The innovation recipe

You know the conventional wisdom about innovation. It's hard. Big companies can't do it. Everyone defines it differently. Everyone has to do it to thrive. Few have the skills or abilities to lead innovators.

So, what is the secret sauce?

Julia Child is a household name across much of North America thanks to her cooking shows and TV appearances. Yet, many people don’t know that her TV career didn’t start until she was in her 50s, when she appeared on a local Boston book review show. The team bringing Julia Child’s story to life for HBO Max shares in the most recent #GetHired the traits that made her second act so successful.

• She was driven by a mission to teach people how to cook.
• She overcame any self-consciousness that stood in her way.
• She wasn’t afraid to make mistakes.
• She had a constant thirst for knowledge and learning.

Let's start with some basic assumptions and definitions of innovation. Now that we are all reading the same cook book, let's look at a few recipes:

1. It starts with being a problem seeker, not a problem solver
2. There has to be a good match between the problem you decide to solve and the skills of the team deciding to solve it.
3. You need the right innovation strategy. Are you basically a technopreneur or market perceiver?
4. You need a champion.
5. The champion needs to have the right people on the team
6. You need robust internal and external networks to regional innovation ecosystems and clusters. How would you rate your digital health or biomedical ecosystem?
7. If you are an intrapreneur, you need the right fit between yourself and the organizational readiness
8. Your solution has to create the right product-market mix by offering an attractive value proposition
9. You have to execute a VAST business model
10. You have to know when and how to make yourself invisible when the time is right.

I'm a terrible cook. So, for me, cooking a meal for guests takes some courage and usually my being willing to clean up the mess, or, the blood on the floor, after another vain attempt at beef bourguignon. The same is true about innovating. Do something that scares you every day.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs