Join me for my guest lecture on “Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors” as part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track in the MBA International Business Management and Leadership curriculum at the Hochschule Kempten, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany on June 01, 2019.
Join me for my upcoming guest lecture on “Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors”as part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track in the MBA International Business Management and Leadership curriculum at the Hochschule Kempten, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany on July 26, 2020.
In this track, we also discuss the teaching case study ‘Boehringer Ingelheim: Leading Innovation’ (available at Harvard Business Review) featuring Stephan Klaschka’s corporate career as an innovator and intrapreneur at Boehringer Ingelheim.
This case study was written by the Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and is used for education by universities and colleges across Europe, America, and Asia.
Join me for my guest lecture on “Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors” as part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track in the MBA International Business Management and Leadership curriculum at the Hochschule Kempten, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany on June 01, 2019.
Join me for my upcoming guest lecture on “Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors”as part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track in the MBA International Business Management and Leadership curriculum at the Hochschule Kempten, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany on June 01, 2019.
In this track, we also discuss the teaching case study ‘Boehringer Ingelheim: Leading Innovation’ (available at Harvard Business Review) featuring Stephan Klaschka’s corporate career as an innovator and intrapreneur at Boehringer Ingelheim.
This case study was written by the Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and is used for education by universities and colleges across Europe, America, and Asia.
Sign up for this unique professional development opportunity, where health and wellness professionals and social innovators from organizations around the world will come together to innovate in this online course.
Four years ago, I helped to launch the “Social Intrapreneurship for Innovation in Health and Wellness” program of ASHOKA in cooperation with Boehringer Ingelheim. With overwhelming success, the program was repeated every year since 2014 and is being offered again this year from April 24 thru June 2, 2017!
Who should sign up?
Sign up for this unique professional development opportunity, where health and wellness professionals and social innovators from organizations around the world will come together to innovate in this online course.
What is Social Intrapreneuring?
Social Intrapreneurship is a methodology for cultivating and advancing social innovation within institutions by adopting agile, strategies while building essential skills such as leadership, empathy, teamwork and change-making. This 5th edition of the course is sponsored by the Making More Health initiative – creating a healthier world for individuals, families and their communities through social entrepreneurship and intrapreneurial thinking.
Where do I sign up?
Check out the course sign-up page: http://bit.ly/socintspring2017
Space is limited and based on a first-come, first-served basis. Participants will also be vetted based on criteria and fit for the course. We strongly encourage Boehringer Ingelheim employees, as well as health and wellness social entrepreneurs and professionals to apply.
Course Details
Application Opens: NOW
Application Deadline: April 13th
Course start date: April 24th
Course end date: June 2nd
Expected Time Commitment: 2-3 hr/week time-flexible, self-paced and interactive.
Questions?
If you have any questions about the course, please feel free to email the organizaers at courses@ashoka.org
Join my session on “Building a Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem in a Global Corporation” in the Innovation Culture & Ecosystems track on March 21.
What my session is about?
Large pharmaceutical (and other) organizations struggle with the tectonic shifts and fundamental changes across the landscapes worldwide. The traditional mindset and business models are failing. A rejuvenating and holistic transformation effort is needed to get nimble again and adapt to the new reality.
How do you change a stagnant innovation culture and create a sustainable ecosystem within a global organization that stands the challenges of real life?
As an example, this case study discusses the comprehensive yet practical approach that mobilized hidden talent and resources transforming Boehringer Ingelheim, a Global FORTUNE 500 pharmaceutical company, from within on a global scale. It generated exponential returns and fundamentally changed the culture of the organization from leadership training and managerial decision-making down to bringing grass-root ideas to a break-through and new career paths for employees.
What is the Problem?
The issue is universal and not limited to a pharmaceutical or healthcare company: There is no lack of great ideas aiming beyond incremental improvement at the grassroots of large organizations. There is also no lack of funds or support for break-through ideas on the top of the hierarchy; in fact, leadership is constantly seeking for good ideas. However, there are many obstacles bringing them together.
One problem is how to connect the people with great, disruptive ideas with the ones that have the authority and resources to making them happen in the organization?
A second problem is how to find and vet the ideas that have a game-changing potential and develop them with limited risk?
The third problem is that even with executive support it can be hard to implement a new idea against the resistance of the organization, which rejects them as disrupting the equilibrium of the status quo.
The proposed session illustrates and discusses the real-life experiences of building and operating a holistic and sustainable framework that successfully addressed the issue, overcame resistance on many levels, and yielded an exponential return-of-investment. It resulted in a visible and measurable way changed innovation mindset and changed behaviors throughout the organization to bring disruptive ideas and projects to life.
Where do I find more Information on the Topic?
Visit my blog OrgChanger.com to read more about intrapreneuring with case studies and real-life success stories!
