GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Editor’s Note:  This is the first in a series of pieces that examine pathfinders who are forging new innovative ways of working in Healthcare.

Healthcare, more than any other single field, seems to be undergoing massive reinvention, underscored by pressing unmet needs. One of the most unusual talks I heard in 2014 was a discussion on empathy and patient centricity as strategy by a leader in Big Pharma, Sheila Babnis, at the Front End of Innovation Conference. As head of strategic innovation for product development at Roche, she opened a window into the way the company is innovating how drugs get developed, focusing on the area of clinical trials. That strategy starts with one word, and a word not always associated with the Healthcare industry: empathy. But for Sheila and her team at Roche, it seems to be core.

Sheila started by challenging all of us to imagine a wholly different world…

• A world where healthcare is personalized and precise
• Where we know so much more about the body and disease
• Where we harness the abundance of data to understand the best way to treat people as individuals
• Where drugs are delivered as part of a package of solutions to help patients care for themselves and live fuller lives
• And where patients have a say and a voice in the development and access to their solutions anywhere, anytime

Imagine health and healthcare integrated into our lives. “Healthcare integrated into our lives.”

That whole riff spoke to me, as it clearly did to many in the audience — and while it is easy to say “patient-centered perspective” it is another thing entirely to hear it authentically delivered from a Big Pharma perspective.

Roche knew they needed to revamp how they do their work , particularly in Product Development. Sheila shared how they began by working with patients, and not just by having them talk to the company once a drug had been approved. For years, Roche had brought in patients to speak with the company on the impact the approved drugs were making on their lives. To hear firsthand from patients was always inspiring. But what if Roche brought in patients to speak with global development teams much earlier in the drug development process—when clinical trials were being designed? What if patients were able to share what living with a disease was like? What if a patient could share insights on what was important in participating in a clinical trial? What would make them participate and what would keep them engaged over the long haul? And what if development teams were able to test assumptions directly with patients? This is where Roche has taken a different path.

Talking to patients BEFORE a drug has been tested in clinical trials and getting them to participate in the design of clinical trials is not an every day occurrence.

Sheila brought that perspective and work to life through a story about one patient, named Sean.,. Sean has a chronic illness—Crohn’s —disease. He’s had Crohn’s disease since his early teenage years. Sheila told us “If you were Sean five years ago, you were not as empowered as we are today to take charge of your health. You had to deal with lots of doctors, and it was tough to reduce or eliminate your symptoms so that you could function as a normally healthy person. Your best options were surgery, diet, or joining a clinical trial that might or might not be close to your home.”

To combat the lack of information and to help manage his disease, Sean took matters into his own hands. He started to connect with other Crohn’s patients. To do this, he started up his own website called Crohnology.

Sheila and her team met Sean two years ago when they were embarking on a journey of redesigning how they conduct clinical trials, interface and connect with patients, and improve the value of their medicines. Today, Sean’s site is helping many other patients living with Crohn’s. Sean is also helping Roche in many ways to revolutionize drug development.

He started by joining one of Roche’s Innovation Advisory Boards, which consists of patients, physicians, drug developers, payers and leaders from other industries who have experience making large scale shifts in their business with the customer in mind. Sean was the critical voice of the patient that was needed. Pharma can talk about what they think may be important to patients, but why not ask them firsthand? And that’s what Roche did. They found out directly from patients like Sean what’s important and what they want in treatment options. This is where Roche’s approach is different by engaging patients in Advisory Boards and sessions with study teams.

Through patient involvement in Roche’s clinical trial development the company has been able to factor in the burden to the patient and get more creative in approaching data collection practices among other things. Understanding the health and lifestyle needs, allows Roche to create clinical trials that patients want to be a part of and increases adherence rates.

Said Babnis…“His advice and guidance has been invaluable to us, ensuring we are designing patient solutions with the patient front and center in our design process.”

