Innovation Week: Take a strategic Pause to innovate

At Medexprim and then BC Platforms , as growing companies in the medical technology sector, we're always pushing hard to advance our projects, develop our products, and keep our clients happy. Production often takes precedence, even though innovation and research are at the core of our business. We decided to create an intentional pause in our packed roadmap to put innovation back at the heart of our activities.

Our recent "Innovation Week" drew inspiration from the practices of tech giants. This strategic break in our usual development cycle aimed to stimulate creativity and innovation within our R&D team, while adapting to our specific context in the health and medical technology sector.

Inspirations from the Tech World

1. Google's "20% Time": Employees dedicate 20% of their time to personal projects, giving birth to major products like Gmail and Google News.
2. Microsoft's "Hackathon Week": An annual event for working on innovative projects, which has led to important features for Xbox and Outlook.
3. LinkedIn's "InDays": Monthly days dedicated to personal projects, learning, or volunteering.

Our Golden Rule for Innovation Week: Freedom to Explore

The fundamental principle was simple yet crucial: engineers were free to explore topics of their choice. This freedom extended to all aspects:

• Selection of exploration topics
• Definition of their own research methodology
• Choice of technologies to study

"What I appreciated about the Innovation Week was this total freedom and the ability to take our time." said by Eloise when describying this event

Structure of Innovation Week

Preparation (2 weeks prior)

• Individual identification of areas of interest
• Informal discussions about these ideas during coffee breaks

Execution (2 weeks, 10 effective working days)

• Kick-off meeting with topic selection on the first day
• In-depth exploration of chosen topics
• Daily meeting to share progress and questions

Conclusion (last day)

• Status update on exploration progress
• Points on what should be done to continue

Organization

Total freedom of organization. A maximum number of meetings were cancelled or postponed to allow for total immersion. However, this approach came with its own challenges regarding to production.

"It was really difficult for me to free up time. It was so frustrating to read the same paragraph of a paper several times because I had been interrupted.” noted by Samuel when analyzing the pro an

Key Projects and Results

Our engineers focused on specific areas, yielding interesting results:

• Samuel Boucher explored #blockchain for medical imaging, discovering its promising potential, particularly for multi-centric projects.
• Elo?se Grossiord delved into Project MONAI , a PyTorch framework for deep learning in medical imaging. In-depth testing revealed that while it doesn't yet fully meet our needs, it's worth keeping a close eye on its evolution.
• Juliette Bousso investigated facial recognition for anonymizing medical imaging data, exploring promising frameworks and developing conceptual prototypes from paperswithcode.com

These projects not only expanded our knowledge but also provided valuable insights into emerging technologies that could shape the future of medical imaging. Reflecting on the experience,

"I wasn't expecting much from this event. I was surprised by what I managed to accomplish.” shared by Juliette on the last day of this event

Lessons Learned and Challenges

1. Time management: Out of the 10 planned days, only 5 effective days were devoted to innovation, with the rest being caught up by production. For next time, we're considering 5 days with a real break and an activated "out of office".
2. Exchange format: The daily meeting didn't work well due to the diversity of topics. We're considering a more in-depth mid-term review or involving external team members to bring fresh perspectives on these subjects.
3. Research approach: This experience reminded us that research approaches are different from those in production. We try, we make mistakes, we dive into a subject, we change direction without knowing in advance what will be useful.

Impact on Our Innovation Culture

This experience reminded us that "thinking outside the box" is a skill that needs to be maintained. It rekindled our passion for innovation and showed us the importance of creating spaces dedicated to creativity, even in the intense environment of a startup.

Conclusion

Although we've returned to our usual fast-paced mode of operation, we've become aware of the need for dedicated innovation breaks. This special week refreshed us and revived our creativity.

We continue our scientific and technical watch, our POCs, but with a new awareness: innovation and creativity require time during which the brain can switch to a different mode, away from the urgency of the moment.

How about you? How do you cultivate innovation in your company despite daily constraints? Share your experiences!

#InnovationWeek #StartupLife #MedTech #RDInnovation