The Art of Innovation: How to Become a “Partner of Choice” is an insightful interview with seasoned innovation professionals discussing what it takes to build a Partner-of Choice-relationship with Open Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.
The Art of Innovation: How to Become a “Partner of Choice” is an insightful interview with seasoned innovation professionals discussing what it takes to build a Partner-of Choice-relationship with Open Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.
Technological advances like Star Trek’s “Tricorder” affect healthcare faster and deeper than we seem to be aware of. It poses the legitimate (and serious) question whether we will need physicians anymore in the future!
This post is inspired by recent events, when I was approached to moderate a controversial discussion with an expert panel at an international health innovation event in Europe. The topic featured: “Disruptive Innovation in Medicine: Will physicians soon be obsolete?”
Science Fiction – for real?
50 years ago the original TV series “Star Trek” introduced a most fascinating and visionary healthcare device, the ‘Tricorder.’ Remember how Doctor McCoy (and his successors in more recent Start Trek versions) perform comprehensive medical examinations by simply moving the device over the patient’s body to diagnose their condition?
This technology is now becoming reality, user test are scheduled to start in September 2016. – The question is, how will it influence the medical profession? Will we need physicians in the future and if so, will their work be different for what they do today?
Stuck in today’s medical factory model
Let’s take a quick step back to look at why the Tricorder changes the paradigm of the past centuries as well as our current healthcare system, where the physician plays a key role to diagnose and treat our illnesses.
The internet led to a decline of our reliance on the medical experts around us (at least for the bulk of non-emergency care). Patients and caregivers discovered the abundance of online content to gain broader and deeper insights into health topics, to find up-to-date research information or to explore new treatment options. Global online communities of patients and caregivers form around numerous illnesses to share and exchange information and individual experiences across disciplines and borders.
Nowadays patients often enter a doctor’s office armed with research results and specific therapy options as well as a keen awareness of their own economic power pushing the physician towards delivering on the patient’s specific requests. From a patient’s perspective, in many cases, the physician degraded from a consulting health professional to a dispenser for prescriptions.
The physician on the other hand is limited by what diagnosis and treatment options the payers allow, i.e. are willing to pay for, and remains trapped spending much time to navigate a bureaucracy established by the various insurers and payers. Not being able to focus on practicing medicine but distracted by administration is frustrating also for physicians, who have stepped up to improve the patients’ health to the best of their abilities.
Frustration with today’s health factory model (image: whatsnext.nuance.com)
It does not surprise that a typical medical practice -from a patient’s perspective- looks like a factory: the patients get lined-up while the doctor hops from one to another in an efficient flow spending minimum time on each individual.
Overall, we already know our healthcare system being not overly efficient and way too expensive. From a patient’s perspective, it’s focus feels far off their individual health and care.
Beyond the limits of human capability
Even the best trained physician remains a human being with biases and limitation just as everyone else. We can also not realistically expect a physician to keep up with the 5,000 latest research articles on heart disease alone, to digest and interpret them as well as translating them swiftly into their medical practice.
At the same time, computers with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning algorithms are already becoming capable of providing better and more treatment options with fewer errors with quick access to the internet’s vast sources of medical data and the most recent healthcare information for all kinds of user groups.
The picture is not much different for the “self-informed patient.” It is in the nature of the (online) beast that some information sources are more credible than others, which induces significant risk for layman consumers of this information. Incomplete, cherry-picked and at times questionable, outright wrong or inapplicable medical information in untrained hands can do more ill than good for the patient.
It’s a race that humans cannot win anymore, neither patients nor doctors.
The next step: Fiction becoming reality
The Tricorder can be seen as a way as the next evolution of automation – scary as it might sound initially, freeing up the physician and medical staff for other tasks may not be a bad thing.
It is a big step towards ‘automating healthcare’ by building an affordable and mobile diagnostic device that can reliably detect the presence or absence of an array of common illnesses better than an individual physician. This is what the ongoing Qualcomm ‘Tricorder’ X-Prize challenge is about.
What the final design will look like, we will see. Here is a glimpse by two of the seven finalist teams.
It awards $10,000,000 for a mobile device that cover vital signs, consumer experience, and diagnostics across a set of 12 distinct diseases as well as their absence. In fact, the winning device needs to cover indications from a variety of medical fields (see below table, source: X-Prize) with its results beating ten board-certified physicians.
Tricorder X-Prize requirements
The winner(s) are to be announced in just a few months out. To my surprise, this groundbreaking innovation challenge goes widely unnoticed – at least in Europe, from my recent observation.
