Author Archives: Arlen Meyers

About Arlen Meyers

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Follow along onSubstack.

Why Diversity and Inclusion Are Entrepreneurial Competencies

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Why Diversity and Inclusion Are Entrepreneurial Competencies

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

A competency is the ability to do something successfully. There are many entrepreneurial competencies. One of them is interdisciplinary teamwork and collaboration i.e. the ability of individuals to form partnerships with a team of professionally diverse individuals in a participatory, collaborative, and coordinated approach to share decision making around issues as the means to achieving improved health outcomes .

In the public health world, D & I means dissemination and implementation i.e. how does a intervention come into common use or become the standard of care. Here is what you need to know about it.

In the education and student success world, D, E & I means diversity, equity and inclusion. Here is the case for it.

In the entrepreneurial world, D, E & I is even more expansive and is measured by:

  1. Your ability to lead high performance teams both face to face and virtually
  2. How you create psychological safety – Here are four ways to boost psychological safety.
  3. The composition of your teams
  4. International representation
  5. Demographic representation
  6. Functional representation (marketing, engineering, finance, etc)
  7. Results
  8. Persona representation: coaches, teachers, cynics, mentors, etc
  9. Listening to both good rebels and bad rebels
  10. The people on your leadership team, advisory board and board of directors
  11. How you incorporate ideas from industries outside of your own. Sickcare cannot be fixed from inside.
  12. How you avoid bias and noise to influence outcomes and variability in decision making.
  13. How you avoid colorism in your sales and marketing approach.
  14. Ownership, not just fairness
  15. Improving your emotional intelligence along the narcissistic-empathy spectrum

Measuring the results or your efforts requires people analytics.

Are you ready to innovate?

I’m a privileged, old white guy who won the ovary lottery. My child of immigrant, first generation to college father got an advanced degrees. Consequently, I was able to grow up in the right ZIP code and take advantage of the opportunities afforded to me by sheer dumb luck. As a result, I wound up being an academic surgeon and worked at the same place for 40 years until I retired as an emeritus professor to pursue my next encore side gig, including working with several non-profits that sit at the intersection of sick care, higher education, biomedical and clinical entrepreneurship and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Four key arguments make the case for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

What are the barriers to leading DEI?

Rather than making leaders solely responsible for their own effectiveness, these researchers allow a balance between managerial competences and the many constraints that limit leaders. With bounded leadership, they look past the leader’s characteristics and consider the many constraints they encounter at the individual, team, organizational and stakeholder levels.

In bounded leadership, there are five distinct abilities leaders require to be effective:

  • Anticipation competence: The ability to predict market patterns and conditions, which are essential to the organization, such as future trends or customer needs
  • Mobilization competence: The ability to inspire employees to put an extraordinary effort into their work
  • Self-reflection competence: The ability to analyze past experiences and draw useful conclusions
  • Values-creation competence: The ability to promote a leader’s values in the organization
  • Visionary competence: The ability to create an attractive vision of the organization, communicate this vision to followers and empower them to implement it

Each of these competencies presents several hurdles: cultural (difficulties in changing values and norms), emotional (strong negative emotions that prevent rational behavior), entitlement (formalized organizational responsibilities and hierarchy), ethical (leaders’ dilemmas), informational (difficulties in processing or collecting data), motivational (problems with inspiring others) and political (office politics and power plays).

Competencies are measured by entrustable professional activities defined by a performance rubric. Creating diverse, equitable, inclusive teams that deliver expected results is one of them. But, getting from said to done takes more than education, training and policy changes.

Being DEI competent is not about changing your mind. It requires changing your mindset.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Why Good Job Interviews Don’t Lead to Good Job Performance

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Why Good Job Interviews Don't Lead to Good Job Performance

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Many hiring managers, professional school and residency interviewers and search executives know there is not a single correlation that links how someone interviews with their on-the-job performance.

“In 30 years of executive search, over 1000 search projects, and interviews with over 250,000 candidates, we cannot find a single correlation that links how someone interviews with their on-the-job performance – as interviews are traditionally conducted by the vast majority of hiring managers.” — Barry Deutsch

Yet interview theater constantly appears at a location near you.

Why?

