Favours from people are perfectly fine, especially when you're changing the world.

Time for creative thinking

Favours from people are perfectly fine, especially when you’re changing the world.

After the excitement of the operating theater, the thrill of learning new science, and the novelty of writing patents – and of course, talking about all of the above – I am coming to appreciate the ability to execute. This is generally the job of the “businessperson”, which is one I, as a businessperson, had started overlooking. That has come to an end. The ability to determine the right questions, ask the right people, find the best answers and make decisions is critical to moving an idea forward.

For those of you who have not read this blog series before,  I’m a Fellow at Stanford’s Biodesign program, where we spend a year between the school of engineering and the school of medicine solving medical problems with devices. We’re designing devices for unmet clinical needs. The “we” is a team that began as four and has now become two pairs of two. The needs range from heart failure to incontinence. The gospel of the program is that innovation is a process. The tales I tell are my insights for the month.

For those of you who have read this blog before and expect it to be monthly: so did I! The one thing I will say about the time missed is that with funding declined, the government will become increasingly important as will large corporate partnerships or acquisitions. Ok, shall we begin?

These past few months we have been seeking to really understand the market: are the patients a homogenous group? Will the device fit all patients? What kinds of patients will be reasonable to have in the initial target market and regulatory studies? What are the required regulatory studies and endpoints for each design option? What do payers pay for? How can changes to payment codes be made? Will this product have the return necessary for venture funding? Do we want to take venture money yet? Do we want to keep running this on our own? How do we incentivize people to help us?

The world is complex. Now that we have what I think is a brilliant solution to heart failure, I want to bring our device from the bench to the bedside. Having mapped our plan, I realize that to accomplish this I have to escape from the comfort of pubmed and the orderly hospital. I have to reach out to people and ask questions that likely don’t have right answers, just logical thoughts. Without IP ownership (Stanford has that) or money (which we don’t yet have) we will have to beg and borrow to get all of our guidance and help. Given that “it takes a village to raise a child” and this is like raising a monster we need a lot of help: so begging I will go.

Papers won’t cut it; people are necessary for answers to reimbursement, regulatory and business model questions because that proprietary information is well hidden and the “rules” give guidance, but they can’t tell you squat about how to navigate around them. Creative navigation is the only way to get through.

I have always adopted the motto that the question shouldn’t be “can this be done?” but “how can this be done?” I forgot that while reading pubmed and science, but I need to readopt it for this. The other thing I misplaced was my bright-eyed, bubbly spirit that took in information from janitors to executives to make a decision. Being the “questions gal” is, I think, critical to success. I have not seen anyone get as much help as I can get or deal with as many opinions, and it is that information that has allowed me to be successful in the past, so I’d better try it again!

My great friend, Gary Diamond, a cleantech business-mogul- to-be, whose advice is wise and valuable, reminded me today of something I had forgotten that has helped me get back on track and may be useful for those on the business side: “Favours from people are fine, especially when you’re changing the world.”

Good luck in your return to the land of many questions as I help shepherd an idea from bench to bedside. And I will be careful to be humble, inquisitive and fearless going forward.

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Tags: Creativity, health care, life sciences