A new side of healthcare
The Tricorder will only be the first version of a new class of healthcare technology. The first Tricorders may become available at the entrance to hospitals, medical practices, workplaces or in public health kiosks already in place at Walgreen, CVS and there alike over the coming years. They may pop up everywhere you hang out and have a few minutes to spare. Perhaps, you will have to undergo a quick screen of your health status to ensure the absence of contagious diseases before entering areas with many or vulnerable people such as nurseries, retirement homes or entertainment events.
Imagine how fast the second and third version will aim high with added features, miniaturization, better portability, user convenience, lowering cost, and so on. Order your own Tricorder via Amazon or pick it up at BestBuy or the Apple store. Some of its functionality may become available part of your next ever-smarter smartphone, smartwatch or other wearable device.
As a bottom-line, you will no longer need to see your doctor for a diagnosis. You may even collect relevant vital signs or perform a laboratory test on your own device anytime and anywhere.
Medical doctors – a dying profession?
With technology delivering affordable quality results, the key question remains: what happens to the physicians and their staff if key responsibilities such as a reliable diagnosis and selecting the most promising treatment may no longer be in their job description?
It seems obvious that most of what doctors and their administrative helpers do today may not be needed in the future. We already see trends emerging that drive radiologists, for example, out of their diagnostics business:
Cancer Research UK crowd-sourced identifying cancer by asking citizens to participate and commissioning a Genes in Space game for mobile devices designed to actually map patterns that help scientists spot DNA faults.
In recent competitions artificial intelligence (AI) systems get “strikingly close” to humans in detecting breast cancer, for example.
Where did the medical doctors go?
Technology will take over triage, diagnosis and decision-making regarding treatment options. Much of the administrative staff becomes obsolete. Fewer doctors will be needed. Their focus shifts to delivering the much-needed empathetic human care – and this may not be a bad thing, since this critical field of care seemed to have lost its place in the medical practices today.
It will open a new competition with nurses who already occupy much of this care space today and at a more affordable cost. Where exactly the line will be drawn time will tell.
My question to you
– How do you envision the future of medical professionals to change?
Please share your thoughts!
On April 20-21, 2016, Singularity University, the most innovative and forward-looking institution, has chosen to host their SingularityU Germany Summit in Berlin—one of the most vibrant cities in the world. SingularityU Germany Summit is a local Chapter and community organization of Singularity University. It is one of the largest two-day events in Europe aimed at bringing awareness about exponential technologies and their impact on business and policy to thought leaders and executives from breakthrough companies.
What can you expect at SingularityU Germany Summit?
Leading experts from the global high-tech community will present the latest trends and cutting-edge developments in Mobility, Organization, Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Computing, Robotics, 3D Printing, Machine Learning and Design Thinking. Together we strive to inspire and empower European leaders and influencers in using exponential technologies to solve today’s most pressing issues. SingularityU Germany Summit is an ideal platform to network for both alumni as well as first time attendees, leaders, government representatives, entrepreneurs, investors, NGOs.
500 attendees ranging from CEOs to young innovators from across the globe are expected to attend the event. Together we will explore issues such as: How can technological evolution be transformed into a sustainable and value-based growth for any industry? What ethical standards and responsibilities do global leaders have to account for?
Read this insightful “Taking the entrepreneurial approach” interview conducted by Eyeforpharma on the impact of hierarchy and how executive mindset inhibits adapting to the rapidly changing commercial landscape. It outlines how “intrapreneurs” and internal “angel investors” can get large, mature organizations moving again!
The prestigious Ivey Business School of the Western University in Ontario, Canada, published an insightful new teaching case study on intrapreneuring and corporate innovation titled “Boehringer Ingelheim: Leading Innovation” in which the case writers, Professor J. Robert Mitchell, Ph.D., and Ramasastry Chandrasekhar, follow the footsteps of the newly appointed innovation director.
Meant to raise questions and serving as a learning opportunity for graduate students in academic program around the globe, this case study lifts the corporate curtain a bit to show how innovation through intrapreneuring really happens and decision points along the way.
The newly appointed director of Innovation Management & Strategy at Boehringer Ingelheim, a German-based multinational pharmaceutical company, is finding his way forward in his firm’s new, first-of-its-kind role, which is central to the company’s growth rejuvenation strategy. His job has a threefold mandate: to build internal networks, to establish internal structures and to leverage internal ideas. His biggest challenge, however, may be transforming the organization’s DNA. The blockbuster business model that has characterized the company for decades is no longer appropriate. Instead, the firm needs to develop healthcare products available to end users over the counter. This shift in strategy requires innovative changes in distribution, delivery and customer focus. To accomplish this goal, he needs to institutionalize innovation so that it becomes sustainable. But in doing so, he must also identify the metrics for assessing progress. The case provides an opportunity for students to step into the shoes of an innovation leader, to develop an innovation roadmap for the organization in the face of uncertainty and to understand how to engage in innovation leadership at various levels of a global enterprise.