  1. By it’s very nature, there is a power imbalance so the interviewer almost always has the upper hand
  2. Telling truth to authority can be a non-starter
  3. The process is flawed
  4. Interviewers and interviewees are not trained to interview
  5. There is an inadequate or non-existent job preview
  6. It is almost impossible to understand the culture of a potential organization without acually experiencing it for a while
  7. Interviewers look for personality, not performance, fits
  8. There is bias and the inability to accept cognitive, demographic and psychographic diversity
  9. Here is how not to answer 10 medical school and residency interview questions
  10. The process for selecting those who are interviewed in flawed.
  11. It is impossible to pick your parents or pick your boss
  12. You can’t always trust people to do what they said they would do if you work for them.

How we are filling the sickcare worker pipeline is not working. Interview theater has had it’s run. It’s time for Medical School Powerball.

While you are at it, get rid of exit interviews and annual performance reviews too.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Laddering Up Your Career Portfolio

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Laddering Up Your Career Portfolio

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

A career used to describe your roles in one company throughout your working life, like a career at Monsanto, Deloitte, a university or IBM. But, the workplace and generational attitudes have changed, along with a prolonged life expectancy, so careers now mean something different. Now, a career includes all the roles you undertake throughout your life – education, training, paid and unpaid work, family, volunteer work, leisure activities and more.

In today’s world the term career is seen as a continuous process of learning and development. For physicians, those activities that contribute to a career can include:

  • training
  • education
  • employment
  • work experience
  • community activities
  • enterprise activities
  • employment
  • different life roles
  • volunteer work
  • leisure activities

The traditional career ladder for doctors meant 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school and then 4-6 years of residency or fellowship followed by 30-40 years of practice, if not more. The contemporary career trajectory is much different. Exit ramps exist and clinical practice half-lives are shorter.

Investment advisers often suggest bond laddering as an investment risk management strategy. A bond ladder is the name given to a portfolio of bonds with different maturities. For example, you buy bonds with maturation dates that are 1 year, 3 years,5 years and 10 years with variable returns. When one matures, you retire it and buy another on the ladder. Physician entrepreneurs should consider doing the same with their careers as a way to hedge career risk. Doctors, like most everyone, need some side gigs. But, you don’t want to quit your day job until the time is right.

Career laddering is a also a way to leverage your impact. As you move how you spend your time on one thing to another, the results of your efforts should be more meaningful and impactful, whether it be helping more people, helping to solidify your personal brand or creating a higher return the investement of your time. Think about your position, authority, and influence. How are you using them to positively impact the lives of your sphere?

Instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, diversify your interests and job roles, gradually retiring one to assume another. For example, while clinical practice is the focus of most doctors, take time to build your interest portfolio and dedicate the requisite time and attention to those roles to build value in them. Such roles can be teaching, volunteering, advising, writing, consulting,entrepreneurship or many others. Then, when it’s time, prune or retire one of the roles to assume another on the ladder.

The strategy also applies to advising or consulting. At some point, if you have done things right, people will be coming to you to ask for help. Here are some tips on how to navigate the gig economy.

For example, you might want to apply these criteria to whether you accept your next gig based on fit:

  1. Does it meet your personal and professional needs?
  2. Do you trust the people ?
  3. Do you think the business is viable and how long will it take?
  4. What are the next critical success factors and do you have the knowledge, skills, attitudes and competencies to deliver them?
  5. Are you satisfied with the compensation being offered?
  6. Is there a conflict of interest with other projects?
  7. How much will this intrude into your non-work life and other commitments?
  8. Is the problem the company wants to solve important to you?
  9. How much time, effort and travel is expected?
  10. How much liability is there?

Don’t get stuck in the three boxes of life. Laddering jobs during your career, including after traditional retirement age as an encore career, is a great way to keep you engaged and satisfied.

Here is the case against early retirement. Many of these studies clearly show that health problems intensify after workers qualify for retirement benefits and abate after policies encouraging work are introduced. In addition, there are financial and social consequences.

The word is out. For the first time in 57 years, the participation rate in the labor force of retirement-age workers has cracked the 20 percent mark, according to a new report from money manager United Income (PDF). Some work longer because they want to. Most do it because they think they have to.

What’s more, since social security costs will exceed income in 2020, by delaying retirement ,you will be doing your part for your country’s budget.

You don’t have to do all this full time. Instead you can be a digital nomad or follow the 10/20/30 plan.

Some cities or towns will pay you to move there. Job switching for higher pay is common.

