8 Trends driving Innovation and Transformation in Life Science & Healthcare

We recently came across this elegantly written article (see link below) highlighting the productivity challenge that many organisations are facing. Needless to say this also applies to the Life Science & Healthcare sector. In the Life Science industry, innovation, productivity, and ROI are on top of the agenda of many executives. In Healthcare, workforce engagement and patient empowerment are prevailing themes.

But in both sectors, digitalisation and the introduction of new technologies (eg artificial intelligence amongst many others), are raising the tide for many organisations to cope with.  All these transformations are actively happening and they will just not stop. The big challenge for organisations is to cope with these changes, while keeping the daily work going.

While many articles have been written on the influence and trends of technological evolutions, we feel the trends listed in this article are equally important. Put stronger, these ‘human approaches’ and ‘ways of doing things different’ are probably the biggest forces of change to secure the best possible return on investment to be gained from above mentioned hardware innovations.

At Graphene.Works we feel inspired by these 8 trends because they embody our approach as ‘professional tribers*’ and ‘venture builders’ when working with many of you, ambitious entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Of course we discuss tangible business goals and outcomes when we agree to work together on a specific project. This outcome is also where our life long expertise is, we speak this language and understand the challenges of the business, because we have been part of that business and still are part of that business : We have discovered and developed drugs, we have implemented and validated technology platforms, we understand the language of regulation, finance, law or marketing.  But, when you engage us to build and lead that specific team that will work towards your specific desired business outcomes, you also appreciate there is more to us than just our vast experience in small and big organisations. You appreciate that we deliberately choose to approach things differently, because innovation and transformation for the the future can only be done when it is done different from how it was done yesterday.

Purpose and value for all involved are close to our heart when we work together, realising your ambition. It is important to us that that everybody we work with, actively experiences that he/she is contributing to shaping that future. When building and leading the team that will focus on your specific business goals, we keep an eye on mastery and intrinsic talent over ‘existing’ job descriptions, and function titles. This may create tension when we compose teams, but we do it for the better good of all involved. Nothing better than to feel the appreciation when somebody, who could not be a core member of the team, admitted this was the best that could happen because it learned him/her where she is really good at, what really gives energy, but also what does not.

Building a focussed team for us, is involving everybody at his/her best, not because titles dictate so. And of course, while we build a team to work with, this is just the start of a network of interactions that will gradually grow when the project evolves. Through this network, we disseminate information in a transparant manner, we collect input, frame decisions, or just prepare decisions that need to made later in the project.

A team, built and led the Graphene-way, is not a closed box, nor a committee, or a status-label, it is hard work, it is confrontational from time to time, it requires trust, it requires transparency, it adapts and experiments, and it does not shy away from changing direction if evidence emerges that an initial route was not the best one.

But above all we stand for servant leadership, distributed decision-making, authentic communication, creative and constructive thinking, honest and candid communication but with empathy when needed.  And always, we could reach the desired business outcomes, we realised ambitions, but we also built bonds for the future and an ever growing network of people that we had the pleasure working with and for.

Together with all ambitious people that we worked with over the past years, we have been building a Graphene-lattice, a Graphene-network of human interactions. We went through good and bad moments, but we had the pleasure realising your ambitions as organisations, teams or individuals.  … capitalising on the 8 trends we just found back in this article.

Let this be the trends that will further drive Transformation and Innovation in Life Science and Healthcare.  For us at Graphene they will be, as we continue to work with all of you ambitious professionals, teams and entrepreneurs.

Written by Kurt Hertogs – March 17th 2019

(* Professional Triber : Experienced professional specialised in building and leading teams for very specific projects with specific business goals)