Learning Objective
This case has two key objectives. First, this case provides students an opportunity to grapple with the difficult decisions associated with innovation in an uncertain environment. Second, this case highlights that anyone has the ability to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and to lead innovation. The case divides the attributes of an innovation leader into five components: observing, questioning, experimenting, networking and associating. It shows the real-life experiences of a manager doing seemingly routine activities, who evolved into a leader who transformed the DNA of a global enterprise. The case also provides a template of the tasks, responsibilities and value-added changes as an individual moves progressively within an enterprise from an operations manager to a senior manager to an innovation leader. This case can be used either toward the beginning or toward the end of any course that addresses innovation and creative thinking in a large organization. At the beginning of a course, it illustrates the challenges of acting in the face of uncertainty in a large organization. At the end of a course, the case provides an opportunity for students to apply what they have learned about innovation, entrepreneurial thinking and innovation leadership.
When we talk about disruptive innovation, we can easily agree that going from the days of dim candle light and sooty oil lamps to electric light was one of these breakthrough innovations, right? Its icon, the lightbulb serves as our symbol for a great idea today.
When you ask around “who invented the lightbulb?” the answer “Thomas Edison” first comes to mind – and the answer is wrong! Truth is that we can give credit closer to 20(!) inventors of the lightbulb! – How so?
Thomas Edison patented the first practical and commercially viable incandescent lightbulb in 1878 and a revised design in 1879. In addition, he offered the first efficient electricity supply system for households and businesses, which laid the foundation and cleared the path for mass-producing light bulbs in 1880. His design was an evolution from previous, inferior designs and enabled by improved technology.
No worries, we would not stay sitting in the dark. It appears safe to say that even if Thomas Edison was never born, the practical incandescent lightbulb would have been developed around the same time – by someone else.
Looking back in history, Humphrey Davy invented electric light in 1802; more than 75 years before Edison. His “arc light” was unsuitable for mainstream application though it found specialty uses even today. Many more designs for incandescent light and lightbulbs were developed by several inventors, but neither were they practical nor suitable beyond demonstration stage. Prominently, Joseph W. Swan built a working prototype of a “light bulb” in 1850 – well before Edison.
Entrepreneurial Competition
Edison had access to improved technology such as a better vacuum pump for his breakthrough design. This technology was not available to previous inventors. Edison also developed an efficient and economical way to distribute electricity when earlier designs drained batteries quickly. (A nice example, by the way, on how a product can go a long way when bundled with a complementing service.)
On the flip-side, Edison knew of his limitation too. He made carbonized Japanese bamboo glow as filament between two electrodes knowing that carbonized Tungsten was the superior material. However, the technology was not available at the time to produce a thin Tungsten thread. We had to wait for William D. Coolidge to produce the Tungsten filament for General Electric in 1910, which is still the preferred material to illuminate our modern incandescent lightbulbs today.
This situation is typical and comparable to many big ideas that entrepreneurs work on today. There is much competition among entrepreneurs, so every good idea usually has a handful of teams working on it independently and head-to-head at the same time. Thus, it is highly likely that, if not Edison, another inventor would have come up with the lightbulb design we are so familiar with today.
R&D as a Legacy
Perhaps, the even more impactful and lasting heritage of Thomas Edison are not his inventions, useful as they are. His products such as the lightbulb, phonograph, quadruplex telegraph, mimeograph, etc., have been replaced over time by more advanced technology.
Nonetheless, Edison has changed the way we discover concertedly today. Until his time, inventors matched the stereotypical image of a lonely genius experimenting and inventing in their lair burning the midnight oil over some ambitious idea. Edison established the first research and development (R&D) organization in his famous Menlo Park lab, where a large number of researchers worked together in an orchestrated way to find solutions to specific problems coordinated strategically and systematically concerted. Edison has industrialized research!
Until today every research-driven company or organization worldwide follows in Edison’s footsteps! What an impressive legacy!
Summary
Disruptive innovations tend to have their origin in incremental steps and competition among inventors. First working individually and now increasingly in teams or even distributed R&D organizations across country borders.
A key success factor here is building trust and incentives within the team in order for all individual contributors to share information and findings freely.
The broader, cross-functional approach to research helps to identify ideas and technologies from other disciplines that can serve as stepping stones. Edison used a better vacuum pump, which made his design possible. Later, the capability to manufacture a thin Tungsten wire allowed General Electric to take the lightbulb the next level.
As the saying goes, “innovation happens at the intersections of disciplines.” The development of the lightbulb serves as a nice example proving it to hold true once again. Thus, innovation benefits by drawing from advances in other disciplines.
So, is disruptive innovation a myth?
Back to our original question, the story of the lightbulb is a great example for a breakthrough innovation with vast ramifications that disrupted and shaped the we live and work around the globe.
