Medtech investors are pursuing statistical outliers

I was pleased and proud to be invited to be faculty at the Bio BootCamp held at the BIO meeting where 15,000 people converged on the Boston Convention Center on June 5, 2023.

What a meeting! The Bio BootCamp was attended by other former faculty and there was some very animated discussions about funding and what venture capital and medtech angels were looking for in investments. I can't remember who it was that said that “Medtech investors are pursuing statistical outliers”, but it was notable enough that I used it for the title of this article.

After the BIO meeting, McKinsey sent me this article, titled ‘The creative process is fabulously unpredictable. A great idea cannot be predicted’. The timing could not have been better. Below are my takeaways from this great article.

What should a CEO do to foster great design, nurture the fragility of new ideas, and manage group dynamics that can stall and impel creativity?

  • One of the most valuable relationships a CEO can have is to work with a team member who has a practical (not academic) ability to create.

  • To make that team member’s idea relevant, they need to work with a like-minded group of people. However, the complexity of ideas and the creative process can be exacting and unusual. That complexity may not fit well within a sizable group of people because the activities may not be predictable or measurable. Here’s why (insert link)

    • Complexity in team management can be a very predictable result of having greater numbers of people work together when developing new concepts.

    • What creating isn’t:

      • An easy-to-institutionalize process that can be recorded in an SOP or measured in a spreadsheet.

      • A predictable process with easily defined timelines and milestones.

    • What creating is:

      • A process championed by people that have a genuine appetite to create, are motivated to understand the nature of the process, to be curious and aware of the impediments to creating.

      • A process championed by people that accept that the creative process is astoundingly unpredictable. A disruptive idea cannot be predicted.

      • A process that can be unfamiliar and require patience as concepts develop.

      • There are no absolutes except all the problems that the creative idea connects to. Of the hidden potential of the idea, there’s nothing of any certainty.

        • The distinction between an idea and a product is that you’ve resolved the problems.

          • That technology prevails. When someone says, “You can’t do this for these reasons,” it means that there are still problems to be solved. Once they are solved, the idea shifts into becoming a reality. If the problems aren’t solved, it remains an idea.

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