The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

When it comes to tackling some of the hardest medical innovations, patience becomes a fundamental requirement. Because of the regulatory challenges of getting government approval, its not uncommon to wait for years before an innovation is approved for use. That assumes you can solve all of the technical and medical issues before even starting to secure government approval.

In the case of Dean Irwin, the innovation he envisioned needed innovation in components before the product could be created. How long would you be willing to wait? In Dean's case, that wait was for 15 years.

Patience

Waiting 15 years to bring an innovation to market is the ultimate example of patience. Why did it take so long? To achieve the design objectives, the product needed innovation in a number of areas including smaller and cheaper lasers, improved delivery approaches and confidence in the vision of using lasers to address a medical need that no one else considered.

So how do you fund innovations that take so long?

Dean's company took the basic elements and went after a market that was less demanding and that could generate enough margin to fund the long term vision. The result was a bootstrap approach to ensure control of the vision and funding to drive the innovations needed.

What's the status of the innovation Dean has waited so patiently for?

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear how Dean Irwin's patience is saving lives.[/callout]

About Dean Irwin

Dean Irwin is founder and CEO of Ra Medical Systems. Since founding Ra Medical Systems, he has spearheaded the successful design, development, and commercialization of the Pharos excimer laser for dermatology as well as the investigational DABRA excimer laser and DABRA catheter for peripheral artery disease (PAD).

Over his career, he has published numerous engineering and scientific papers including consulting to the Plasma Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute of Plasma Physics at Nagoya University in Japan. Dean has been issued eight patents in the field of ultraviolet light and phototherapy, four patents for advanced display technologies, and has numerous patents pending for methods, devices, and catheters for cardiovascular applications.

Show Links:

• Ra Medical Systems
• Dean Irwin on LinkedIn

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear how Dean Irwin's patience is saving lives.[/callout]

We've all heard the mantra to never give up. We say it to our kids in the hopes that they stick with something that has impact. In the case of Dean Irwin, this mantra as child set him on a path that few could imagine.

Dean left school at 13 to become an entrepreneur. His first effort was studying and repairing radios and TV back when they relied on vacuum tubes. This foundation let to him becoming and engineering consultant at MIT working on nuclear fusion.

How do you go from a kid of 13 fixing TV's to working on nuclear fusion at one of the most prestigious universities? Through passion, curiosity and willingness to use his understanding of the basics and applying them to new technologies. It turns out that understanding the basic of vacuum tubes is directly attributable to understanding and building the elements needed for nuclear fusion.

Never Give Up

Dean credits his upbringing that encouraged his interests to learn, understand and apply his ideas in unique ways. To never give up on his dreams and interests. Even if that means going in directions that sometimes don't seem logical.

I'm not sure as a father and a grandfather I could get comfortable with one of my kids or grand-kids leaving school at such a young age to go live their dream. Does that sound too conservative or too logical? Maybe. As I've preached many times, we all need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And when we see youth who are on a path to transform society, we sometimes have to be willing to let go.

Dean Irwin is one of those rare bread of entrepreneurs and innovators that can see what others can't and create life impacting innovations.

About Dean Irwin

Dean Irwin is founder and CEO of Ra Medical Systems. Since founding Ra Medical Systems, he has spearheaded the successful design, development, and commercialization of the Pharos excimer laser for dermatology as well as the investigational DABRA excimer laser and DABRA catheter for peripheral artery disease (PAD).

Over his career, he has published numerous engineering and scientific papers including consulting to the Plasma Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute of Plasma Physics at Nagoya University in Japan. Dean has been issued eight patents in the field of ultraviolet light and phototherapy, four patents for advanced display technologies, and has numerous patents pending for methods, devices, and catheters for cardiovascular applications.

Show Links:

* Ra Medical Systems

* Dean Irwin on LinkedIn 

We've all heard the mantra to never give up. We say it to our kids in the hopes that they stick with something that has impact. In the case of Dean Irwin, this mantra as child set him on a path that few could imagine.

Dean left school at 13 to become an entrepreneur. His first effort was studying and repairing radios and TV back when they relied on vacuum tubes. This foundation let to him becoming and engineering consultant at MIT working on nuclear fusion.

