Inspiring Minds

3D printing, or digital manufacturing as it is also known, is a very complicated subject. To get to an end product, it involves lots of different types of scientific backgrounds. Companies that are successful commercializing 3D printing have been able to build a team that is capable of speaking all kinds of different scientific languages that are pushing for the same goal. That end goal being to deliver great technology that people can use, can design with, can build and iterate with, and that helps create products or projects on time.

HP has been investing in 3D printing and because of their history, have the supply chain set-up for and can deliver game changing technology that is resetting the market. Lihua Zhao, the Global Head of 3D Printing Lab at HP Labs and an HP Distinguished Technologist, joined Justin Starbird for the latest episode of Inspiring Minds to talk about the future of 3D printing.

Lihua shared that, “We have been developing our technology for quite a few years. One of the big things you may know is HP has a strong position in delivering fluids. We have a lot of engineering know-hows to build a printing-like technology. (We have worked hard to) leverage a lot of the existing assets and to assess the world’s needs. This combination of developing and delivering our technology for plastic additive manufacturing, as well as for metal, has led to producing goods in a different fashion.”

HP created the technology, called Multi Jet Fusion, to meet the demands of printing for plastic. This type of powder-based system has been integral to being able run around the clock so that there are no time limits for manufacturing and new parts, materials and objects are delivered on time.

“We’re living in a 3D printing world. How do you start with zeros and ones and end up with a physical thing? At HP we fuse this physical with the digital together to bring that experience and that performance to create new technology.”

Zsquare develops high performance, ultra-thin, single-use endoscopes for a broad range of indications. They have created a single-use endoscopic platform that completely eliminates the risk of cross-contamination which is caused by endoscopes that are reused. These endoscopes dramatically cut healthcare cost and improve diagnostics quality.

Asaf Shahmoon, Founder and CEO of Zsquare, patented miniature fibers that allow for unprecedented access for doctors, serving indications that never been available before. "I think that we have started out very ambitiously by reconsidering endoscopy in general. Once we researched the market, we knew that rather than tackle a single barrier or a single trend, we were going to disrupt the way people approach endoscopy. We mapped out basically three components in the clinical, in the healthcare, as well as the market. We set out to create a sustainable technology that would significantly shift all of these elements," shared Asaf on the most recent episode of Inspiring Minds with Justin Starbird.

For example, meeting the demands of the global pandemic has been at the forefront of their scope of work. The Zsquare tiny endoscope, can access the Eustachian in ENT, the Fallopian tube in gynecology and go deeper down the lungs in bronchoscopy.

Asaf explained "I think that from the clinical aspect, we needed an endoscope that was from one side flexible enough but at the same time, very small in order to go inside areas that no other endoscope can go, but still provide high-resolution images. In terms of health care, we had to solve the cross-contamination problem that is actually affecting the entire environment of the multi-use. I think that specifically in these days when a pandemic is being spread around the globe, we're witnessing the magnitude of cross-contamination. Therefore, single-use endoscope can play a vital role in avoiding this."

Vocera has always worked under the philosophy of following the customer and developing solutions centered around human-centered design techniques. Meaning that in order to design your product to be effective and to support the workflow in the business, you need to be immersed in the business and understand what happens from a workflow perspective.

As Kathy English, the Chief Marketing Officer of Vocera told Justin on this episode of Inspiring Minds, "The thing about healthcare is it's always changing. A nurse's day is never the same as it was intended to be when it started out when you end the day, because you have patients crashing, you have doctors coming in and wanting to talk to the nurse at any given time. You have new orders, you have new patient arrivals. It's this dynamic environment and the only way to design a product that's going to solve for that is to be immersed in it."

Kathy explained how the product managers actually go onsite, follow the clinicians, and understand what happens on any given day and the way that workflow might need to change. The team at Vocera is inspiring folks each day to solve communication problems in healthcare.

EVP of Healthcare Solutions at DJO Global, Steve Ingel, joins Justin Starbird to talk about working to continue to innovate and meet customer demands in an ever changing world.

DJO, the 7th Largest Orthopedic company in the world, is a leading global provider of medical technologies designed to get and keep people moving. The Company’s products and software solutions address patient care from injury prevention to rehabilitation after surgery, injury or from degenerative disease, enabling people to regain or maintain their natural motion.

The DJO software platform, MotionMD, recently won a Gold Edison Award for its web based, integrated solution, with Internal development teams. Steve shares how "we test new features and modules on our own business (insource/outsource), and then also pilot with direct Customers for Voice of Customer and work closely with industry leaders and Industry groups and associations. Recently we reached 3 Million Patient Agreements, have well over 2,500 locations across the US and now Canada using our software, 25k providers, and integrated with 47 EMR vendors. We did a very rapid pivot to tele-health to support Customers with unique software features, and we continue to add more features to our platform to meet evolving Customer and Industry needs."

Listen as Steve explains how... "nobody else in the industry is as uniquely positioned as DJO to deliver on the continuum of care promise. Nevertheless, we continue to focus on the innovation gap, on solving real Customer and market needs, provide even greater value, while also leveraging our strengths. My goal is to constantly challenge my teams to widen our competitive advantage."

Steve and DJO are a great example of how to lead and continue to innovate as the world changes all around us.

Dan Harden, CEO and Founder of Whipsaw joins Justin Starbird today to discuss leading a company through adversity. Dan and his team are a group of true pioneers and innovators in the product design space.