Create a career portfolio and rethink your encore career: You lower your risk, increase your return and can wake up with a smile on your face having made a wise investment.

Image credit: Pixabay

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How marketable is your invention?

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How marketable is your invention?

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Marketability may apply to things i.e. goods or services or people. When it applies to people, we are talking about making them attractive to potential employers or clients. People may study for a degree to improve their marketability. This means that they believe that getting a degree improves their chances of getting either a job or a better job.

Are you looking for a non-clinical career job? Here is how to make yourself more marketable by building your personal brand.

When it applies to things, we are talking about their ability to be marketed or sold. If you are selling your house, you might improve its marketability if you convert the loft into a living area. In other words, converting the loft will make it easier to sell the house.

If you have invented a new medical device, how likely are the multiple stakeholders likely to buy, use or prescribe it? Will they choose it, use it or just lose interest in it? Is your product just another brown cow or is it a purple cow?  Is your new product sufficiently better than the standard of care for doctors to go to bat with administration to change vendors?

SmallBusiness.Chron.com has the following definition of the term:

“Marketability is a measure of whether a product will appeal to buyers and sell at a certain price range to generate a profit.”

The business model canvas is a way to validate your hypotheses about the desirability, feasibility, viability and adaptability of your idea.

But, how marketable is your product and how do you determine marketability in advance? Of course, there are no guarantees the dog will eat the food, but here are some things to consider:

  1. Early on, startups must identify the market type in which they plan to operate. In The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steven G. Blank describes four different types of market:
  • Existing market
  • New market
  • Re-segmentation of an existing market as a low-cost player
  • Re-segmentation of existing market by employing a niche strategy

Winning in some markets is harder than others. For example, entering a “never been done before at scale”, like electric cars, is expensive and takes lot of convincing the early majority to buy it. On the other hand, the upside potential is enormous.

2. In markets where there are lots of stakeholders, personas and members of the buying group, like sickcare, you have to satisfy the jobs, pains and gains or each with a somewhat different value proposition for each one.

3. A “marketability evaluation” is what all inventors should have completed prior to attempting to market their invention. A marketability evaluation basically considers whether the invention is “marketable” within the current and future market. This is extremely important to you since a manufacturer will not license your patent rights for an invention that may be “really neat” but is not competitive with the other products currently on the market.

Here is a quick 20 Factor Invention Evaluation Form that you can complete yourself or have a friend complete. Remember, this form is only effective if you or your friend are honest with the scoring.

4. While you may have determined that your invention has a high marketability, the results are in the execution of your go to market strategy by your sales and marketing team.

5. Marketability exists in a particular moment in time and can easily change by competitive entries, and other threats.

6. The VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world demands that you constantly test your ideas and explore and exploit new business models and products and their marketability.

7. Complacency erodes marketability.

8. Markets constantly change. The modern marketplace is unlike anything seen before in human history. For example, eCommerce allows anyone to order practically anything from anywhere in the world with virtual currency, often with the help of a virtual assistant that personalizes its recommendations so that each person’s buying journey is unique. In this new age, previously reigning marketing paradigms like the 4Ps of marketing are also undergoing a transformation. Welcome to the age of the 4Es instead.

The “4Es” of Marketing are “Experience”, “Everyplace”, “Exchange” and “Evangelism”. Anyone familiar with Marketing theory will recognize that the 4Es draw their basic wisdom from the famous “4P” mnemonic in modern marketing theory.

9. Many startup founders have low marketing IQs

10. Different business models require different marketing strategies and tactics, e.g. direct to patient marketing v B2B v B2B2C

11. Dissemination and implementation among healthcare professionals is a complicated and often unpredictable process. It often takes many years.

12. Successful social media marketing involves finding the right influencers and “sneezers” to help your idea go viral.

If you are a physician entrepreneur looking for investors, or an academic entrepreneur trying to commercialize your idea with your technology transfer office, then the first three questions you will have to answer are:

  1. What is your intellectual property and other barriers to entry?
  2. What is the technical and commercial feasibility of your product?
  3. What is the marketability of your product?

If you fail to convincingly answer these questions, it is likely that you will not pass GO and collect $200. But, given the dismal track record of investor’s and inventor’s new product success and portfolio returns, the exercise might all be marketability theater and just a Wild Ass Guess, that, ultimately, will be tested in the marketplace.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Land Mines of Intrapreneurship

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Land Mines of Intrapreneurship

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity under VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) conditions with the goal of creating user/stakeholder defined value through the deployment of innovation using a VAST business model.