Sean is also active in working with Roche Study Teams who design and develop solutions for Crohn’s patients. By participating in the design of clinical trials for Crohn’s patients, Sean was able to share that patients don’t want to travel more than 30 minutes from their homes or wait in a doctor’s office for more than 30 minutes. A change such as having a nurse visit Sean instead of Sean visiting a clinic would make his life and other patients’ lives easier. For Roche a change like this ensures patients continue to receive their treatment and continue to participate in a clinical trial.

“Hearing what is important to Sean and other patients has motivated Roche to continue to pursue new ways of working and thinking. These patients have helped us realize that people need and want drugs that are beyond safe and compliant. Just like Sean, and just like you and me, what they want is quality of life. To not have to worry about being close to home all the time, to be able to eat normal food, hang out with their friends. They want freedom.”

Sheila also shared a comment from a clinical scientist about talking with patients earlier in the process:

“I think building in time to test assumptions and gain feedback from patients early on will change the way we design our protocols going forward. For example, what may seem to look good on paper, may not work in real life when tested with patients. It’s better to know that early on.”

She finished by saying “Looking at our mission through our patients’ eyes has given us a whole new dimension and sense of purpose. This goal is what drives our efforts day in and day out.”

If this is what empathy in action in healthcare looks like, please, bring it on.

In my next blog post I’ll share more on Sheila’s presentation and how co-creation is driving changes.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Dr. Patricia McFate, my godmother, and the first renaissance woman we knew, after our mother, passed away peacefully recently. There’s nothing like death to clarify life.

In appreciation of Patty, as we called her, and her life, I want to recount the example she set for me and my sisters, Amy and Mari, as a woman who simply never stopped learning.  And doing.

As a little girl, I was captivated by her physical presence: tall, strong, lithe, and confident. And verbal. Very verbal. Conversational light emanated from her as she bantered and laughed and argued with whoever was in our living room. She was the Dean of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois, my mother’s best friend, and a fixture in our home on weekends, where she travelled from her Old Town apartment in Chicago. She dated my parents friends, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, among others, but she was independently and autonomously her own person. She became a duo with Sanford Harris, my father’s best friend, a songwriter and raconteur from Chicago’s South Side. They were the indelible drumbeat of ideas, energy and love that we lived within.

Later on, I watched from afar as her career traversed through time and space and knowledge and power and impact: She was, in succession, with a grace, focus, intellect and reach that I can still not fully comprehend:

• A doctor, an M.D.

• Dean of the University of Pennsylvania

• Head of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the Carter Era

• Head of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

• Head of the American Scandinavian Foundation

• Fellow at SAIC — where she became an expert on base security and met her husband, then SAIC’s Chief Science Officer, and Cold War Intelligence expert, Sidney Graybeal and began a beloved marriage of equals. He alerted President Kennedy to the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were both dedicated civil servants.

• Film Documentarian – with her friend the New Mexico director/film-maker Mary Lance at New Deal Films, produced films including Diego Rivera: I Paint What I See, and Blue Alchemy: Stories of Indigo. She passionately loved the color blue.

• Commission of Operas, Board Member, Fundraiser, for the Santa Fe Opera

• Fighter for the arts, preserving the beautiful 1931 Lensic Center for Performing Arts in Santa Fe.

• Dog lover, who celebrated her standard poodle and companion, Max, by building a maze for him in her backyard among the cactus and the red rock.

• Contributor to the ASPCA and animal lover writ large. She especially loved, had a thing, for Polar Bears.

• Yoga practitioner, Tango lover, inveterate reader, traveler, white wine aficionado, friend.

Once, during one of our last visits, I asked her the question “How? How did you do all of this?”

She shot back at me, without hesitating: “I just love to learn.”

What we, my sisters Mari and Amy and I, not so much learned as beheld, witnessed, and understood from Patty goes well beyond any life lessons or platitudes. We were simply blessed to know her, to be in her orbit, as was the rest of the world, which she treated as a garden to be watered and cultivated, tenderly preserved, watched over, protected, and generated, over and over and over again.

