The Relentless Pursuit of Innovation for our Patients

Innovation. It’s a word many of us hear at least once every day—a promise of business growth, fresh solutions for stubborn challenges, and a future world that is better than today. At AbbVie, where our mission is to develop medicines to address the toughest obstacles our patients experience, innovation is in our blood. Today’s healthcare challenges are making scientific breakthroughs more important than ever – but this is easier said than done. Breakthroughs that have a true impact on patients’ lives require unwavering commitment, confidence and investment of time, resources and energy.

I recently had the pleasure of participating in the Old Masters Program at Purdue, my alma mater. This annual event dates back to the 1950s and gives alumni like me the opportunity to visit the campus and share ideas and lived experiences with students. While I was there, I had the privilege of presenting several learnings on how to innovate in a business environment. Here are several points that I shared with them.

Innovation is both an art and science. In fact, I look at innovation as a multiplication problem: Identify x Insights x Ideation x Impact = Innovation. Math lovers will recognize that in this multiplication problem, if any of the factors are zero, the whole formula will result in zero. Let me break down the process:

Identify

We must first identify the problem we’re solving. I like to ask questions such as: What are the biggest pain points our patients are experiencing right now? How can we make their lives easier?

Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” We must know and truly understand the problem we are trying to address – that’s where insights come in.

Insights

One of the most critical parts of the innovation equation is insights. This is what unlocks amazing ideas – the engine that runs the innovation formula. What are patients saying? Their doctors? What is their day-to-day life like? How can we immerse ourselves in their experience and journey over time to truly understand their needs?

The stronger the insights, the more innovative ideas are, and the more impactful the solution can be for the patient. My teams step into the shoes of patients and understand the challenges of their conditions. If you do right by the patient, the business will follow.

Ideation

Once you’ve identified and understand the challenge, then comes ideation. We’re all familiar with brainstorming. There are several ways to generate ideas – but there are a few behaviors we continuously prioritize in my organization to inspire bold thinking.

• Freshness behavior. Freshness emphasizes the importance of pushing the boundaries of our own status quo to develop new creative connections. There’s two ways this happens: deliberate freshness and everyday freshness. An example of deliberate freshness is an initiative we’ve implemented at AbbVie, “Freedom Fridays,” which is an opportunity to step away from meetings and have protected time to be in a creative mindset. Everyday freshness is about what’s within only our control – sleeping on the other side of the bed, taking a different route to school or work, or eating lunch with someone new.
• Greenhousing behavior. Greenhousing is all about protecting and nurturing early ideas – building them up and allowing them to grow, rather than shutting them down too quickly. For example, in brainstorming sessions with my team, we avoid phrases like, “Yes, but…” “No because…” or “That won’t work.” Instead, we use language like, “Yes and…,” or “We could build on that by…” This practice allows early ideas to grow into something greater.
• Test and learn behavior. The right mindset is all about experimentation – an attitude of giving things a try without overthinking it. It’s important to be willing to take risks and learn from failure. This is how some of the most successful entrepreneurs have found success – trying, failing, learning and trying again.

Impact

This is the final step of the innovation process – where the magic happens. It’s time to bring all the talk to life – and turn ideas into life-changing realities. After all, innovation can’t end with ideas. Identify the things you need to make the idea happen, build your team and execute. For all of us at AbbVie, at the end of the day, the outcomes are why we do what we do. It’s about treating serious health conditions, and most importantly, making a remarkable impact on patients’ lives.

This post is approved by AbbVie