Intrapreneurs are employees trying to act like entrepreneurs within their organizations or non-profits. Here is the textbook of physician intrapreneurship.

Here is how to get your ideas noticed:

If you are trying to develop and deploy an AI solution in your sickcare organization, have you answered these questions?

Here are some reasons why your initiative will fail.

Do you have a VAST edupreneur business model?

Studies show that around 60 to 80% of new products fail. The same is probably true for programs and new educational offerings. It is difficult to determine the exact number of unreported cases, because who would like to talk about his innovation flops? The odds are against you.

So, what are the landmines to detect and avoid?

  1. You did not do your homework because you where unwilling, unable to do so ,or ,you do not have an entrepreneurial mindset and think because you already have 2 people who said they were interested that you could forge ahead.
  2. You did not have an exit strategy.
  3. You did not read the field manual.
  4. You don’t have the right sponsor with staying power.
  5. You tried to bite off more than your stakeholders are willing or able to chew.
  6. You are a bad rebel and chalk it up to “being authentic.”
  7. You do not have the right clinical champions on board.
  8. You have empty seats on the bus or the wrong people sitting in them.
  9. You are making these rookie intrapreneur mindset mistakes.
  10. You are not addressing the dysfunction of teams.
  11. You are not aligned with your organization’s strategy or vision.
  12. You are working in the wrong place with a toxic or fixed culture or for the wrong person.
  13. You don’t have an innovation strategy
  14. You don’t get sales and marketing
  15. You didn’t ask and answer these four questions before you started
  16.  If you’ve got a major change on the horizon, here’s how to avoid three of the most common saboteurs of company transformation. First, understand that significant change will be harder than you think it will be to achieve. Next, be realistic about your organization’s capacity to implement changes. Finally, make sure your organization understands how and why the transformation is important to you.
  17. You have not learned how to win at Survivor  1) Don’t expect friendship. Invest in relationships outside your company to meet your emotional needs; 2) Manage sideways. Your reputation with your peers becomes an important factor as you’re being considered for senior ranks; and 3) Hone your political skills.

If you get too far ahead of your troops, it is hard to tell the difference between you and the enemy. De-risk yourself. Be careful out there.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Should you be a physician entrepreneur?

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Should you be a physician entrepreneur?

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Not every doctor is cut out to be a physician entrepreneur. Are you?

It seems to me there is confusion about physician entrepreneurship, its definition and whether it represents a threat to professionalism. I’m not alone. Is a physician entrepreneur someone who starts and runs a business, or is it something more?

Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity under variable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous conditions. The goal of all entrepreneurs, including physician entrepreneurs, is to create user defined value through the deployment of innovation using a VAST business model to accomplish, in the case of medical professionals, the quintuple aim or, if applicable, shareholder value.

Here are three things to know about physician entrepreneurship.

Because of the many changes in the art and practice of medicine, many doctors have decided to get involved in non-clinical side gigs or, in some instances, leave medicine entirely. Here is a guide to non-clinical careers.

Doctors are practicing the art of entrepreneurship for many reasons:

  1. It helps patients
  2. It’s fun and challenging
  3. It gives them the ability to exercise creativity
  4. It creates alignment and engagement with organization
  5. The profit motive
  6. It creates meaning
  7. It satisfies psychic needs
  8. It provides another sources of external vaidation
  9. It’s a way to get outside of your comfort zone
  10. It allows you to take more risk
  11. The sick care business model is broken and they want to be part of the big fix after feeling ignored and disempowered
  12. They have to to surthrive

Whether you are a pre-med, a medical student, a resident, a fellow or a practicing clinician thinking about beginning the entrepreneurial journey, you should take some time to identify your persona.

You career strategy starts with answering:

  1. Where are you now?
  2. Where do you want to go?
  3. How do you want to get there?

Begin by matching yourself with one of the four core entrepreneurial personas as defined by their willingness and ability to practice entrepreneurship successfully.

The Convinced and Confident know entrepreneurship should be part of their career pathway. In fact, many of them have had entrepreneurial life experiences prior to medical school.

The Curious but Clueless don’t know what they don’t know but are willing to learn more. Many have never held a job in their life. Some might be willing, but unable to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. . Others discover their innerpreneur, and move on.