Rest in peace, Patricia McFate.

image credit:  Roadtripper.com

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

If you consider yourself an innovator you should traverse at least once, through the very-hard-to-label experience of The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, the resort and casino that is credited for revitalizing the Strip, and building a formidable new brand in what feels like the blink of an eye.  I know. I’ve done it.

Arriving at the front door, entering the digital trance they call a lobby, and beginning to experience that sense of…VISCERAL SURPRISE…is such an antidote to what my old boss, Tom Peters called, the sea of sameness.  It is a reminder of what is possible, what new looks and feels like.

The magic behind The Cosmopolitan is poured decisively every day from a cocktail shaker of imagination, daring, an unswerving belief in originality, and a daily operation that doesn’t sleep in its desire to create experiences “worth returning to.”  It’s also a testament to diversity, in the leadership (experienced Vegas operators meet essentialists who just won’t settle for anything that has been done before), in the product (seemingly endless restaurants and bars that spring from a mix of restauranteur-auteurs and an homage to the Rat Pack era of Vegas elegance) and environments.

Recognizing the two sides of our nature, there’s the zen pool and the night club pool. There’s the boxing ring and Hammam.  And the big red high heels.

When CMO Lisa Marchese spoke at the Back End of Innovation last year, in the words of some friends, “she killed it”…because she talked openly about how hard this is to pull off, and the real grit it takes for a team to build a dream. Together, with CEO John Unwin and Chief Talent guy Daniel Espino, and the rest of their team, they have created The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas to be a waking dream for right now.

The Back End of Innovation conference alights there on October 6 through the 8th.  It includes behind the scene tours of the resort, of Zappos, the Downtown Las Vegas Project and more.

As the conference chair (full disclosure) I fought for this choice because I wanted to help plunge the heavy-lifter innovation crowd, the back-end implementers (who truth be told, often start at the front-end, with insights and ideas) into an EXPERIENCE of innovation — implemented.  It’s human, it’s digital, it’s different, it is relentless in its drive for originality and…it’s a commercial success that is proof that daring to be different has a return on investment.

This is the backdrop for three days focused completely on what it takes to do the work of innovation, and what Stanford d-school’s Bob Sutton calls “the problem of more” i.e., getting more of the people in your organization involved in doing that work with you.  If you want to see, hear, feel, taste, touch and be inspired by a fully implemented customer journey, then come join us!  The BEI conference room rate is a stunning $189 through September 12. Register here while you can!

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Editor’s note – this piece first appeared on one of our favorite blogs, Ideas Lab.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to be bold, aspiring to be bold, fretting over not being bold enough – not just clever, smart or imaginative, but audacious.

The tough part is that the world keeps shifting and taking away the firm ground that would allow us to take action. The rise of new technologies, the flood of analytics and data and the accelerating speed of the global enterprise can complicate decision making for even the most confident executive. So, how do we stay bold?

Recently, GE released the results of our fourth annual Global Innovation Barometer, which surveyed business executives from across the globe to better understand the state of innovation today.

What did we find? Executives are increasingly shaking off paralysis and looking to take control. In contrast to last year, when ”innovation vertigo” was the watchword, they are now searching for ways to make their businesses ”disruption-ready.” This shift signals an openness to adopt new thinking about innovation, implement emerging technologies and create the powerful partnerships they need to succeed.

So, what steps are these executives taking to become efficient, ”disruption-ready” innovators?

• Continuing to focus on collaboration, despite potential risks. As collaboration, especially with startups and entrepreneurs, begins to generate revenues and ROI, concerns around IP protection are easing. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of executives – particularly in emerging economies – are increasingly willing to explore new models of partnership. And almost two-thirds (64 percent) have generated revenue as a result of those collaborations.

• Prioritizing human capital and new skill sets. A strong majority of executives, 79 percent, believe that attracting and retaining talent is critical to innovation. Building on the ”disruption-ready” mindset, data and analytics capabilities are increasingly prized as essential skills.

