In a recent article, famed author Malcom Gladwell takes on the notion that creating new technology is always the best strategy to remain competitive in the marketplace. In a talk he gave on October 12 during SapientNitro’s “Idea Engineer Exchange” in New York, Gladwell categorized innovation into three basic roles: inventor, implementer, and tweaker. The latter is often best suited to capitalize on an invention, explains a recent article.

 

Gladwell explained that “there is not a great advantage to being first; there is an advantage to being the one who sits back and reacts in an intelligent way.”

 

He cites an example from computing. The mouse was initially developed way back in the 1960s by SRI International. The mouse didn’t catch on though until Xerox PARC showed it to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1979 (then 24 years old), who ditched technology his nascent company had been working in favor of the point-and-click-device that we all now know. Apple took the idea of the mouse and ran with it—basically remaking the device for his purposes. And, to a certain extent, the personal computer and its graphical user interface were designed around the device.  

"There is not a great advantage to being first; there is an advantage to being the one who sits back and reacts in an intelligent way."

Tinkering was something that Jobs did for most of his life. As a child, he called up Hewlett-Packard co-founder Bill Hewlett and asked for parts that he could play around with. He scored a summer job working on the assembly line.

Gladwell has pointed out, that, while the above example is telling, ideas rarely take hold like this. As an article on Simplify This explains: “More often, however, the thinkers and tinkerers find themselves within a corporate system, their ideas accumulating like counterfeit currency in Peru hardly ever capturing the imagination of the big boss.”

 

It seems that, in medtech, this concept is generally more applicable than it is in other fields. Owing to the regulatory environment and other considerations, many companies are understandably risk-averse. (Not to say that innovation still isn't important. But there's been too many stories of companies, espcially in medtech, with great ideas that never turn a profit).