It can, however, not be seen as just one big and isolated scientific step but rather a series of many little steps in combination insights from other disciplines including manufacturing, economics and marketing leading to broad adoption that changed the world.
Only when it all comes together you have a disruptive innovation like Edison’s famous design. And it was still not the end. The journey continued to evolve with a Tungsten wire and later fluorescence, halogen and LED lights.
In this light, every disruption seems as yet another incremental step, doesn’t it?
CURE and Yale, in collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, presents “Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation.” In an increasingly digital age, healthcare stakeholders can access significant amounts of data and knowledge using various platforms. Critically, this “big data,” represents a vast quantity of complex and diverse information. While payers, providers, healthcare experts and the pharmaceutical industry have the capability to analyze this data to gain insight, this information can be overwhelming to patients. This BioHaven event, moderated by Richard Foster, has convened a panel of experts to explore the topic of “big data,” the role of the patient in data analytics, the role of payers and what actionable data represents. Further discussion will explore the state of the art, including discussing national hospital systems using big data and local ones in CT and at Yale. Finally, the discussion will conclude with discussion about effectively incorporating big data into operations and where the field is headed.
Special kudos to my valued colleague Faye Lindsay, who was instrumental in pulling this event together!
Some of the topics the moderator and panelists will consider:
Defining and Exploring the topic
Tell us what “big data” means to you and why it is important. Give us one example which illustrates the best use of big data to date.
What is the role of the patient in data analytics? Does it benefit them? Do they naturally do it? How error prone are the data they provide directly?
What is the role of the payer in all of this. Can they get the data they need to better set rates? Will “big data” help or hurt the payers?
What is actionable data? What are the three major areas where we are making progress?
State of the Art
Where is the best state of the art in using data to improve outcomes in the US? How do we know that is true?
What hospital systems or MCOs are most advanced?
How are we doing in CT compared to other states? How do we know?
What is the state of the art in healthcare info tech/big data in the US. Where? Why? What do we need to do to catch up?
Unanticipated Consequences
Will all this measurement result in intense, and from time time, unproductive rivalries between docs, or hospital systems?
How can the providers use “big data” and not put at risk the effectiveness of current medical care delivery processes which have takes years to define and perfect?
Specific Subtopics
Big Data and the bottom 5%
We know we spend $1.35 T on 5% of the population. Do we know who they are and how we can best treat them. How much can we expect to reduce the cost, or improve the quality of the health care delivered to these patients?
Big Data and Quality
Integrating Big Data into Operations, effectively
What is coming?
Who is controlling the pace of advance in Big Data these days – Academia (who), the Payers (who?), the providers (who?) the Feds (who and who in HHS/CMS?) What about the role of the National Cancer Hospitals. Or other specialized (by disease/condition) providers (e.g. DaVita)
Moderator:
Richard N. Foster, PhD, Emeritus Director, McKinsey and Co; Lecturer, Yale School of Management.
Dr. Foster is an emeritus director of McKinsey & Company, Inc. where he was a Director and Senior Partner. While at McKinsey he founded several practices including the healthcare practice and the private equity practices, the technology practice and innovation practice. From 1995 to 1998 he led McKinsey’s worldwide knowledge development.
At Yale, Dr. Foster teaches “Managing In Times of Rapid Change” and serves as the Executive in Residence at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. Dr. Foster’s research interests are in the relationships between capital formation, innovation, and regulation. Dr. Foster has written two best-selling books: Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986) and Creative Destruction (2001), both of which were cited as among the “ten best books of the year” when they were published by the Harvard Business Review.
Dr. Foster’s work has appeared in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as several dozen articles in research and popular journals. Dr. Foster was recognized as one of their ten “Masters of Innovation” in the past century. He was the external leader of the Concil on Foreign Relations Study Group on Technological Innovation and Economic Performance which led to the publication of Technological Innovation Economic Performance (2001, Princeton University Press).
Panelists:
Harlan Krumholz, MD, Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Professor of Investigative Medicine and of Public Health (Health Policy); Co-Director, Clinical Scholars Program; Director, Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.
Dr. Krumholz’s research focuses on improving patient outcomes, health system performance and population health. His work with health care companies has led to new models of transparency and data sharing. His work with the U.S. government has led to the development of a portfolio of national, publicly reported measures of hospital performance. These measures also became part of several provisions of the health reform bill. He is currently working with leaders in China on government-funded efforts to establish a national research and performance improvement network.
Dr. Krumholz is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology, the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Rishi Bhalerao, MBA, Director of PatientsLikeMe, a free patient network and real-time health research platform.
At PatientsLikeMe Rishi manages major relationships with industry partners. Prior to joining PatientsLikeMe, Rishi spent several years as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and more recently, as an innovation consultant, at a firm started by Prof. Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School. He earned an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Engineering.