• Unleashing productivity through Big Data and analytics. A full 70 percent of executives indicate that Big Data will be critical to optimizing operational efficiency, but only one in four is prepared for it. For those who make the jump, 69 percent find that data analytics adds value to the innovation process.

There’s no question that our decisions about innovation are some of the most daunting we face. After all, it’s about the future of our companies. Still, we’re learning that for executives who embrace technological change, act boldly and take steps to become disruption-ready, the rewards are enormous.

Beth Comstock is chief marketing officer at GE. This piece first appeared on LinkedIn and IdeasLab

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Let’s Recap: We began last Monday night in New York City. Here’s what happened and what we’re taking away…(Peter Thum, founder of Fonderie47 and Liberty United tells his story above.)

300 people showed up at Material ConneXion’s amazing midtown digs and material science library, and thanks to a whole host of sponsors and partners – Ommegang beers and Deep Eddy Vodka’s Moo-tini’s and Moo-politans – the mood and conversation flowed. And so did the stories.

This is the first in a series of reports about what we’re doing and learning on our Innovation Cities Tour and it starts with four rather startling things we’re discovering through our Story Exchanges about the role of stories innovation.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Here’s an update on our Innovation Cities Tour – we have over 40 Innovation Storytellers confirmed to date – and we’re looking for more.

We invite you to share an innovation story with us, and the world.

It can be your own story of overcoming resistance, or about your company or how you helped a client do that to bring something new into the world. Or, share a story about your favorite innovator who you believe deserves to be known!

Thanks to partners at HYPE Innovation, submitting your three minute story – in any form (text, slides, video, audio) – is easy. Just visit our storytelling site at https://bit.ly/inno-cities-tour and upload your story.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Somewhere in New York — ON THE ROAD TO OUR 2014 Innovation Cities Tour

Creating a narrative that sticks, carries and sustains you for the long haul is interesting work. First, you have to believe that you have one, then you have to find, state and create it, and then to make it live, to make it real, you have to embody it. Watching High Hopes, the new HBO documentary on Bruce Springsteen last night, about the making of his 18th album of the same name, it was hard not to feel awe at the Boss’s ferocious mix of consistent intensity and and the hunt for brand new creative juice. Springsteen’s narrative of love, hard work, loss and redemption plays out through the Rock and Roll airwaves, and floats across, and shapes, our cultural landscape.

Businesses aren’t bands, but they have narratives too. At least some do. When a business commits to building its brand it’s really in hope of creating a narrative that sticks and resonates with its audience, and draws them closer in a way that marketing simply can’t.

Late last year we launched our 2014 Innovation Cities Tour and went looking for a few good partners. Admittedly not for everyone, we were looking for people that valued stories, enough to partner with us on helping collect and deliver 100 stories of disruptive innovators to the public this year. The first place we went knocking  in New York, was to the downtown offices of Fahrenheit 212. Not because we like them, but because when it comes to story and capital N narrative, they get it. When they started out in business they declared their own —  Money + Magic — as a commitment to only doing work that would produce commercial value, which while it seems obvious, stood out as a gutsy declaration that suggested their focus went beyond the sticky note, the ideation, the concept, the testing, the launch to the cold hard cash of market acceptance. And then they put some of their fees at risk.

So when they agreed to serve as New York city host we were delighted. When we asked them how they use stories in their work, Mark Payne, president and founder, and architect of Money + Magic shared the following with us in public conversation you can listen to here:

“There are always two stories going on when you work on innovation: the story of the customer, and the story of the company. Unless those two can come together in a meaningful way,  you won’t succeed.”

That duality struck and stayed with me. What does it look like to marry up and get those two stories working together? We’ll be exploring that and more with Mark over the coming year as we head out on our Cities Tour. And in act of serious play, a nod to their own duality, they have made a few enhancements to their space to bring their narrative to life — which you can see below.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

We’re not exactly living in the most generous of times.  Bruce Springsteen summed it up recently when he said in his Jimmy Fallon-singing-to-Chris-Christie-as-the-Boss-duet, “it’s been high times on Wall Street, and tough times on Main Street.”