The I Couldn’t Care Less are unwilling and unable to give it a try. Their attitude is , “I went to medical school to take care of patients, not take care of business”. What they don’t realize is that if you don’t take care of business, you have no business taking care of patients.

The Conflicted have yet to discover their “innerpreneur”, but are conflicted about whether to step outside of their comfort zones and cut the chord.

Your persona will help lead you to the next steps:

  1. The Convinced and Confident: Continue to improve your knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies and learn from your experience.
  2. The Curious but Clueless: Start with education, building your networks and finding mentors
  3. The I Couldn’t Care Less: Pass on entrepreneurship until or unless you change your mind. Here are the many reasons why you should not be a physician entrepreneur.
  4. The Conflicted: Start with the 6Rs of physician career transitioning, beginning with reflection.

Where you are in the thought process will depend on who you are.

Moving from unawareness to awareness to intention to decision to action might show you someone in the mirror you would have never recognized in the past. Or, you might be looking at the same old person.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Challenges of Artificial Intelligence Adoption, Dissemination and Implementation

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Challenges of Artificial Intelligence Adoption, Dissemination and Implementation

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Dissemination and Implementation Science (DIS) is a growing research field that seeks to inform how evidence-based interventions can be successfully adopted, implemented, and maintained in health care delivery and community settings.

Here is what you should know about dissemination and implementation.

Sickcare artificial intelligence products and services have a unique set of barriers to dissemination and implementation.

Every sickcare AI entrepreneur will eventually be faced with the task of finding customers willing and able to buy and integrate the product into their facility. But, every potential customer or segment is not the same.

There are differences in:

  1. The governance structure
  2. The process for vetting and choosing a particular vendor or solution
  3. The makeup of the buying group and decision makers
  4. The process customers use to disseminate and implement the solution
  5. Whether or not they are willing to work with vendors on pilots
  6. The terms and conditions of contracts
  7. The business model of the organization when it comes to working with early-stage companies
  8. How stakeholders are educated and trained
  9. When and how which end users and stakeholders have input in the decision
  10. The length of the sales cycle
  11. The complexity of the decision-making process
  12. Whether the product is a point solution or platform
  13. Whether the product can be used throughout all parts of just a few of the sickcare delivery network
  14. A transactional approach v a partnership and future development one
  15. The service after the sale arrangement

Here is what Sales Navigator won’t tell you.

Here is why ColdLinking does not work.

When it comes to AI product marketing and sales, when you have seen one successful integration, you have seen one process to make it happen and the success of the dissemination and implentation that creates the promised results will vary from one place to the next.

Do your homework. One size does not fit all.

Image credit: Pixabay

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What will it take to create a national medical records system?

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What will it take to create a national medical records system?

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Almost every person that has experienced the US sickcare system has been frustrated by the lack of data interoperability. We are all paying the costs, now pegged at $4.1T. About $1T of the tab is waste.

Here is the case for data interoperability.

Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, is the latest person who says he wants his company to fix that.

Like those that preceded him, he will face:

  1. Stakeholders that don’t play nice with each other
  2. An enormous cost
  3. Trying to create a VAST business model
  4. Inconsistent technical standards
  5. Competition
  6. The lack of a national patient unique identifier system
  7. Privacy and confidentiality issues
  8. A highly regulated system for patients sharing their data
  9. End user resistance to dissemination and implementation
  10. Cybersecurity
  11. Connecting the kaleidoscope of the disparate elements of the US sickcare system of systems, like the VA, safety net hospitals, rural hospitals, academic centers and DOD facilities
  12. Combining financial data with clinical data
  13. Combining research data with clinical care data
  14. Varying levels of data maturity in the system
  15. Accessing data that is created outside of traditional medical service facilities
  16. The growth of retail sickcare and sicktech companies
  17. Harnessing data from the internet of medical things
  18. Integrating artificial intelligence to not only achieve the quintuple aim, but also create shareholder value that will conflict with one another
  19. Winning the “cloud wars”
  20. The lack of trust and growing sickcare technoskepticism
  21. The Cerner VA implentation FUBAR halo effects.
  22. Changing the EMR “SHIT” -single most hated information technology- to a whole product solution
  23. Accessing unstructured data on social media sites
  24. Governance of the enterprise
  25. Regulatory oversight of software as a medical device and digital therapeutics
  26. Low levels of sickcare professional and patient data literacy
  27. Barriers to international data sharing in a era of pandemics and required rapid response
  28. Fax facts
  29. Push back from patients who want to be paid for their data
  30. Decentralized clinical trial data issues
  31. DEI
  32. Leaderpreneurship skills
  33. UI/UX Will he eliminate passwords?

