Innovative Product Development and Technology Adoption for Medical Applications - Biomaterials Science: An Integrated Clinical and Engineering Approach - page 276

none of the parts of the CyberKnife came from medical research directly.
I first became acquainted with the CyberKnife at Roper St. Francis Hospital
in Charleston, South Carolina. It was demonstrated to our group on a tour
as part of the ThinkTEC Innovation group at the Charleston Metro Chamber
of Commerce. The head of the CyberKnife was originally used to inspect
bridges for flaws in the concrete. The base of the CyberKnife was an automo-
bile manufacturing robot. So how did this marriage ever occur?
One of the reasons that so much technology is left on the table in research
facilities is their lack of the ability to develop “concepts of operation” for the
new technologies. Another reason is the lack of teaming with other devel-
opers of critical components for a finished product owing to a misguided
philosophy of “protecting intellectual property” that eventually becomes
worthless as it is overcome by other research. In his book The Innovator's
Dilemma , Christensen demonstrated this explicitly in the development of
hard disc storage technology in the computer industry. In that example, in
every instance of new technology being inserted in the miniaturization of
new hard disc storage devices, the leaders could not visualize the benefits of
the new technology. In most instances the new technology in its nascent form
was not as capable as the existing product. The key missing concept was that
computers were destined to become more mobile and smaller to fit the future
market based primarily on laptops. In this mode the desktop unit didn't need
a miniature disc with a high storage capacity. To enable the market transition
to laptops, the miniature disc was a critical technology requirement.
In the medical technology industry sector, how do we team and find syn-
ergistic developments that will enable new products such as the CyberKnife?
“To invent, you need a good imagination
and a pile of junk.” —Thomas Edison
I'm not insinuating by this quote from Edison that all new technology is
a pile of junk. What I am proposing is that many researchers get too close
to their own work and need to step back and leverage the developments of
others in other technology areas to move their own projects along faster to a
reasonable conclusion. I don't know the CyberKnife developers, but I image
the discussion may have gone something like this. “Who makes robots that
have extreme accuracy?” “Don't they use them for very accurate welds and
manufacturing in the automobile industry?” “Why don't we use our medical
expertise to apply the technology they developed to the challenge of very
precise manipulation of a device in the medical field?”
My friend Bob Miller and I have collaborated on a number of technol-
ogy developments. We laugh about finishing each other's sentences some-
times. I'll have part of an idea defined and while we're discussing it he will