Economic growth, jobs, new skills, mindsets and business models, and a more enlightened society are part of the solution. But perhaps, and based on the wonderful little film I just inhaled, we might also remember that character is key – ours, and our nation’s – to our own well being amidst the challenges, and to the movement required to improve this messy world.

Where Were You on #Character Day?

Enter Tiffany Shlain and the Moxie Institute, who designated March 20, 2014 as #Character Day and gave away the latest edition of their Let It Ripple films: The Science of Character, “which focuses on the neuroscience and social science of how ones “character” develops.”  It’s scientific research disguised as a public love letter to our best selves, a gem of a teaching tool, and another milestone work of art from Shlain and the cloud filmmaking lab at Moxie.

Innovation Excellence believes in the power of spreadable media — we’re students of the the work of Jenkins, Ford and Green and their  book of the same name. Shlain seems to spend most of her waking hours (when she’s not taking her self-imposed Technology Sabbaths) creating it. Spread, share, ripple…she makes it easy for us to grab, grasp her big ideas and make them ours. The name of the series, Let it Ripple, says it all.

My favorite part of “The Science of #Character” is… to quote Shlain:

“There are a lot of new exciting conversations happening around character. One that I find interesting is that there are 7 strengths in particular that can be real game changers in academic achievement, success and happiness. Those 7 are optimism, gratitude, social intelligence, curiosity, self-control, enthusiasm, and perseverance. What about practical application?”

Shlain encourages us to stop, pause, and think: Is what I am about to do a reflection of who I want to be?

The innovation world is notoriously, thankfully, optimistic:  serious innovators are outrageously courageous, full of vision for what’s possible, defiant in the face of what’s not working, ready to pluck any problem as reason if not mandate for transformation.

We see legions of do-ers: practitioners, entrepreneurs, executives, educators, agencies running full tilt steam ahead to fix what’s really broken and to invent what just might be a whole lot better.

And then there are the artists. Thank God for artists!  They illuminate the process with their work, inspire our own work, and feed the creative impulse to play more.  Inspiration like this is not ethereal.  The demonstrable grit (another character trait) of Artist-Innovators like Tiffany, like Peter Thum’s transmutation of AK47’s into jewelry at Fonderie47, or Gregg Breinberg’s vibrant PS22 Choir on Staten Island, or Peter Gelb’s decade of the democratization of opera inspires us to make Innovation Excellence better, more visual, more purposeful.  We are especially thankful that each of them, and you, persevere against…resistance to not change it up.

Craig Hatkoff and Irwin Kula, founders of the Disruptor Foundation and the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards call this phenomenon “rapid meaning transfer.”  Their art helps us get the new idea all-at-once, and use it, to power our journey forward.

The 8 minutes that it will take you to experience The Science of #Character will show what rapid meaning transfer looks like — in this instance it’s what is now known about the science of character, in its most sublime, most spreadable, sharable package — thanks to the generosity of Tiffany Shlain, the Moxie Institute, and the enlightened sponsors who make it possible.

To join the conversation (still going on) from #Character Day and to access the amazing resources Moxie Institute has assembled,  you can jump in here to find a line up of diverse thinkers on #Character.

Tiffany Shlain is a 2012 recipient of the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, and a Disruptor Foundation Fellow. She is the writer-director-producer of the Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change film series, which employs a new kind of collaborative filmmaking she and her film studio call CLOUD FILMMAKING.

The series will include 10 short films over the next 4 years about important aspects of life that connect us. Each of these films is made collaboratively by inviting people from all over the world to send in their own videos. Then once the film is completed, her team offers free customized versions of the film to nonprofits to help spread their message.  She published a “Cloud Filmmaking Manifesto” for the Tribeca Institute Future of Film blog that outlines what constitutes a “cloud film.” Tiffany was invited to share this groundbreaking approach to filmmaking as the keynote for Tribeca Film Festival’s 2013 Interactive Day.