Dr. Eugenia Jones signing in for the first technology marketing center post of 2012. Since I have the honor of starting the New Year, I’ll share with you what I would like to accomplish this year; an innovation in the biotechnology and medical device industry. I will focus on innovation in its broader context in anticipation of the TMC interview with Jay Paap, on January 31, where he will address the question, “Does gated product development kill innovation?”
Very few, if any, innovations are created de novo. As a scientist my new discoveries were fashioned from insights gain from a wide range of sources, their validity tested in the lab. When hard work and a little luck coalesced, occasionally a patent was generated. In business I gain insights come from watching the success and failures of those who share my passion for molecular diagnostics, as well as from an indiscriminate and voracious appetite for reading business books, magazines, journals, and attending webinars, seminars, and courses.
Some of the best solutions to problems I have seen come from co-opting clever solutions from others, bundling them, and applying the bundle fearlessly to the problem I want to solve. As the saying goes “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” A bundled, or multi-pronged, approach does not dilute your efforts; rather it is necessary to produce the best whole product offering for your customers. Bundling innovative finance, process, and delivery practices with product offerings is on of the surest way to grow your business. (To read more about the types of innovation search- Larry Keeley, 10 types of Innovation.)
In the past two years on of the most innovative approaches in my arena has come from Meridian Biosciences, who compete in the infectious disease diagnostics space with giants like Roche, Abbott, and BD just to name a few. Meridian a mid-sized company, introduced a great enabling solution that allows clinical laboratories to adopt their new technology without purchasing capital equipment. Meridian developed a molecular diagnostic assays using a patent protected technology that can be run on equipment that is inexpensive to build and easy to maintain. By giving the equipment to customers, Meridian lowered the adoption hurdle significantly, and by designing the equipment with a small footprint and for a small test number the customer can try it out without feeling that they will have to commit to a large change. Change can be painful, and enabling a customer to bring in the equipment and order a few tests to see if how it fits in their work-flow was brilliant.
Of course it would have fallen flat without tests that are FDA approved, easy to use, fast and reliable. If a customer want to run more tests, you give them more machines, and if a machine break downs you ship them a new one. Meridian is currently expanding the product line of assays that run on their platform, adding a Group B Streptococcus assay, approved by the FDA at the end of 2011, to their C. difficile assay. Leveraging their platform, which you can think of as the razor, and expanding the product line, the equivalent of the razor blades, Meridian is poised to do well in 2012 in part because they lowered the adoption barrier by forgoing revenue from equipment sales, and enabled customers to purchase tests, which are just as good, if not better than, their competitors’.
One of my goals for 2012 is to apply the knowledge gained in 2011 to help one of my customers launch a customer solution that bundles several types of innovation, along with an innovative product offering, into the biotechnology and medical device space. Add a comment below; I love to hear what you think about how to best innovate solutions, and the most innovative solutions of 2011 were in your industry.
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