How do you go from a kid of 13 fixing TV's to working on nuclear fusion at one of the most prestigious universities? Through passion, curiosity and willingness to use his understanding of the basics and applying them to new technologies. It turns out that understanding the basic of vacuum tubes is directly attributable to understanding and building the elements needed for nuclear fusion.

Never Give Up

Dean credits his upbringing that encouraged his interests to learn, understand and apply his ideas in unique ways. To never give up on his dreams and interests. Even if that means going in directions that sometimes don't seem logical.

I'm not sure as a father and a grandfather I could get comfortable with one of my kids or grand-kids leaving school at such a young age to go live their dream. Does that sound too conservative or too logical? Maybe. As I've preached many times, we all need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And when we see youth who are on a path to transform society, we sometimes have to be willing to let go.

Dean Irwin is one of those rare bread of entrepreneurs and innovators that can see what others can't and create life impacting innovations.

About Dean Irwin

Dean Irwin is founder and CEO of Ra Medical Systems. Since founding Ra Medical Systems, he has spearheaded the successful design, development, and commercialization of the Pharos excimer laser for dermatology as well as the investigational DABRA excimer laser and DABRA catheter for peripheral artery disease (PAD).

Over his career, he has published numerous engineering and scientific papers including consulting to the Plasma Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute of Plasma Physics at Nagoya University in Japan. Dean has been issued eight patents in the field of ultraviolet light and phototherapy, four patents for advanced display technologies, and has numerous patents pending for methods, devices, and catheters for cardiovascular applications.

Show Links:

* Ra Medical Systems

* Dean Irwin on LinkedIn 

We've all heard the mantra to never give up. We say it to our kids in the hopes that they stick with something that has impact. In the case of Dean Irwin, this mantra as child set him on a path that few could imagine.

Dean left school at 13 to become an entrepreneur. His first effort was studying and repairing radios and TV back when they relied on vacuum tubes. This foundation let to him becoming and engineering consultant at MIT working on nuclear fusion.

How do you go from a kid of 13 fixing TV's to working on nuclear fusion at one of the most prestigious universities? Through passion, curiosity and willingness to use his understanding of the basics and applying them to new technologies. It turns out that understanding the basic of vacuum tubes is directly attributable to understanding and building the elements needed for nuclear fusion.

Never Give Up

Dean credits his upbringing that encouraged his interests to learn, understand and apply his ideas in unique ways. To never give up on his dreams and interests. Even if that means going in directions that sometimes don't seem logical.

I'm not sure as a father and a grandfather I could get comfortable with one of my kids or grand-kids leaving school at such a young age to go live their dream. Does that sound too conservative or too logical? Maybe. As I've preached many times, we all need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And when we see youth who are on a path to transform society, we sometimes have to be willing to let go.

Dean Irwin is one of those rare bread of entrepreneurs and innovators that can see what others can't and create life impacting innovations.

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear Dean Irwin's story and how he is changing our lives.[/callout]

About Dean Irwin

Dean Irwin is founder and CEO of Ra Medical Systems. Since founding Ra Medical Systems, he has spearheaded the successful design, development, and commercialization of the Pharos excimer laser for dermatology as well as the investigational DABRA excimer laser and DABRA catheter for peripheral artery disease (PAD).

Over his career, he has published numerous engineering and scientific papers including consulting to the Plasma Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute of Plasma Physics at Nagoya University in Japan. Dean has been issued eight patents in the field of ultraviolet light and phototherapy, four patents for advanced display technologies, and has numerous patents pending for methods, devices, and catheters for cardiovascular applications.

Show Links:

• Ra Medical Systems
• Dean Irwin on LinkedIn

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear Dean Irwin's story and how he is changing our lives.[/callout]

Over my career, twice I found myself part of what I would consider high performance teams. These are teams that achieved far beyond expectations. Once you've been a part of a high performance team, you will do everything in your power to find another team just like it.

What I struggled with was unlocking why some teams are high performing while others were so bad I did everything in my power to get off of them.

This begs the question: Is there a formula or set of rules to creating and maintaining high performance teams?

Yes – per the authors Linda Adams and Audrey Epstein, of The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor and Authenticity Create Great Organizations.

In their book, they establish the framework that there are four types of teams.

* Saboteur: Team members are working actively to sabotage the project and team members.

