About This Episode:
Stephen shares with us how the leaders and teams at RDC are overcoming the challenges of innovating in healthcare through a global pandemic. RDC built new capabilities to explore the needs of underserved customer segments. They also are developing solutions at speed in a regulated environment. Stephen talks candidly about how leaders need to exercise new skills and behaviors to focus intently on customers and their problems. All this needs to be done while encouraging teams to move quickly and to get ideas funded and sponsored by executives.
About Our Guest:
Stephen is the VP of New Product Development at Roche Diabetes Care. His focus is on meeting the needs of healthcare professionals and patients by developing strategies & driving hardware and digital innovation. For over 15 years, Stephen has worked in pharmaceuticals, medical devices and Health IT. His extensive experience driving open innovation and establishing new collaborations can be seen with customers and technology players (Amazon, Verily, and other digital health startups). Prior to joining Roche, Stephen worked at Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Epic Systems. Currently, he is an Executive Advisory Board Member at the University of Wisconsin School of Business’ Erdman Center, where he earned his MBA. In his spare time, he enjoys racquetball and photography.
Interested in audio only? We have that too!
Highlights from Stephen’s Session:
00:35 – Special Offer: Free coaching session on our Customer Problem Zoom Tool
01:23 – Introducing Stephen
03:44 – How Stephen and his family are holding up during massive change
07:04 – How the Coronavirus Epidemic has impacted Roche’s innovation work.
11:29 – Examples of how the innovation teams have risen to the occasion during a crisis (reimagining the future of digital, balancing access to busy healthcare customers)
16:29 – Leading a lean innovation transformation and working with Moves The Needle to build new capabilities and explore new customer types, pain points, insights, and products.
22:09 – Survival of the Fastest: Suggestions to leaders on how to create innovation quickly in a regulated environment.
27:24 – Using evidence from customers to convince leaders of solution return on investment, how to navigate the pressure. Earning your right to do more.
30:58 – Metrics to gauge and coach team progress: Are you learning something new to make decisions and choices? “Are you learning something new about the problem and the customer that the problem is highest for?”
40:50 – Sharing the impact to build commitment and momentum to Lean Innovation. Understanding the impact of learning.
43:40 – Success in adopting and scaling Lean Innovation in a highly regulated industry. Making an impact on patients.
45:54 – Stephen shares about his motivation and adventure in coming to University in the US without any prior visit; seeking personal transformation and parallels to Lean Innovation. The advantage of diversity.
53:42 – Who Stephen would like to have dinner with (hint: an Olympian/missionary and an iconic influencer of positive change)
56:36 – Find out what’s unique on Stephen’s desk.