Jennifer Whitney, Editor, jwhitney@rodpub.com04.05.06
At the recent annual meeting for AdvaMed, inventor Dean Kamen, founder of the DEKA Research and Development Corporation, spoke to attendees about entrepreneurship and innovation. During his lively session, he made the following observation: “Innovation is a lot like love—everybody wants it, but nobody really knows what it is.” And, also like love, he further noted that innovation typically offers a lot of surprises.
Kamen, who holds more than 150 patents, certainly knows quite a bit about innovation. Therefore, I couldn’t help but want to pass on some of his insights regarding the subject:
1. Anybody who thinks innovation can occur in a
linear fashion is in denial. After all, innovation is all about failure, risk and productivity.
2. Make sure you fall behind schedule early in the development process, because the sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
3. Innovation isn’t just a spectator sport. Projects require management, but management itself isn’t going to drive innovation.
4. Innovation requires leadership—not management, because management requires achievement, whereas leadership leaves room for failure.
As a final piece of advice, Kamen said that true innovation comes from embracing change. “If you’re faint of heart,” he also added, “support the people who are willing to go out there and take a chance.”
At Medical Product Outsourcing, we are always looking to work by such principles. As such, we have found that the best way to do so is to turn toward industry leaders who can help us continue to innovate. This month, I am happy to announce we have two new additions to our Editorial Advisory Board.
John “Jack” Czajkowski is vice president of Advanced Operations at Stryker Orthopaedics in Mahwah, NJ. Having worked in the medical device industry at Stryker and Johnson & Johnson for the past 24 years, he has nearly three decades of experience in manufacturing and industrial engineering, engineering management and plant and production management.
James Ravitz, a longtime columnist for this magazine, is a partner in the food and drug group of Arent Fox PLLC, a Washington, DC-based law firm. He counsels medical device companies on a wide variety of regulatory issues and works closely with manufacturers, distributors, retailers and product vendors in the development of new, innovative products.
Please join me in welcoming both of these fine men to our board!