Wouldn’t it be nice if Sickcare USA, Inc. could provide you with the same experience as your bank ATM system?

Is Larry really the smartest person or just in the wrong room?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Changing Your Innovator’s DNA

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Changing Your Innovator's DNA

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

In their book, The Innovator’s DNA, the authors identified 5 parts to the secret sauce of innovative business success:

In thinking about how these skills work together, they found it useful to apply the metaphor of DNA. Associating is like the backbone structure of DNA’s double helix; four patterns of action (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) wind around this backbone, helping to cultivate new insights. And just as each person’s physical DNA is unique, each individual we studied had a unique innovator’s DNA for generating breakthrough business ideas.

Associating is about pattern recognition, connecting dots and seeing what others don’t see.

 These business school professors describe the creative mindset that they believe executives must embrace.

So, A stands for Attention, which is about noticing problems or opportunities that you and others previously missed by changing where and how you look.

L is for Levitation, which means stepping back to gain perspective and make sense of what you’ve seen to reflect on what you need to do differently.

I stands for Imagination, which involves connecting the dots in new and interesting ways to create original and useful ideas. Learn something new every day.

E is about Experimentation, which is about testing your promising idea and turning it into a workable solution that addresses a real need. Here is the value to experimentation in innovation.

Finally, N stands for Navigation, which is about finding ways to get your solution accepted without getting shot down in the process.

Here is another take on the theme

Innovation starts with mindset. Most scientists, engineers and health professionals don’t have it. However, there are ways to develop and change the gene expression by practicing epigenetic exercises. In case you missed that biology class, epigenetics literally means “above” or “on top of” genetics. It refers to external modifications to DNA that turn genes “on” or “off.” These modifications do not change the DNA sequence, but instead, they affect how cells “read” genes.

So, if you want to unlock your innerpreneurial genes, try :

  1. Associating, by realizing that sickcare USA cannot be fixed from inside.
  2. Associating by practicing open innovation
  3. Associating by thinking twice about thinking out of the box
  4. Questioning by being a problem seeker, not a problem solver
  5. Questioning why not instead of why and getting to why
  6. Observing by learning to see around corners. Avoid having to say “I didn’t see it coming” :

Look ahead of the curve – Track the trends and pay greater attention to the external environment. Beef up your information diet and endeavor to “get informed” rather than passively “be informed.”

Think ahead of the curve – Take the time to connect the dots, look for patterns of change, and emerging opportunities. Ask: where will this trend, technology or Driving Force of Change be in 10 years and what might I need to do in response?

Act ahead of the curve – Don’t wait for a trend to overwhelm you, take responsive action today. Disrupt yourself. “We must be willing to learn, unlearn and relearn to get ahead in this fast-paced digital world,” notes Jeff Thomson, president and CEO of the Institute of Management Accountants.

Here are 10 strategic trends that will drive data management. Did you see them coming?

  1. Observing by looking for the clues, not the roadmap
  2. Experimenting by using the business model canvas instead of writing a business plan
  3. Experimenting by applying your clinical or scientific mindset
  4. Networking by building robust internal and external networks
  5. Networking the right way when coldLinking
  6. Networking by learning how to meet up at a Meetup
  7. Networking by growing and engaging your alumni network

David Epstein explains in his book. Range, that specializing and practicing repeatedly works in environments that are “kind”. Tiger Woods excelled because he started young and engaged in a task and tried to do better. There were clearly defined rules and immediate outcomes that provided feedback. Doctors are also in this category and the educational establishment picks medical students who demonstrate narrow and deep thinking.

On the other hand, in “wicked” learning environments and domains, like entrepreneurship, the rules of the game are often unclear and incomplete, i.e. there are VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) conditions, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback i often delayed, inaccurate or both. Sometimes, you have to make up the rules as you go along and they are not necessarily transferable from one industry to the next because of the differences in industry ecosystems and cultures, like sickcare. That’s another reason why the clinical mindset is different than the entrepreneurial mindset and why it is so hard to find doctors with both.

