Jeremy Li
CEO and Cofounder, Cision Vision
Qualities of innovative thinkers? Empathy. An idea or a technology is only a starting point. An innovation that truly serves the customers requires the inventor to think from the customers’ perspective and be in their shoes. Empathic thinking involves not only being on a practical level – such as workflow, timesaving, cost-saving, etc.– but also on the emotional level, such as the frustrations and the pains that they are experiencing. Empathic thinking should also go beyond the clinical needs that are directly related to your technical solutions. For example, what are the other pain points that are affecting your customers and how do those factors affect their behaviors? We as inventors need to remove our biases and be empathic to our customers to truly innovate.
Making the most of an invention or innovation? My "secret" is talking to as many customers and users as possible before you start the business. A common pitfall for entrepreneurs is that because many of us have a certain level of experience in the industry we work in, we assume that we already know customers' needs inside and out. This is a risky assumption, especially in the medical technology field. Every hospital, every geography, and every doctor are different. It takes hundreds of interviews before a common thread can be drawn, and an unbiased opinion can be formed. The best part about conducting extensive customer interviews early on is that your enthusiastic interviewees will become your early adopters and champions when your product is ready. So far, we have interviewed more than 2,000 physicians around the globe. As my mentor, Jay Stein, the cofounder of Hologic, taught me, “You can never spend too much time with your customers.”
Deciding which problems to tackle? I look at three main factors: (1) how pressing is the need; (2) how hard is it to bring a product to market; and (3) how much do you love your customer community – because you will have to spend a lot of time with them.
When Angela Belcher and I first discovered that our shortwave infrared imaging technology was particularly useful for imaging the lymphatic system, we were using it in rodent models and were unsure about what the clinical applications can be. More than two thousand interviews later, we identified multiple clinical needs in a variety of clinical specialties. We decided to focus on anatomic pathology grossing because (1) it is a pressing need affecting almost every 20 million solid tumor patients worldwide, and the current solution is extremely laborious and inconsistent; (2) it is a low-risk solution as our development process does not involve clinical trials with live patients; and (3) we fell in love with the pathology community, from pathologists, pathologist assistants, histology technicians, and lab managers, who really are the unsung heroes of medicine and are our last line of defense against diseases. Championing pathology and all pathology practitioners became part of our company's mission.
