E-Folder - Business

You must have seen the festive puzzle with nine dots (three dots in three rows)

o o o

o o o

o o o

and your task is to trace through all the dots in four straight l

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

ines without lifting your pen from the page? (The solution is below.)

What does this teach us about creative solutions? Well if we allow ourselves to be limited by wh

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

at appears to be the box made up of the outside dots, we cannot solve the puzzle. However if we challenge our apparent limitations and several of the lines begin or fi

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

ish outside the box, the solution is easy and obvious.

How different will tomorrow's products be?

The other day when I was working with a client whose product

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

s are successful today. I felt that this was (naturally) constraining her thoughts and she was having difficulty in seeing her customers’ needs with fresh eyes. I used this

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

dotty puzzle to help her recognise that how success was condemning her to incrementally improve her products rather than radically replace them. She could then see that new e

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

ntrants to her industry can see what her customers want and are already designing tomorrow's products.

How do you change your innovative focus?

As we talked and work

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

ed on this insight, my client made three new resolutions:

Iwill ask my customers what their issues are and what they want to improve.
I will suspend my ju

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

gement and listen to my customers' ideas and comments carefully.

I will be curious about their reasons for the features they want and learn from the benefits they a

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

re looking for.

We then designed an innovation program where my client approached a dozen of her key customers and spent a couple of hours with each of them, askin

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

for their ideas and listening to the help they gave.

How do you handle the missing information?

Having listened to her customers, we still had gaps in the informati

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

on we needed to design the new products. For many small businesses, many decisions are taken with incomplete information because they do not have the time or resources to res

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

earch decisions fully before taking them.

So we adopted four more resolutions (in order of discomfort) to help us flesh out the skeletal ideas we had:

Let us guess

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

ucky about the missing information - we can fill gaps with several alternatives and check how permutations of these guesses work as we develop our ideas.

We can thi

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

nk how greed and fear may bias our ideas - then we can construct best and worst cases for the performance targets.

We can brainstorm the choices other companies mig

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

t use - and use our experience with our competitors to help us get ahead.

We can choose our box and decide what limitations to accept - by changing our question, we

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

ourselves to get a find answer.

How to put this into practice?

If what I have said about innovation is a foreign language, please do not ignore it; find s

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

omeone to help you understand it because my experience shows that this approach to product innovation is important.

If you need a clue to solving the puzzle: draw three l

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

nes from the top left corner, allowing the vertical and horizontal lines to extend outside the box, then draw a diagonal line through the untouched dots to join these two 'ou

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

t of the box' lines.

I hope this puzzle has stirs you to taking a new view on your problems - I really enjoy coaching business people who create wealth through new ideas

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.e-folder.org.ua/article/42259/e-folder-Creative-Business-Innovation-How-Do-You-Innovate-Your-Way-Out-of-Your-Marketing-Box.html">Creative Business Innovation: How Do You Innovate Your Way Out of Your Marketing Box</a>

BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.e-folder.org.ua/article/42259/e-folder-Creative-Business-Innovation-How-Do-You-Innovate-Your-Way-Out-of-Your-Marketing-Box.html]Creative Business Innovation: How Do You Innovate Your Way Out of Your Marketing Box[/url]

Whether you're just starting up or you're already established, this critical factor is an essential part of any business. Once you understand the cash needs of your company you are far more likely to succeed. And if you ignore it then you could soon be joining many others in business failure.

Looking to get a job at an ad agency or in a creative field? Breaking through against all the other people who think they can be creative is tough. We examine how to get attention without the restraining order.

Marketing is not something that can be left to a Department or an Individual. And, it definately shouldn't be outsourced! It is something that is everyone's responsibility. To find out more read on ...

Tags

Links

E-Folder - Creative Business Innovation: How Do You Innovate Your Way Out of Your Marketing Box

Related Articles: