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10 Rules for Driving Innovation in Healthcare – Rule # 10 – Be in the right place

10 Rules for Driving Innovation in Healthcare:

Rule # 10 – Be in the right place

 

In preparation for our first full day event, MedStartr Momentum 2015 we are writing out our ten secrets to Healthcare Innovation Success. After helping hundreds of new ideas get to market faster, we have learned a few things about what works in driving innovation in our industry. We will release them one a day to make them more easily digestible. Enjoy!

Rule # 10: Be in the right place

Wayne Gretsky said that he wasn’t the fastest player or the best puck handler, but he always focused on where the puck was going to be, to be in the right place at the right time. Well for innovation to happen you can’t just stay in your lab or department, at your desk or in your office, you need to go where it is, where it crackles and sizzles with life and where you will find the right people and partners that will help spark the best ideas with you or can bring the distribution, awareness, capital, and skills to the table.

So where’s the puck?

From the very first H2NYC event I attended in 2009 where an engineer with a smart pill bottle idea met a marketer and a new company was formed to the AHA CrowdChallenge we ran that helped 9 new companies do 1.7 M in new business in 31 days this year, there is no better place to be than a health innovation event, community, or contest. Whether you are an innovation leader at a hospital or pharma company or a startup founder with a great idea, internet searches, spitballing with your team, and cold calling will only get you so far, you need to get out there!

Need a place to go now?

Find your local health innovation community, usually on Meetup.com, go to a national event, or even join us for MedStartr Momentum 2015 on Nov 30th at Microsoft’s facility in Times Square in New York City. Get stakeholder discount tickets, learn more, or apply to get up front here. Speakers include Regina Holliday (The Walking Gallery) and Susannah Fox (CTO at HHS) and over 22 more amazing folks. If you need help finding a local group ping us as we have relationships with such groups in 100 cities around the world.

Have a Momentous Day!

This post was originally published on the MedStartr Blog


The Value of a Championship

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As we start our third challenge for the AHA we are looking back on our previous champions and thinking about the Championship Effect.  First, the Champions. The winners of our last three challenges were Dr. Michelle Longmire and her company DermTap, Jen Ohlson of IHT Spirit, and most recently Sarah Doherty of Telehealth Robotics. Each won 15 to 20 thousand dollars and raised another ten to fifteen thousand in their crowdfunding campaigns. More importantly they all got a few new partners that helped them get out to market incredibly fast.

For example, IHT Spirit didn’t just get a deal with a chain of twenty-three rehab centers,  but also is now the hottest new thing to reduce childhood obesity and is in over 700 schools in American. 9 months to the day after winning the 2014 AHA Open Innovation Challenge they signed a deal with Adidas on stage at CES too. This kind of success after winning is no accident. During the contests millions of people in the Healthcare industry hear about the ideas and hundreds of millions read articles in the New York Times,  Washington Post, and even on network news.

Why does this happen?  Why does the world pay so much attention to a $25,000 Challenge? We think of this as the “Championship Effect” whereby people pay more attention to Championships than regular games. I know this is obvious, but to understand the magnitude of the effect, consider the first ever College Football Championship game this year which had over 35 million views, setting the record for the most watched show on cable EVER. It was also about 7 times as many viewers as you average “Bowl Game.”  This huge differential is all about people’s desire to know they are seeing the Best as validated by a reliable and fair system that no algorithm can satisfy.  For over 30 years there has been a debate in college football over whether there should even be a Championship with winners and loses vs a computer / expert based system that selects the best team.  While very learned people argued, billions of dollars in ad revenue was lost and the cost of tuition went up by four times the inflation rate.

The Championship Effect is in full effect, not just for the NCAA, but also for innovation. Contests and challenges help solve big problems. One of the biggest really problems for innovators in medicine is getting connected with the people and partners that need the new ideas, products, and services so badly.  You would think it would be easy,  but the Healthcare industry is very slow to accept new ideas. Gathering a crowd of supporters that gets behind a new idea is a great way to overcome reluctant stakeholders,  which is why crowdfunding works so well in healthcare. Crowdfunding Challenges which result in a champion, are even better thanks to the Championship Effect. The winners not only get millions of views, funding and partners, but the all important glow of being The Best.

As the latest AHA challenge begins we encourage everyone who wants to be our next Champion to apply. Also stay tuned for the playoffs on MedStartr.com/AHA or register to attend the fimals at the AHA Health Sciences Forum in NYC on April 22nd. See you in the Winners Circle.

As always, thank you for reaching and being part of the crowd that cares about fixing healthcare faster.

This post was originally published on our about.medstartr.com blog


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