Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Innovation: Drug Discovery, Medical Devices and Digital Health

Curator:  Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

The following discussuions are related to postings presenting on innovation by Dr. Aviva Lav-Ari.   It is painfull on this week that the Federal Funding for research necessary for maintaining a fruitful and dominant position of US universities and scientific organizations is hanging on the vine.  What resources will be available to ripen the fruit?  Despite the serious fracturing of serious issues debated in the republican “Tea Parrty” led House of Representatives, The actual productivity of scientific discovery has increased with falling budgets since the Vietnam War, mainly because of great postdocs and great mentoring – in both “ivy league”, fluorishing non-ivy league (Duke, Vanderbilt, University of Chicago),  and strong state and land-grant universities.  The difference now is that states are struggling with budgets and the decline of municipalities, and research is no longer an individual exploring an idea because of the need for many scientists with different technologies and different approaches to collaborate, across worldwide and state borders.  Michelangelo as an example.  3-D printing revolution.

This Will Save Us Years — Lean LaunchPad for Life Science Oct 14, 2013

Steve Blank
Part 1 of this post described the issues in the drug discovery. Part 2 covered medical devices and digital health. Part 3 described what we’re going to do about it.

This is post is a brief snapshot of our progress.

Vitruvian is one of the 28 teams in the class. The team members are:

Dr. Hobart Harris Chief of General Surgery, Vice-Chair of the Department of Surgery, and a Professor of Surgery at UCSF. Dr. Harris is also a Principal Investigator in the UCSF Surgical Research Laboratory at San Francisco General Hospital.
Dr. David Young, Professor of Plastic Surgery at UCSF. His area of expertise includes wound healing, microsurgery, and reconstruction after burns and trauma. His research interests include the molecular mechanisms of wound healing and the epidemiology and treatment of soft tissue infections.
Sarah Seegal is at One Medical.  Sarah is interested in increasing the quality and accessibility of healthcare services. Sarah worked with Breakthrough.com to connect individuals with professional therapists for online sessions.
Cindy Chang is an Enzymologist investigating novel enzymes involved in biofuel and chemical synthesis in microbes at LS9

Vitruvian’s first product, MyoSeal, promotes wound repair via biocompatible microparticles plus a fibrin tissue sealant that has been shown to prevent incisional hernias through enhanced wound healing. The team believed that surgeons would embrace the product and pay thousands to use it. In week 2 of the class 14 of their potential customers (surgeons) told the team otherwise.
Watch and find out how the Lean LaunchPad class saved them years.
https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_80_80/p/8/000/1c3/112/01bd323.jpg

Image: A derived drawing from Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons

Lessons Learned – Get out of the building
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131014134545-95015-this-will-save-us-years-lean-launchpad-for-life-science?trk=cha-feed-art-title-217
Read more Steve Blank posts at http://www.steveblank.com

What Michelangelo Can Teach Us about Innovation and Competition

Daniel Burrus  Oct 14, 2013

On a recent trip to Italy I had the opportunity to visit both Florence and Rome, and to see the work of some of history’s greatest artists, including Michelangelo.
In Florence, I saw David, Michelangelo’s amazing sculpture. I also refreshed my memory about the history of that sculpture which is a great story of innovation, courage, and reinvention. Historians have well documented the fact that Michelangelo was very competitive with other artists. When other sculptures looked at the large piece of marble that was selected for this sculpture that was being commissioned, they decided it was not a good piece of marble and would be too difficult to work with. So they passed on it.
But not Michelangelo. He said he could do it and he took it on. At that moment, he began to separate himself from the competition and he began his strategy to redefine sculpting. Therefore, he became the competition.
And that’s what business needs to do. In Michelangelo’s case, all of the depictions of David in the David and Goliath story, up to that point, depicted David as a very young boy. And, of course, he was clothed. Additionally, all of the sculptures up to that point were human-sized or slightly bigger. They weren’t overly large.
So Michelangelo did something very different from his peers. He did the opposite and created a 17-foot tall David, made him an adult, and kept him unclothed. The only thing he had with him was his slingshot to get Goliath.
After working each day on David, he would study cadavers to learn more of how the human body worked. Taking what he learned and applying it to his work, he became the first sculptor to show veins and arteries and detailed muscle structures.
The result, of course, was absolute mastery. Anyone who has ever seen David understands that.
Michelangelo changed everyone’s view. He redefined what sculpting was about and set a new standard. In other words, he went beyond the competition.
Years passed and Michelangelo had done some drawings and some paintings, but he considered himself, first and foremost, a sculptor. However, the Pope decided that he wanted Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Interestingly, Michelangelo didn’t want to do it because he considered himself a sculptor. In a note to the Pope, Michelangelo even signed it, “The Sculptor, Michelangelo,” pointing out the fact that he wasn’t a painter; he was a sculptor. When the Pope wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, Michelangelo left Rome.
The Pope sent guards to get him and bring him back, essentially forcing him into painting the Sistine Chapel. So Michelangelo reluctantly agreed.
At that time, all of his competition was painting pictures in 2D. In other words, paintings were flat with no depth to them.
Anyone who has ever seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel knows that Michelangelo, once again, redefined what art was by putting in amazing—even by today’s standards—depth and 3D effects. Essentially, he once again went beyond the competition. As a matter of fact, while he was working on the Sistine Chapel, other great artists of the day would sneak in during Michelangelo’s breaks just to look at his techniques. They were floored, literally, by what he was doing. And from that point on, other artists started to incorporate depth and 3D techniques into their paintings.
So what’s the moral of the story? Look at what your competition is doing … and don’t do that. Why? Because they are already doing it.
Instead, raise the bar. Look at what the best of the best are doing … and then go beyond them. Think bigger. Don’t compete. Create. Innovate.
*****
DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.

3D Printing Is Turning the Impossible Into the Possible

Daniel Burrus      Aug 22, 2013