Happy Friday!
As usual picking out the juiciest comment from last week’s “The Oreo Cookie Effect In Innovation” post:
I love this and also think the gooey stuff in the middle has to seep budget and empowerment from the bottom and top cookies in order for it to be delicious;)
Now onto this week’s chapter teaser: “The Challenge” or aka where it all started…
I remember the moment that my boss to be, approached me at one of the events with the typical question of : “Do you know someone who can drive digital health”? It took about 9 months for me to start my new gig from that initial conversation (that should have alerted me on how long things take around this multinational giant company) but I have been warned by people: “Don’t do it, it will suck the life out of you. Pharma companies are so political. You will never be able to make a difference and change. You will waste your time.”
But those were the statements that actually pushed me to do it. I was so ready to take on this challenge. I was so ready to understand how a large, hierarchical, process oriented pharmaceutical company works. I was so ready to push a Pharma company beyond molecular therapies. I was so ready to build an amazing team to do it. I was so ready to share with the world continuously what works and what doesn’t - so intra and entrepreneurs around the world can learn from it, rinse, add color and repeat. I was so ready to make an impact to people’s lives.
As I was going through my interview process with 3 of the board members, I asked each one of them the metric of my team’s success.
“When we are sitting here in the same room a year from now, what do you envision the digital health team has accomplished?” - that was my simple question….
I actually do not now remember all the answers, but one in particular stands out:
“I hope that you will have your plan together by then”.
I laughed on the inside.. Plan? Sure we need something more formal but without disclosing my meticulously mapped out mindmap, I thought to myself “pfshhht, piece of cake. This will be underpromised and over delivered.“ Boy was I wrong..
Till Next Week,