Dan shares that, “We bring that attitude to our clients, that optimistic like good old fashioned American, “let's roll up our sleeves and solve this problem” attitude lives in those companies so strongly that it's benefited us during this pandemic. Our clients feel that they're really grateful to us for sticking with them and helping them through this difficult time.”

Listen as Dan talks about how his team works explaining that it’s really just about the celebration and the joy of creative problem solving.” Everything that we do stems from this belief and this purpose, that the world can be a better place. If you think openly and creatively, we live and breathe innovation. It is our way of expressing ourselves. It feels natural.

If you are not familiar with Whipsaw, they have had a lot of big hits ranging, from Google Chromecast, Nike FuelBand many products for Brita, Dell products. The list goes on and on. They’ve helped clients produce and ship well over a thousand products since Dan founded the company back in 1999.

Listen now.

Industrial Technology Research Institute is located in the northern part of Taiwan, Hsinchu, won two Edison Awards for 2020 for their contributions to innovation.

In the first of their two wins, ITRI took the Edison Award Gold in the Adhesives category for their product Celluad, a product developed in part by Dr. Lin, Research Director of Materials Research and Development at the company. Dr. Lin joined Justin Starbird and explained how Celluad was created using cellulose, an organic material found in plant cell walls, this adhesive is low-cost, strong, water-resistant, and environmentally friendly.

Compatible with existing manufacturing processes, Celluad provides excellent adhesion when applied to plywood, flooring, and lumber core board. Most importantly, ITRI’s adhesive is completely free of formaldehyde, a carcinogenic chemical found in the resin used to construct most artificial wooden boards. In this way, ITRI offers an adhesive solution that is effective and affordable as well as healthier for manufacturers, consumers, and the environment.

The second award ITRI received this year was bronze in Cellular Research for iKNOBEADS, the world’s first and only biomimetic magnetic beads capable of fighting cancer by stimulating, expanding, and strengthening T cells through imitation of the immune system. Dr. Chen also joined Justin and worked directly on their development, explains that the knobby shape which gives iKNOBEADS their name and makes them so effective was the result of a happy accident that occurred while experimenting with different bead sizes when it was found that the addition of texture to the beads increased expansion rate. Because of this, iKNOBEADS not only fight cancer but do so with an incubation period reduced by three to four days, reducing opportunities for contamination and saving money.

Listen as Dr. Lin and Dr. Chen talk through innovation, commercialization and what winning an Edison Award has meant for ITRI.

Jenny Yiu, Director of Operations at Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Limited (https://www.nami.org.hk/en) in Hong Kong, joins Justin Starbird to talk about how NAMI achieves technological advancements and commercialization of technologies that are developed within their organization. NAMI focuses their research and development on five market sectors which have the highest potential; construction, electronics, energy, environmental, and healthcare. As of this posting, NAMI has already commercialized over 20 products that have launched to the market in 2020.

Jenny shares that "... We (at NAMI) believe in this miniature (nano) world of materials because our focus is on the materials. Materials can take on distinctive chemical, electrical, magnetic, mechanical, optical, and other properties. When working at the nano-size, our researchers are able to exploit these properties and we leverage our cutting-edge equipment, laboratory and infrastructure to create solutions that will have commercial success."

Listen as Jenny and Justin discuss the business model, the types or relationships that are successful, and insights on what can work to help you commercialize your next project.

Wayne Liu, SVP of Perfect Corp, joins Justin Starbird to discuss how a hardcore technology company applies their innovation to the beauty industry.

Yes, to their roots, Perfect Corp incorporates R&D, engineering and innovation to all of their projects. According to Wayne, "...More than two-thirds of our employees are really technically driven. However, it's not only technology. The spirit of the Edison Awards is really how to apply the technology into the real world and commercialize it, and then create benefit for the majority of the people. That's really something we are looking at. We use our technology to create a product, and then we find a place where it can be useful and can benefit all the people. Then we commercialize, and get the business successes."

That business model is confirmed by winning the Edison Award. Wayne adds that, "we recognize that we are having an impact on the market which we are choosing, which is the beauty industry. We are really mainstream now."

Listen as Wayne shares how Perfect Corp is getting set to celebrate their first 5 years!

This is the Sanitizing Solution that could "Re-open the World!" Chris Vazzana talks about www.Klean-Pak.com and the journey to a whole new product line with Host Justin Starbird.

In true Edison fashion, Chris and his team asked themselves if, "... there is a way that we could take some of our existing core technology and change it up so that it can be consumer-ready?"

On this Inspiring Minds Podcast, one exciting piece we learn from Chris is how he and his team went over to their Director of R&D's house (because of the Covid-19 quarantine) and they sketched out and developed an entirely new product with a couple of other folks and a couple of our key engineers here. They said, "We can take the core technology that we have, change some orifices and pressures and inlets and outlets, make it simpler and make it consumer-ready and be able to put a sanitizing and disinfecting solution into the apparatus and allow for the mixing and the ratio mixing to occur."

Incredibly, the team was able to take 25 years of experience in technology and existing products and reconfigure it all to be in a new application that could help us open up society, help us open up the world!

Ryan Morris, Exec. Chairman of Software Motor Company, has always viewed business and companies as vehicles for solving important problems in the world. He shares and explains the SMC mission is to transform all motors in the world to be optimally efficient systems.

Software Motor Company, a 2020 Edison Award WINNER, is poised to disrupt an industry that relies on patents over 100 years old. As the leader of SMC, Ryan shares how his quest started at a very young age and continues to evolve as the company keeps breaking down barriers. Listen as Justin and Ryan discuss innovation, best practices, and true leadership during the most challenging of times.