* Benign Saboteur: Depending on the the situation and personal goals, team members will throw others under the bus with no commitment to the success of the team and its projects.

* Situation Loyalist: Team members support the team and its members depending on the situation and personal objectives.

* Loyalist: Team members are fully committed and have each others back.

Compared to saboteur teams, loyalist teams are 2000x more likely to be viewed as highly effective by their stakeholders.

Mindset of High Performance Teams

In their book, the authors layout what they believe are the tell tail signs of the loyalists team mind set:

* We win or lose together

* We have each other's backs

* We are committed to the team goals

* We hold each other accountable

What type of team are you on?

Which team are you a part of? Take a free survey offered at Trispective.com

About The Guests:

Audrey Epstein's 20-year corporate HR career has focused on her passion: driving executive, team and organizational excellence. Prior to her consulting experience, Audrey managed learning and development functions within large companies and non-profits. Her experience includes building state-of-the-art leadership programs for executives, high potential groups, and special populations such as executive women.

Linda Adams brings over 40 years of experience as a Human Resources professional in several large international corporations and as an Executive Coach to the senior leadership of several top North American businesses. Linda focuses her work on creating dynamic and sustainable change in the way executives interact and create results for their teams and their organizations. She works with senior executive leaders to articulate vision, build alignment, establish accountability and drive to attain results for their organizations.

Links:

* Trispective Group

* The Loyalist Team

Over my career, twice I found myself part of what I would consider high performance teams. These are teams that achieved far beyond expectations. Once you've been a part of a high performance team, you will do everything in your power to find another team just like it.

What I struggled with was unlocking why some teams are high performing while others were so bad I did everything in my power to get off of them.

This begs the question: Is there a formula or set of rules to creating and maintaining high performance teams?

Yes – per the authors Linda Adams and Audrey Epstein, of The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor and Authenticity Create Great Organizations.

In their book, they establish the framework that there are four types of teams.

* Saboteur: Team members are working actively to sabotage the project and team members.

* Benign Saboteur: Depending on the the situation and personal goals, team members will throw others under the bus with no commitment to the success of the team and its projects.

* Situation Loyalist: Team members support the team and its members depending on the situation and personal objectives.

* Loyalist: Team members are fully committed and have each others back.

Compared to saboteur teams, loyalist teams are 2000x more likely to be viewed as highly effective by their stakeholders.

Mindset of High Performance Teams

In their book, the authors layout what they believe are the tell tail signs of the loyalists team mind set:

* We win or lose together

* We have each other's backs

* We are committed to the team goals

* We hold each other accountable

What type of team are you on?

Which team are you a part of? Take a free survey offered at Trispective.com

About The Guests:

Audrey Epstein's 20-year corporate HR career has focused on her passion: driving executive, team and organizational excellence. Prior to her consulting experience, Audrey managed learning and development functions within large companies and non-profits. Her experience includes building state-of-the-art leadership programs for executives, high potential groups, and special populations such as executive women.

Linda Adams brings over 40 years of experience as a Human Resources professional in several large international corporations and as an Executive Coach to the senior leadership of several top North American businesses. Linda focuses her work on creating dynamic and sustainable change in the way executives interact and create results for their teams and their organizations. She works with senior executive leaders to articulate vision, build alignment, establish accountability and drive to attain results for their organizations.

Links:

* Trispective Group

* The Loyalist Team

Over my career, twice I found myself part of what I would consider high performance teams. These are teams that achieved far beyond expectations. Once you've been a part of a high performance team, you will do everything in your power to find another team just like it.

What I struggled with was unlocking why some teams are high performing while others were so bad I did everything in my power to get off of them.

This begs the question: Is there a formula or set of rules to creating and maintaining high performance teams?

Yes - per the authors Linda Adams and Audrey Epstein, of The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor and Authenticity Create Great Organizations.

In their book, they establish the framework that there are four types of teams.

• Saboteur: Team members are working actively to sabotage the project and team members.
• Benign Saboteur: Depending on the the situation and personal goals, team members will throw others under the bus with no commitment to the success of the team and its projects.
• Situation Loyalist: Team members support the team and its members depending on the situation and personal objectives.
• Loyalist: Team members are fully committed and have each others back.

Compared to saboteur teams, loyalist teams are 2000x more likely to be viewed as highly effective by their stakeholders.

