A recent blog over on startwithwhy.com proclaims that it is better to blow up your own business before someone else does. The post recounts a story involving Steve Jobs, who in the early 1980s was visiting Xerox to check out their (then) new graphical user interface technology, which would eventually revolutionize computing. Xerox, however, didn't want to introduce the technology too quickly for fear of cannibalizing their business. “Better we should blow it up than someone else,” Steve Jobs replied when confronted with that argument.

A similar topic was recently considered by Mark Smith, MD, MBA, president and CEO of the California Health Care Foundation. While delivering a keynote at the Health 2.0 Conference, Smith explained that there are many healthcare firms (in this case, health IT companies) that would do well to rethink their business strategy. To illustrate his point, Smith, somewhat surprisingly, referenced a South Park episode involving gnomes (yes, gnomes) that claimed to be business experts. In that episode, the first phase in their three-step business plan was clear. And the last step involved making a profit. As it happens, the gnomes had completely neglected to address the second crucial step.

Smith also introduced that point with the cartoon pictured above on the right, which has the caption: "I think you should be more explicit in step two."

He says that most advanced healthcare IT startups have a similarily unclear strategy:

1. Invent gadget
2. ???
3. Profit!

After Smith stated this, while illustrating the point with a PowerPoint slide, he drew applause from the audience.

He later went on to say that there was a graveyard of great ideas out there in healthcare IT.

All of this  reminds me of something I had heard recently from George Samaras, PhD of Samaras & Associates: "Innovation is about successfully commercializing an invention."

Why doesn't that happen more often?

For one thing, it is not enough to have a new idea. It's more productive to relentlessly invest energy in problem solving than to simply come up with new ideas—although the two skills are closely related. This involves considering not just a product but thoroughly looking at the entire supply chain, reimbursement and regulatory issues, etc. It's easy to become attached to great ideas, but it's more productive to follow Steve Jobs' advice to: "Stay hungry, stay foolish," never staying satisfied with short-term breakthroughs and to focus on the intricacies of commercialization and continual improvement.

—Brian Buntz