Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In addition to the local marketplace events, the teams presented their ideas
on a virtual Intranet marketplace with a videotaped oral presentation and a pre-
sentation fi le. All Merck KGaA employees had the chance to get more informa-
tion about the concepts and expertise still missing to complement the teams. To
fi ll the vacant functions employees had the opportunity to contact the idea
champion directly. Some ideas could not be presented in full detail on the
Intranet platform due to confi dentiality and know-how protection.
Subsequently, team champions were actively coached on team formation
and offered in-roads to the organization to fi nd the right competences. Typically
team leaders were scientists and the skills they searched for in the organization
to complete their team consisted of experienced business developers, marketers,
and fi nance executives. In pharmaceuticals, specialized skills were often con-
sidered crucial for teams' therapy innovation efforts. Prior literature has shown
that the market success of new therapies requires a deep understanding of spe-
cialized topics such as pricing (Verniers et al.
2011
), reimbursement and regula-
tory regimes in different countries (Stremersch and Lemmens
2009
), and
experience with the increasingly complex clinical studies required for market
approval (Gassmann and Reepmeyer
2005
). Thus, several teams at
Innospire
attempted to add such specialized skills to their team.
In the fi rst year, the six strongest ideas and teams that would enter the inno-
vation bootcamp were selected by the interdivisional evaluation committee on
the basis of the following criteria: (1) idea progression since the previous stage,
(2) leadership potential of the idea champion, (3) completeness of skills in the
team, (4) business potential of the idea, (5) fi t of the idea with Merck KGaA,
(6) probability of success in (further) developing the underlying technology,
and (7) portfolio balance.
In the second year, as stated above, a “wisdom of the crowds” approach was
used to select the projects allowed access to the bootcamp. Experiences with
this approach were mixed. We found that two main disadvantages of the popu-
lar voting approach were: (1) people voted disproportionately for projects that
had an emotional appeal (e.g., a cool new technology or “save the planet” type
of ideas); (2) people voted disproportionately for people they knew and liked.
The big advantage was that the approach allowed for a strong engagement to be
generated and thousands of employees were exposed to the ideas and voted and
many even contributed with proposals for further improvement. The visibility
of the entire
Innospire
process was greatly enhanced by the public voting
exercise.
(d) Innovation bootcamp: skills training and professional coaching
The six fi nalist teams gathered in an intensive program in which about fi ve
members of each team received a basic management training, optimized towards
writing a business plan, found time to advance their ideas together with coaches,
and also underwent a series of challenge meetings and dry-run presentations in
order to make sure that the business plans to be presented to the grand jury were
of the highest quality. The bootcamp consisted of 7 days, divided in two blocks
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