Achieving Disruptive Innovation – Our Key Learnings and Takeaways from the Sept. 12th NY/NJ Chapter HBA Event

To produce disruptive innovation, we cannot be a hostage to  "today"

This week Kate Drummond, Dani Kramer and I had an opportunity to attend an HBA panel event sponsored by Novartis focusing on achieving disruptive innovation. The thought-provoking session was moderated by Mary Sylvester (Ricoh USA), with Fabrice Chouraqui (President, Novartis Pharma Corp), Georgia Papathomas (Sr VP and Global Head of Data Analytics, J&J), Bruce Molloy (Chief AI Officer, Springboard.ai) and Mimi Brooks (CEO, Logical Design Solutions) sharing their experiences and insights as panelists. Here are a few of our key learnings and takeaways...

Technology is changing business models. Disruptors are everywhere, with a keen focus of thinking about the future, without the burden of the past. Established companies, on the other hand, have a lot at stake and carry a burden of the past with them. To shift, they ask themselves “what does today look like and where do want to go tomorrow” and leverage technology to try to get there. For large institutions to remain sustainable, they must not allow technology to get ahead of their business and business models specifically. To produce disruptive innovation, we cannot be a hostage to today. In fact, companies most disrupted by innovation have a vast amount of legacy knowledge, people and systems which can become significant liabilities if they are not transformed into assets.

We are living in a time when healthcare companies want to be tech companies, while tech companies want to be healthcare companies. And while tech companies can and will disrupt healthcare, healthcare and life sciences companies may be better equipped to successfully leverage technology and big data in achieving more impactful outcomes due to the deep knowledge and expertise needed to interpret the data and action off of it.

Innovation is a mindset and it is key no matter who you are and what you want to become. Meaningful innovation must be cultural – meaning there is no one department which should be responsible for bringing new ideas to life. It is about enabling experimentation, failure and learnings within an organization and it needs to come from everywhere. Innovation must also be about purpose. For example, in the commercial side of life sciences, you can view yourself as having a job promoting or selling medications, or you can live it with the purpose and duty of bringing life-saving medications to patients. 

As healthcare companies forge ahead with disruptive digital innovations, they need to be smart about what should be done in-house versus what should be outsourced. Making that decision is not easy, particularly for large companies which may not want to admit they don’t know something or may not be a center for attracting the best possible talent. The decision should be based on a neutral assessment of your vision, talent needs and talent availability; and asking yourself if you can attract the best talent to achieve that vision through direct employment or an outsourcing partnership. With that answer also comes a mind-shift in the way procurement makes decisions – shifting from a vendor cost/efficiency focus to one of outcomes and partnership. Additionally, there will need to be a mindset shift from one-size-fits-all (one vendor, one solution) to one of having versatility of solutions available that enable companies to drive business in a way that answers their key business questions/opportunities/challenges.

In conclusion, the panel discussion left us with few great tips to keep in mind as we forge ahead in achieving disruptive innovation, as perfectly summarized by Kate:

• Companies should foster an environment that allows for unconstrained innovation and intrapreneurship; innovation should not be defined by an end point or deadline. 
• It is important to throw out the playbook when thinking about how to catch up to technology and how to get to your goal. Process is often a restricting factor in innovation; start with a blank page rather than focusing on where you are today.
• Change management is key to keep up with real world data and technology. Begin to reskill and retool your employees now.
• Every single day matters...patients are waiting. Put yourself in the customers’ shoes when thinking about what value you want to bring to them.
• Failure is not a negative. It is the educational part of the disruptive innovation process. Do. Learn. Adjust. Do.