Here are some more ways to sharpen your entrepreneurial skills.

Doctors have the potential to make great entrepreneurs because they have the DNA. No, they are not lousy business people. Downstream gene expression, though, is often a problem.

Image Credits: Pixabay, Design Council

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Sickcare AI Field Notes

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Sickcare AI Field Notes

I recently participated in a conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare. It was the first onsite meeting after 900 days of the pandemic.

Here is a report from the front:

  1. AI has a way to go before it can substitute for physician judgment, intuition, creativity and empathy
  2. There seems to be an inherent conflict between using AI to standardize decisions compared to using it for mass customization. Efforts to develop customized care must be designed around a deep understanding of what happens at the ground level along the patient pathway and must incorporate patient engagement by focusing on such things as shared decision-making, definition of appointments, and self-management, all of which are elements of a “build-to-order” approach.
  3. When it comes to dissemination and implementation, culture eats strategy for lunch.
  4. The majority of the conversations had to do with the technical aspects and use cases for AI. A small amount was about how to get people in your organization to understand and use it.
  5. The goal is to empower clinical teams to collaborate with patient teams and that will take some work. Moving sick care to healthcare also requires changing a sprint mindset to a marathon relay race mindset with all the hazards and risks of dropped handoffs and referral and information management leaks.
  6. AI is a facilitating technology that cuts across many applications, use cases and intended uses in sick care. Some day we might be recruiting medical students, residents and other sick care workers using AI instead of those silly resumes.
  7. The value proposition of AI includes improving workflow and improving productivity
  8. AI requires large, clean data sets regardless of applications
  9. It will take a while to create trust in technology
  10. There needs to be transparency in data models
  11. There is a large repository of data from non-traditional sources that needs to be mined e.g social media sites, community based sites providing tests, like health clubs and health fairs, as well as post acute care facilities
  12. AI is enabling both the clinical and business models of value based care
  13. Cloud based AI is changing diagnostic imaging and pattern recognition which will change manpower dynamics
  14. There are potential opportunities in AI for quality outcome stratification, cost accounting and pricing of episodes of care, determining risk premiums and optimizing margins for a bundled priced procedure given geographic disparities in quality and cost.
  15. We are in the second era of AI that is based on deep learning v rules based algorithms
  16. Value based care requires care coordination, risk stratification, patient centricity and managing risk
  17. Machine learning is being used, like Moneyball, to pick startup winners and losers, with a dose of high touch.
  18. It is encouraging to see more and more doctors attending and speaking at these kinds of meetings and lending a much needed perspective and reality check to technologists and non-sick care entrepreneurs. There were few healthcare executives besides those who were invited to be on panels.
  19. Overcoming the barriers to AI in sick care have mostly to do with changing behavior and not dwelling on the technicalities, but, rather, focusing on the jobs that doctors need to get done.
  20. The costs of AI , particularly for small, independent practitioners, are often not affordable, particularly when bundled with crippling EMR expenses . Moore’s law has not yet impacted medicine
  21. The promise of using AI to get more done with less conflicts with the paradox of productivity
  22. Top of mind problems to be solved were how to increase revenuces, cut costs , fill the workforce pipelines and address burnout and behavioral health employee and patient problems with scarce resouces.
  23. Nurses, pharmacists, public health professionals and veterinarians were under represented
  24. Payers were scarce
  25. Patients were scarce
  26. Students, residents and clinicians were looking for ways to get side gigs, non-clinical careers and exit ramps if need be.
  27. 70% of AI applications are in radiology
  28. AI is migrating from shiny to standard, running in the background to power diverse remote care modalities
  29. Chronic disease management and behavioral health have replace infectious disease as the global care management challenges
  30. AI education and training in sickcare professional schools is still woefully absent but international sickcare professional schools are filling the gaps
  31. Process and workflow improvements are a necessary part of digital and AI transformation

At its core, AI is part of a sick care eco-nervous system “brain” that is designed to change how doctors and patients think, feel and act as part of continuous behavioral improvement. Outcomes are irrelevant without impact.

AI is another facilitating technology that is part and parcel of almost every aspect of sick care. Like other shiny new objects, it remains to be seen how much value it actually delivers on its promise. I look forward to future conferences where we will be discussing how, not if to use AI and comparing best practices and results, not fairy tales and comparing mine with yours.

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