You Xi
Director of Business Analytics at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (BI)and leads a team of analysts conducting analysis across all BI’s portfolio and communicating findings and strategic insights to internal stakeholders (Marketing, Sales, Managed Markets, Sr. Management etc.).
The key deliverables include using various data sources to measure performance, build promotional mix optimization modeling, behavior segmentation, portfolio optimization, etc. Prior to BI, You was a consultant at ZS Associates and then held various management roles in the pharmaceutical industry including Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Novartis.
Michael Matteo
Mike Matteo is chief growth officer at Optum, where he is responsible for creating and enabling growth across the company. Matteo focuses on the needs and opportunities of Optum’s customers and how the company can deliver creative, innovative solutions that meet their objectives. Prior to bringing his passion for modernizing the health care system to Optum in 2012, Matteo served for four years as chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare National Accounts, where he expanded the company’s industry-leading position in the large-employer marketplace. Prior to becoming CEO, Matteo led business development efforts for UnitedHealthcare National Accounts, where previously he worked in product development and was instrumental in designing and launching the company’s first consumer-driven product innovations. He joined UnitedHealth Group in 1997 as a strategic account executive, helping many of the company’s largest employer clients meet their health care objectives.
Before joining UnitedHealth Group, Matteo was with Physicians Health Services, where he served the needs of major clients as an underwriting director and senior account executive. He began his career serving in multiple roles with Traveler’s Insurance Companies. Matteo graduated magna cum laude with honors from the College of the Holy Cross, and participated in the Columbia University Executive Management Program. He is on the boards of the MetroHartford Alliance, Hartford YMCA, and Connecticut Science Center, and served as chairperson of the Greater Hartford Arts Council Capital Campaign.
Why is this a billion dollar question? – The traditional business model of the pharmaceutical industry is broken. The focus shifts to incentivize patient-centric outcomes, prevention and behavior change in the global battle against a mounting wave of chronic diseases such as diabetes. In search for a new business “beyond the pill” the pharmaceutical industry joins other stakeholders in the healthcare system to align and pull in this same direction. First data-driven results are highly anticipated – well, here they are, so don’t miss this milestone event!
It is not without irony when a leadership team complains about their talent. As the saying goes, “Leaders deserve the talent they hired.”
Looking into the Abyss – Not kidding!
Let me give you an idea how bad it can get. Here is a real-life scenario I was asked at address as a consultant not long ago: A global leadership team identified the need to diversify their management across a distributed, global division. Business results were lagging, bureaucracy stifling and fresh ideas nowhere to be seen let be implemented. Despite an outspoken commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, the ‘corporate immune system’ and ‘group-think’ resisted much needed change with repercussions for those questioning the status quo or thinking differently out loud. Data-driven paralysis by analysis was the daily mode of operation. – You get the picture.
The leadership team had tried filling open positions by hiring the usual ‘best and brightest’ with a focus on expert skills and solutions they would bring from their previous employer – it did not solve the problem. It was common practice to hire staff for their expertise, primarily; the term used was “to hit the ground running.”
As if the situation was not bad enough already, the brightest brains have left or where about to leave. They so drained the ‘leaky pipeline’ of talent even more. Since we know that “talent attracts talent” also the opposite appears quite likely. Thereby, the quality of leadership team overall weakens and entails the nasty downstream effects for the staff and the organization as a whole. Obviously the situation was home-grown, which added a sensitive political dimension the whole situation.
The blunt question stuck with me, does the top leaders actually know what talent they need? What are their criteria for ‘talent’ when they search, so you would recognize it when you see it? And, do they have the guts of hiring someone who actually looks at things and truly thinks differently, comes up with unorthodox solutions and possibly has a very different profession background, career path and experiences?
Let’s leave this ‘case study’ here and step back to look at the bigger picture.
Fighting the wrong battle?
Sadly, there were many hidden assumptions at work that never surfaced or articulated. For example, the steepest careers were made by employees sharing the same professional discipline as their leaders, so the assumption was that only a specific professional background would qualify a candidate. Another ironclad assumption was that talent is hard to find – after all we read about this “war for talent” raging out there, as Steven Hankin of McKinsey coined it so dramatically, right?
I respectfully disagree. While it makes sense to hire from the outside for certain purposes such as short-term for specific skills or experience for a project or long-term for the right mindset and development potential, for example, it makes little sense to me to neglect the talent you already have. My take was not that there is a lack of talent but a lack of being able to identifying talent.
Talent Mismanagement
It seems that talent acquisition and development have eroded from an an art form to a dry and rigid process that -obviously- doesn’t work all that well for this organization. Little attention was paid to talent identification and retention within the organization or mindset and cultural fit of candidates, for example.