Mindset of High Performance Teams

In their book, the authors layout what they believe are the tell tail signs of the loyalists team mind set:

• We win or lose together
• We have each other's backs
• We are committed to the team goals
• We hold each other accountable

What type of team are you on?

Which team are you a part of? Take a free survey offered at Trispective.com

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear how you can create high performance teams.[/callout]

About The Guests:

Audrey Epstein's 20-year corporate HR career has focused on her passion: driving executive, team and organizational excellence. Prior to her consulting experience, Audrey managed learning and development functions within large companies and non-profits. Her experience includes building state-of-the-art leadership programs for executives, high potential groups, and special populations such as executive women.

Linda Adams brings over 40 years of experience as a Human Resources professional in several large international corporations and as an Executive Coach to the senior leadership of several top North American businesses. Linda focuses her work on creating dynamic and sustainable change in the way executives interact and create results for their teams and their organizations. She works with senior executive leaders to articulate vision, build alignment, establish accountability and drive to attain results for their organizations.

Links:

• Trispective Group
• The Loyalist Team

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear how you can create high performance teams.[/callout]

Have we become addicted to innovation? I love the next new thing as much as anyone as evidenced by all of the stuff I've accumulated. As an innovators, the challenge is how to get the innovation timing right to satisfy the market and stay ahead of the competition.

The pull on companies to create the next great product or service is hard to avoid. Consumers are asking and your competition is on your heals.  Its the innovation version of “keeping up with the Jones”.

But innovation is not a one and done type activity. Once you start, the customer is always looking for what's next. The pace of innovation drives your activity and its not slowing down. In fact, its accelerating.

The Goldilocks Problem

As an innovators, can you or should you speed up your innovation refresh rate? This is a Goldilocks problem. You go too slow and your competitions will blow right past you. Go too fast and your customers cannot absorb what you are creating. You risk creating innovation exhaustion.

You need to get the innovation timing “just right”.

Behind The Scenes Look At How I Do It

You are probably asking yourself, if this is so hard, what hope do you have in getting it right? Don't expect perfection.  There is NO magic formula that when performed generates innovation planning success.

Innovation is messy and unpredictable.  So how do you set the right flow?

Four Step Process To Set Your Innovation Timing

* Set your funnel “output” rate. For example,  At HP, the rate of innovation from the Innovation Program Offices was 2 per year for HP. In my current role as a CEO with ~200 people, we have an innovation rate slightly higher than what we had at HP.

* Define your stages in the funnel. I use a four stage funnel/gates to ensure oversight of ideas in different stages of development.

* Calculate out how many total ideas to achieve your “output” rate. For example, at HP we set our metrics as:

* Market Validation = 20 ideas

* Customer/Product Validation = 10 ideas

* Limited Launch/Trial = 5 ideas

* Global Launch = 2 ideas

* Pace yourself. Its easy to get enthusiastic on the ideas you have in the funnel. To achieve long term, sustainable innovation, you need to prioritize your funnel and be discipline on 2 per year.

The above may sound simple but trust me, its a lot harder than it looks. Leaders within your organization will derail the funnel at ever turn. Be prepared to defend and protect the funnel.

Hard Learned Lessons

Some lessons I've learned when leading and managing innovation organizations:

* Do not over extend your rate by pushing more innovations than the rate you've set. For 2 ideas per year, we required 35 ideas in the funnel (see metrics below). If you were to go to 3 ideas per year, you would need roughly 52 ideas in the funnel. Think about that carefully.

* Be aware of what your customers (or internal catching organization) can absorb. If you exceed their innovation adoption rate, you will burn them out with innovation exhaustion.

Listener Question: Starting A New Business

This week, we took time answer a listener question:

Answer: Yes. Listen to this weeks show to hear my advice to Roberta on starting a new business.

Have we become addicted to innovation? I love the next new thing as much as anyone as evidenced by all of the stuff I've accumulated. As an innovators, the challenge is how to get the innovation timing right to satisfy the market and stay ahead of the competition.

The pull on companies to create the next great product or service is hard to avoid. Consumers are asking and your competition is on your heals. Its the innovation version of "keeping up with the Jones".

But innovation is not a one and done type activity. Once you start, the customer is always looking for what's next. The pace of innovation drives your activity and its not slowing down. In fact, its accelerating.

