Category Archives: Big Data

The Innovator’s Dilemma in biopharma part 1. Framing the industry’s position

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk

h/t to @Frank_S_David, @scientre, and the LinkedIn Group Big Ideas in Pharma Innovation and R&D Productivity for links and ideas

Joe Nocera’s recent column in the New York Times provided a nice dissection of how Blackberry tumbled from the position it once held at the top of the handheld phone/PDA business market.  In a nutshell it encapsulates how Blackberry fell victim to the Innovator’s Dilemma, the paradigm put forward by Clay Christensen about how and why established companies within an industry often fall victim to disruptive technologies.  This happened even though they were aware of the danger and made efforts to circumvent the dilemma.  In the case of Blackberry, one aspect of their fall was a lack of appreciation for the technology creeping up behind: the iPhone and other mobile devices using touchscreens.  For Blackberry one of their advantages and selling points was a physical keyboard which allowed rapid typing and emailing by business customers.  They couldn’t see why anyone would want something less effective for emails and messaging.

In addition, Blackberry felt both secure in and beholden to their customer base, the businesspeople who used Blackberries strictly as tools for work.  Blackberry (Research in Motion at the time) seemed both unable to conceive of the possibility of other markets and, frankly, had no incentive to reach into those markets until it was too late.  By then other phones and operating systems had grown and matured to the point of essentially overtaking the market of smartphone users, of which businesspeople make up just a small fraction.  Too little, too late, and now Blackberry has been trying to sell itself, although recent reports suggest that strategy is also failing.

From Blackberry to biopharma

In this post I’d like to explore the concept of the Innovator’s Dilemma as it might apply to the biopharmaceuticals industry.  Continue reading →

What do labrador retrievers and NFL wide receivers have in common?

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

A.  They’re both being studied via mobile tech to create their ethograms.

What’s an ethogram?  I had no idea until I saw this PLOSone paper on using inertial sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure the movements and behaviors of dogs, so as to create an ethogram, or collection of behaviors and actions, characteristic of labrador retrievers and Belgian Malinois.  For scientists studying the behavior and action patterns of different species, building an ethogram is essential to studies of animal behavior.  Without a standardized, objective catalog of behaviors, it can be easy for the perspectives of the observer to get in the way.  And it can make comparisons of data among different researchers (or coaches, as we’ll discuss in a bit) difficult.

And just as I was mulling over how that study shows the power of technology for behavioral research, the latest issue of Sports Illustrated came in the mail and I read a short, fascinating article by Tim Newcomb about how eight NFL teams have signed up with the company Catapult to integrate small GPS sensors into practice and game uniforms. This data allows a more accurate, granular and comprehensive view of how different receivers, for example, play the game.  Basically, building the receiver ethogram (using the term rather loosely). Sadly, this article is currently only in the print issue and not online that I can find.  But it’s at newsstands now.  You can go pick one up.  I’ll wait.

So let me delve into each of these articles a little more.

Continue reading →

Mobile tech and the challenge and opportunity for design

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

Lots of things bother me when I’m driving my car.  But recently I’ve found that the number one thing making me bang my head on the steering wheel is when I’m behind a car at a stoplight, the light changes…and nothing happens. Many times I can see the back of the driver’s head, which is almost always tilted down, and I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is because the person in front of me is texting or surfing the web.

A recent report from the Seattle Times that one in twelve active drivers in Washington State was observed using a cellphone while driving confirms how widespread this problem is. The thing is, the problem is, the opportunity is, this is only one small symptom of how our world is changing and becoming full of distraction. I may be irritated when the person in front of me isn’t paying attention but at the same time I’m continually impressed by the immediacy and mobility of technology.  In some ways, much as I might rant about people who are texting while driving, I also understand why. They do it because it’s easy, simple, and feeds our hardwired desire for rapid positive feedback.

So what can be done? Continue reading →

Tall poppies, tall corn and creating the right environment

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All opinions my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

The first time I heard the saying, “Cutting down the tall poppies,” I was in Australia, over 20 years ago, talking to an Professor who was a US expatriate and working at the University of Queensland.  I’ve heard it since in conversations with people from the UK, Denmark and other countries.  The specific connotation in each culture differs somewhat, but the general underlying meaning is that those who rise above the crowd should in some way be brought back down to the level of everyone else. This might be in a physical and material sense, or in an attitudinal way, as in, “don’t think you are better than us just because of your (choose one) wealth, success, position, knowledge, etc.” An egalitarian sentiment, to be sure, but one that sounds odd to someone raised in the US, where individual attainment and excellence are among the key values.

I often contrast that idea to the following story about tall corn.  I first heard it from Professor Michael Freeling when I was a graduate teaching assistant at UC Berkeley, and assigned to TA for his class on Genetics and Society. This was an undergraduate survey class and on the first day, a freshman stood up (aren’t freshmen cute?  Always so earnest and ready to play “stump the Professor.”) and asked Michael where he stood on the question of Nature versus Nurture.

Michael’s answer was to describe his own work in maize genetics. Take a handful of genetically diverse maize kernels, he said, and sow them in a field and see what happens.  You get plants growing to a variety of heights, and each plant will give you different yields. Take another handful of kernels from the same batch and plant them in a greenhouse.  Give them fertilizer, gro-lights, plenty of water, keep out bugs and other pathogens. Then you’ll see the plants growing to more or less the same height, and yielding similarly, every ear on every one.

Continue reading →

Transparency and the invisible hand in hospital and healthcare costs

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk

One of the things that sometimes seems to get lost when people talk about the power of the market to create efficiency is that a free market requires that information be shared and freely available and understandable by everyone.  When information is withheld by one side or the other of a transaction, or when different customers for a service or product are unable to compare prices, the metaphor of the invisible hand breaks down.

You can see, this, interestingly enough, in sports as it relates to both the trading of players under contract and the signing of free agents.  Since I’m a baseball fan, let me link here to a discussion of research that’s been done looking at Major League Baseball.  The studies looked at players traded or signed by a different team as a free agent and how those players performed in subsequent years versus players whose original team re-signed them.  It turns out that players who switched teams did, indeed, perform more poorly relative to projections than players who stayed.  This suggests that the original teams have proprietary information that allows them to make better decisions about which players to retain.  Thus the market for baseball players isn’t quite free and efficient because of information asymmetry.

And unfortunately, information asymmetry is also rampant in other industries such as healthcare. Continue reading →