Here are just some examples for common practices that inhibited internal talent to develop and grow – and eventually drove employees away:
Internal applicants for open positions were in practice only considered when the already did the job they applied for. How is this supposed to work? Where is the potential for existing staff to develop and seize opportunities?
We know little about new hires but we a know a lot about our existing employees. What may look like an advantage for the employee often plays out the other way: This knowledge can induce a bias and limit our employees getting opportunities when we may still see them as ‘corporate infants’ despite many years of tenure; like parents who can be blindsided of their kids growing up and being ready for the challenge that we tend more easily to entrust a stranger with.
Graduates fresh out of college were preferred over employees meeting the job requirements, for a trainee rotation program, for example. This was despite the fact that the company often had paid for the employees’ advanced degrees. These employees came with relevant work experience and existing networks within the organization which minimized on-boarding efforts. They already knew the company culture and what to expect. So these employees would not get the job despite their qualifications. – How crazy is that? I call this ‘talent mismanagement.’
Take an even closer look: These employees went back to school in parallel to their day job, family, etc. They had proven their tenacity and commitment to develop personally as well as for the company over years – and are denied a chance to apply their new skills. What a waste! No wonder the talent pipeline leaked!
Three ways to identify talent you already have
Traditionally, talent identification is seen as a top-down process where executives pick employees from their pool based on who they believe has potential. The selected ‘talent’ then receives training, development or career opportunities to prepare them for their future leadership role. This was the model applied leading up to the sad situation of the case study above. It favors a bias of group-think and appointing or hiring people like yourself instead of focusing to find the best person for the job.
What if we looked at and selected internal ‘talent’ differently? What if we leveled the playing field to allow any employee to prove themselves and then select talent based on merits?
Here are three proposals on how to identify talent you already have within your organization but overlooked in the past:
Look closely at your employees who went back to school or underwent a significant challenge on top of their core job to learn and develop themselves, such as the ones mentioned above that graduated with advanced degrees in parallel to their day work. This are tough cookies, self-starters, driven to self-improve and seeking career opportunities; ignore them and they will leave. Read also: How to retain talent under the new workplace paradigm?
Seed-fund ideas that meet desirable criteria for disruptive innovation for a proof-of-concept by introducing, for example, Angel Investing within the Company – Insights from an Internal Corporate Venture Capitalist. We have seen colleagues returning with more great ideas after their first one got funded. It works like releasing creative breaks and empowering employees to take charge.
Meaningful change is likely to meet resistance within the organization. It takes determination to change established talent management practices. It takes guts to walk the walk despite a general intellectual agreement.
Time will tell how the above case study plays out for this particular organization, i.e. if the recommendations made will be adopted – or if this consulting appointment degrades to just a feel-good exercise without consequences, since taking action requires real leadership.
HxRefactored 2014 in NYC on May 13-14 at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge.
HxRefactored is a revolutionary design and technology conference that will gather over 500 designers, developers and leaders in health for two days of thought provoking talks, workshops and discussions on how to improve the quality of the health experience. The conference fuses the technical and creative elements of Health 2.0’s Health:Refactored and Mad*Pow’s Healthcare Experience Design Conference.
The earlier post “How you become the next Steve Jobs!” relies on an innovation ecosystem of sorts that already exists in your organization – but what if there is none?
It is not easy and takes time turning an organization’s mindset from what is into what if. It’s a great and rewarding achievement, though, if you can pull it off!
Building an Ecosystem
So, let’s continue there: If you find yourself in a company which does not provide an environment that supports intrapreneuring, you may need to build an innovation ecosystem within a large organization. Practically, you choose to become a midwife helping ideas of your colleagues getting a chance to come to life. This enables other aspiring intrapreneurs to step up, unite and act together.
A transition mechanism to feed these ideas back into the regular organization to become funded and implemented with strategic alignment to company goals
Preparing management how deal with intrapreneurs. You will need to build or teach
A set of relevant intrapreneurialskills for employees
A supportiveteam and for you to maintain
A positive attitude that you will need to persist and push on.
The “School for Intrapreneurs” (SFI)
A very powerful approach and critical puzzle piece in the ecosystem is the School for Intrapreneurs. We achieved to build this school successfully together with help from like-minded and supportive colleagues that I was fortunate to meet along my crooked intrapreneurial career path, if you want to call it that. The underlying premise of the SFI is that innovation skills can be taught, as mentioned in “How you become the next Steve Jobs!” – So, we teach them in this program.
In the end, results count or in the words I adopted from Accenture’s advertisement: “It is not how many ideas you have. It’s how many you make happen.”
Program Focus
Building intrapreneurial skills systematically, however, is only part of the deal. The real value of the program for the participants lays in experiencing the obstacles an intrapreneur faces in an organization themselves: the rocky road of rejection trying to get an idea on its feet.
