Connect the dots

When I was a kid, my favorite books were connecting the dots books. I was challenged to take a pencil and connect one dot to the next and , by magic, a picture resulted from a previously indecipherable and unrelated bunch of dots. It seems everything you need to learn about innovation and entrepreneurship your grandmother taught you, because, as Steve Jobs said, innovation is about connecting dots.

But you need to connect more than what's on the page in front of you. The layers and meta layers of potential connectedness are almost infinite, so you need to expand, but at the same time focus, on the source of information and inspiration that will motivate your creativity. Some in medical education are beginning to connect some dots and advocating for coherent education, linking medicine to science, technology, engineering, math, business, the humanities, and other domains as well.

Medical students and residents are not pawns of the medical-industrial complex and we should stop corporatizing them.

Many no longer want to work for the Man/Woman.

Innovators, research indicates, connect dots better than most.

In their book, The Innovator's DNA, the authors identified 5 parts to the secret sauce of innovative business success :

In thinking about how these skills work together, they found it useful to apply the metaphor of DNA. Associating is like the backbone structure of DNA’s double helix; four patterns of action (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) wind around this backbone, helping to cultivate new insights. And just as each person’s physical DNA is unique, each individual they studied had a unique innovator’s DNA for generating breakthrough business ideas.

Associating is about pattern recognition, connecting dots and seeing what others don't see.

The 4th Industrial Revolution and the Third Wave of Entrepreneurship are driven by the already rapid pace of connectedness, integration, and coherence in every field including higher education and sick care. Look for more links between:

1. EMR systems
2. Patients and doctors
3. Employers and employees
4. One ecosystem with another
5. One academic domain with another
6. Citizens around the world with each other
7. People with things and things with things
8. Software with hardware with tech with media with storage with sickcare
9. Patient entrepreneurs with patient entrepreneurs and medical entrepreneurs
10. Money with money
11. Companies outside of sick care who have solved sick care problems
12. People with cognitive, demographic, and psychographic diversity

Take care of your expanding network universe. Keep your sights on your metaclusters too.

Seeing things that others don't see by seeing patterns others don't see is what separates the best from the rest. Now pick up your pencils and start drawing.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship