Three innovation takeaways from Moderna presentation

Three #innovation takeaways. Yesterday I attended a webinar on innovation hosted by FACC, with Moderna (Marcello Damiani) and BCG (Michael Ringel) presenting. I’d like to share 3 takeaways and some of my reflections from the session, and also thank the organizers and presenters as a lot of useful information and perspectives were shared!

My personal objective going in was to hear another perspective of how innovation is looked at, talked about and measured in the corporate sense, and a case study.

Not surprisingly innovation remains a “Top 3” priority for the majority of firms, and the framing questions are not “should you innovate” or “how to innovate” but rather how to increase ROI from your innovation efforts, via #strategy , org and operational readiness and effectiveness. My sense from the data presented was that firms innovation readiness follows roughly a pareto distribution, with 20% or less of firms being ready, and the rest lagging or playing catchup.

I’m always thinking with multiple hats in these sessions as a) an entrepreneur, b) a creative trainer/consultant c) a leadership advisor, so my top three hit across those areas:

1. Mission (still) matters. When Marcello talked about Moderna’s #mission I wrote “get the value of mRNA to the most people” (from the website it is: “Deliver on the promise of mRNA science to create a new generation of transformative medicines for patients.)”

A company with a clear view of how it creates #value and what it’s trying to accomplish, such that this drives strategy, #operations, #culture and so on.

We heard how, I believe, the company hadn’t budgeted or staffed for covid in advance thus needed to scale fast, and for a period “everyone’s job wasn’t just their job, it was everyone’s job”, people wore multiple hats to deliver on the priorities of the moment, planned daily. Culture (mission focus) helped this, autonomous teams developed their own scaling with embedded digital team members using agile ways of working, and a thin layer of coordination…why digital, “because it scales”.

2. Platforms (still) matter. The R&D cycle in life sciences is long. They started working on their personalized cancer vaccines around 2016 and getting to later stages in 2023. COVID vaccine was “10 year” journey to build the #platform, and that’s why a 6+ month sprint was possible. Now there are I believe 46 products in various stages of development based on that common platform.

3. It’s “dangerous” to put innovation, but essential to put operations on dashboards. People (scientists) are the experts and go about what they need to do (under the umbrella of addressing unhealthy and healthy people’s unmet needs, and the overall mission), so it is outcomes based. Innovation should be ambitious, unconstrained, and realistic about what trying to do at end. Operations though should be on a #dashboard.

Reflections on the above:

As an entrepreneur developing IP/skills-based products and programs, I try to use the thinking about platforms, and to be realistic that sometimes it takes longer than I’d like to do things the right way: developing distinctive products marketed in a distinct way.

Unlike life sciences though, I’m also trying to improve how I market-test these a lot sooner in the process. Mission is important to me, the branding/offer, to the customers we work with, and the “how” and “why” of delivering the “what”.

The last point about dashboards is probably the defining challenge of my business (a #solopreneur, with collaborators) this year, how to manage unconstrained and constrained tasks and thinking in the optimal way…when it’s all in your own brain and calendar, how to switch modes etc.! More of that in a future article, I’ll share how I’m approaching things and how that’s working out (good, so far).

As a creative trainer/consultant, I recognize the importance of motivation in driving creative output, both from mission, and people having the “sense of urgency” as Marcello also described. Autonomous teams with loose coordination working with urgency towards a shared goal, there are many case studies of how this method can work well e.g. 9/11 cleanup (as told in Frank Barrett's Yes to the Mess, actually a book about how leaders can learn from Jazz improvisors, more of that later).

I also believe for the many organizations that are not learning/R&D focused, it also helps to do some pre-training and work around creativity skills, creative problem solving and building confidence in a creative capability/culture. This helps prepare for whatever unforecasted event happens, but it also helps with how people interact, align and improve things day to day when there isn’t a crisis.

Lastly, from a leadership point of view innovation and creativity are capabilities that can be developed and improved in a concrete, systematic and ongoing way, that isn’t “curing cancer” but actually quite mundane, getting the right incentives, processes, and technology in place, for example. The results however can be spectacular, both in terms of revenue growth, employee engagement and so on.

A program to develop creative capability within the organization can be used as an umbrella to build better alignment, with a focus on meeting unmet customer needs at scale. Forrester research, for example, has shown that B2B organizations with well-aligned product, marketing, and sales functions experience 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability than those that are misaligned.

Thoughts, feedback?