The Goldilocks Problem

As an innovators, can you or should you speed up your innovation refresh rate? This is a Goldilocks problem. You go too slow and your competitions will blow right past you. Go too fast and your customers cannot absorb what you are creating. You risk creating innovation exhaustion.

You need to get the innovation timing "just right".

Behind The Scenes Look At How I Do It

You are probably asking yourself, if this is so hard, what hope do you have in getting it right? Don't expect perfection. There is NO magic formula that when performed generates innovation planning success.

Innovation is messy and unpredictable. So how do you set the right flow?

Four Step Process To Set Your Innovation Timing

1. Set your funnel "output" rate. For example, At HP, the rate of innovation from the Innovation Program Offices was 2 per year for HP. In my current role as a CEO with ~200 people, we have an innovation rate slightly higher than what we had at HP.
2. Define your stages in the funnel. I use a four stage funnel/gates to ensure oversight of ideas in different stages of development.
3. Calculate out how many total ideas to achieve your "output" rate. For example, at HP we set our metrics as:
   • Market Validation = 20 ideas
   • Customer/Product Validation = 10 ideas
   • Limited Launch/Trial = 5 ideas
   • Global Launch = 2 ideas
4. Pace yourself. Its easy to get enthusiastic on the ideas you have in the funnel. To achieve long term, sustainable innovation, you need to prioritize your funnel and be discipline on 2 per year.

The above may sound simple but trust me, its a lot harder than it looks. Leaders within your organization will derail the funnel at ever turn. Be prepared to defend and protect the funnel.

Hard Learned Lessons

Some lessons I've learned when leading and managing innovation organizations:

• Do not over extend your rate by pushing more innovations than the rate you've set. For 2 ideas per year, we required 35 ideas in the funnel (see metrics below). If you were to go to 3 ideas per year, you would need roughly 52 ideas in the funnel. Think about that carefully.
• Be aware of what your customers (or internal catching organization) can absorb. If you exceed their innovation adoption rate, you will burn them out with innovation exhaustion.

Listener Question: Starting A New Business

This week, we took time answer a listener question:

[shareable cite="Roberta " text="Should I start my business as an affiliate or as a distributor ?"]I am stuck trying to decide between starting a new business (non tech actually, small regional chocolate creators) that is either affiliate which is limited start up fees and also limited % or distributor which requires a WHOLE lot more capital as well as commercial kitchen for storage, receipt of products and distribution, etc.[/shareable]

Answer: Yes. Listen to this weeks show to hear my advice to Roberta on starting a new business.

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to get a behind the scenes look at getting the innovation timing right.[/callout]

During some recent travels, I started noticing the comments and suggestions that “being part of Silicon Valley must be exciting”. As I paid more attention, it came across as almost hero worship of Silicon Valley and the companies its has launched. It's like people believe that innovation outside Silicon Valley is a rare if not impossible occurrence.

I have to admit that when I first showed up in Silicon Valley in 1984, I was in awe. I felt that I had arrived and proven myself. It took me better than 4 years to open my eyes and see that it wasn't that unique or special. There are some advantages to being there but human creativity and innovations they create are not limited to small piece of land. There is innovation outside of Silicon Valley.

Venture Capital

One unique characteristic to the valley is the access to billions of risk capital that people are willing to invest in new innovations. But risk capital is available in other places also. For example the State of Ohio Venture Fund which is helping new innovative companies stay in the state rather then feeling they need to go to the valley to be successful.

Unexpected Innovations

Innovation can come from anywhere such as the result Hurricane Katrina, a taxi drive in NYC working on new medical innovations and the solution to predictors killing livestock in Africa. While many of these innovations start out as solutions to immediate hyper local issues, they can and do turn into products and services that we all benefit from.

Remember that innovation does not equal technology. There are an unlimited number of ways to apply innovation to what you do.

How To Help

The challenge is how to help innovators who are outside of Silicon Valley to be successful while also impacting their local economy. Here are some ways we can all help:

* By highlighting what others are doing (e.g. social media) to give them some exposure.

* By shows what others are doing, reinforcing that anyone can innovate.

* By showing how to innovate (e.g. joining The Innovators Community), give others the skills to take their idea and turn it into a business.