We prepare our fellow employees in a process where they form supportive teams to collaborate in order to develop their ideas together and experiment. This includes ways to communicate with management in constructive and non-threatening ways on How Intrapreneurs avoid “No!”, for example. It culminates in pitching ideas to experts and potential sponsors for funding, implementation and support.
Executive sponsorship ensures strategic alignment of ideas with company interests. It also increases the chances dramatically for idea transitions into the established processes of the regular organization, i.e. the idea becoming a project to be implemented. This is why special emphasis needs to be put on preparing management how to support and benefit from intrapreneurs; after all, there are risks involved with intrapreneuring for the individual (see also The Rise of the Intrapreneur).
Building the School for Intrapreneurs together: Stephan Klaschka (left) and Gifford Pinchot III
The three courses build upon each other; we named them DOORWAY, PATHWAY and JOURNEY:
DOORWAY is a two-hour awareness course that outlines how innovation happens in large organizations, what typical obstacles are, what is an intrapreneur and already hints towards what is offered in the succeeding courses, PATHWAY and JOURNEY.
PATHWAY is in its core an incubator and accelerator over a 12 weeks with a mix of training and group work. Research suggests that approx. 5% of the workforce have the intrapreneurial spirit, which is consistent with our school’s enrollment numbers. At the end of the course, the teams pitch their developed ideas to a panel of experts and managers representing different business functions for in-depth feedback and advice how to improve the ideas. – Think “Shark Tank” but without bloody teeth. Teams with the most promising ideas then pitch to high level executives for sponsorship and support to turn their idea into an implementation project that enters the regular development processes in the organization. Receiving executive sponsorship is another level of validation that confirms strategy alignment with company interests.
JOURNEY is a six-month course designed to accompany the team implementing their ideas by providing a mix of skill-building and team-customized coaching. – Why is this needed and important?
Even with executive sponsorship the project has neither been budgeted for nor are other resources planned and available for its implementation; so, the project still disrupts the establishment and may trigger resistance.
Shaping company culture
We also ask JOURNEY participants to connect with the next group going through the PATHWAY course to network, share their experiences and help guiding the “next generation” of graduates. The goal is to achieve sustainability of the program by growing the number of like-minded, experienced and connected employees over time.
Over time, an increasing number of graduates keep the perpetualpipeline of fresh ideas open. They also grow to become a powerful, far-reaching and growing network of active change-makers across all parts of the organization as they connect and pass on their knowledge to the next class going through the School for Intrapreneurs.
These are the self-identified leaders of change that share a common innovation terminology, skill-set and experience while they help shaping the organizational culture and mindset on the way towards a sustainable environment, an innovation ecosystem.
Lessons from the School for Intrapreneurs
My key learning from this challenge in a nutshell is as follows:
The personal journey and ‘intrapreneurial experience’ is of utmost importance for the School’s participants – a theoretical training alone does not do the trick. It has to be hands-on and all the way to implementation.
This is why the participants value the safe space to operate and experiment in.
Typically, talent in large organizations is selected top-down by management. In contrast, talent self-identifies bottom-up and based on –intrapreneurial- merits though the School for Intrapreneurs.
Alumni are hardened by their experience and become part of a growing community of capable and engaged change agents.
Successful pitches to executives validate the alignment with company strategy – not only for the individual idea but also broader for the entire program of the School for Intrapreneurs.
The program allows gives more disruptive, risky and outside-the-box ideas a chance that otherwise would not have been brought to executive attention, or so our executive sponsors said.
The School for Intrapreneurs is part of a larger framework to change company culture over time by cultivating discovery and 10x innovation capabilities once again.
“Bridging between US and China in Current Pharmaceutical World – Strategies, Innovation and Implementation”
Join me at 11:15am at the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association‘s new Connecticut Chapter (SAPA-CT) Milestone Celebration Meeting held at Yale University (N107 The Anlyan Center, 300 Cedar St, New Haven, CT, 06511), 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Feb 22, 2014.
SAPA-CT, Boehringer Ingelheim, BMS, and Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Yale (ACSSY) will co-sponsor this event
For MPH, EMPH, PTM, MBA, EMBA, and MD (including dual-degree) graduate students
To be held Friday, November 9, 2012 At Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health
GOALS OF COMPETITION:
Create opportunity for students to apply classroom learning to a real-world healthcare case, using strategic decision making to solve health service delivery problems
Allow students from the three Alliance schools�Business, Medicine, and Public Health�to collaborate in a cross-functional way
Utilize faculty from the three Alliance Schools to advise teams
For more information/rules and to register your team for the competition, please contact Prof. Paul Thurman, Executive Director of the Alliance, at Paul.Thurman@Columbia.edu Students must register by October 31, 2012
OrgChanger.com 