Bridging the gap between digital health startups and established industry players
I was recently at an industry summit focused on the patient experience from a digital standpoint, and I got a chance to interact with leaders from various health systems, big pharma, physicians, investors, and entrepreneurs. One of the panels included innovation leaders from the health systems and the industry talking about how to get to a truly connected patient experience. Each leader was tasked with driving innovative digital solutions for a better patient experience and working with digital health startups. The discussions triggered thoughts from my personal experience in working at a large bio-pharma company and crafting strategies to partner with start-ups to form successful relationships. Having learned lessons the hard way, I wanted to share some secrets to success for making the magic happen with these partnerships.
During the sessions at the summit, I noticed that the challenges and best practices across the very different worlds of “startups” versus “big pharma” and “big health systems”, which we’ll call the “big players”, were similar. While all parties are focused on a common goal — serving the patient — startups and big players usually have fundamentally different perspectives and approaches. In many cases, the underlying infrastructure that enables a startup to deliver an innovative digital solution may be radically different, or even in congruent, with those of big players.
As the market for digital health solutions grows, so does the need for effective collaboration strategies. Irrespective of how your organization chooses to house the team that works with startups, including an innovation group, accelerator, or an incubator, the fundamental building blocks of forming a successful relationship are the same.
Let’s look at the three fundamentals to consider when designing strategies for a successful relationship between “startup” and “big player”:
1. Clearly define a culture of innovation— How does your organization define success when innovating? Would experimenting with new ideas be considered a success, irrespective of the outcome? These are important questions to address with the leadership team. Innovation requires a culture which allows for experimentation and considers failing a success as well. Just like a startup must fail fast to learn and move on to the next idea, a big player should learn to fail fast as well. Neglecting to define the innovation appetite or culture for your organization is one of the biggest mistakes and should be the #1 priority for any leader in an innovation or a transformation role. One of the ways to implement this would be to establish metrics around projects that didn’t achieve their desired outcome. Some examples of metrics could be number of projects stopped before completion, budget and time saved, stage at which the project stopped, and factors that drove the decision to stop the project before completion. The merit in these metrics comes from the lessons learned throughout the process so future projects could benefit from them. So, choose the right metrics for innovation and forge a path towards strong collaboration with startups!
2. Adopt agile processes — Is your organization’s process enabling or inhibiting your progress? Working with small startups that are creating technologies and solutions that didn’t exist before requires rethinking how business is usually done in your organization. What has always worked well in a large organization with hierarchy, infrastructure and processes will surely not work as effectively when engaging with small startups that are more nimble and flexible. You must have heard the word “agile” that gets thrown around quite a bit these days, and agility is what’s needed to collaborate with startups. Do you have an agile mindset in your organization? Is your team trained in agile techniques that can help create new processes and governance models aligned to the evolving needs of the business? It is imperative for organizations today to understand agile methodologies in which a small team of individuals can have the autonomy to own various process components and drive innovation at a faster pace. So, adopt agile methodologies and set your organization up for success when working with startups!
3. Identify and engage champions and advocates — Do you have champions and advocates in the core business who understand innovation and are willing to solve their problems by experimentation? The importance of this could not be stressed enough. Teams in innovation groups, accelerators or incubators are successful when they understand the needs of their business stakeholders and when they have subject matter experts across the organization willing to collaborate on projects. One of the ways to build advocacy is to profile leaders across the organization and identify their appetite for innovation by looking at their record of accomplishment or by having a conversation with them. These leaders would typically also have budget that is set aside for innovation projects. Both are important because depending on the funding model for your team, you might need the champion to fund the project as well. Once you identify your champions and advocates, an engagement plan can be put in place to establish and nurture these relationships. So, find your champions and bring the best startups on board to serve your patients!
These are some of the building blocks that can be helpful when designing strategies for a successful relationship between “startup” and “big player”. I look forward to elaborating on these building blocks in future blog posts and providing further insights to help design a detailed strategic plan when working with startups.
In the end, we are all in the business of serving the patient, and it is important to remember the human at the center while experimenting and innovating.
What are your thoughts around this topic? Are you in an innovation group and juggling how to best collaborate with your startup partner or how to best serve your patient? Please feel free to drop a note below and let’s talk further!
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