conferences drops during the day, your audience is a lot bigger in the morning When people see you speak (early) they are more likely to approach you later, (feedback about) your presentation is an ice breaker In conferences, a really short speech is likely better than a long one. You are not here to close the deal, just to start more conversations. Your short speaker slot is a bl ..read more

My other venture 9xchange had a a busy week. We announced a partnership with AI-enabled drug discovery company BenevolentAI at the Biomed conference here in Tel Aviv. On 9xchange, we match buyers and sellers of pharmaceutical drugs that are still in development. Sometimes, a drug no longer fits the strategy of a pharma company, sometimes, a drug fails clinical trials for a specific disease, but might still work for another one. BenevolentAI has technology to find potential new indications for drugs. Drugs posted on the platform are exposed to its AI engine and results are fed back into 9xchang ..read more

It is often quick and easy to use PowerPoint to draw a diagram. No need to install and learn new specialized software. A few boxes, lines, a screenshot, and you are done. But why the result totally obvious a PowerPoint slide, even if you are not using the program to present your visual? Over the past years (decades for some) we have become so used to seeing PowerPoint slides with the built-in fonts, standard color palettes, that most people will recognize it instantly. But when your end product is a screenshot, you don’t have to worry about things like font compatibility and presentation temp ..read more

I am usually not a big fan of illustrations that visualize data. Below is an example (with data from February 2022). The soldiers might as well have been represented by straight bar charts. This article in the NYT though, was pretty effective. Representing unused office space with repetitions of well-known landmarks. People can instantly relate to, understand, and internalize the amount of space we are talking about. (BTW, these illustrations are made by Kaylie Fairclough ..read more

I like to play some music in my free time, here is a new synthesizer that was released this week. It sounds great, but I would have loved that they spent a bit more time on solving the grid puzzle of the knobs and buttons…. But hey, I am probably the only one worrying about this ..read more