I recently opened my Sunday New York Times to see a familiar face smiling back at me: Dr. Robert Langer, director of the Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Langer was featured in an article about his lab’s success in launching 25 companies and generating hundreds of patents (and careers) to treat many diseases, including the big three: cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Langer’s lab is a shining example of the concept known as technology transfer, in which universities set up licensing offices to move their intellectual property from concept to commercialization, from bench to bedside.
The article caught my interest not just due to the subject matter, but because I had seen Langer 10 days before, delivering the keynote address at Acceleration 2012, an early stage life sciences conference in Boston that mainly featured the investment community. In his wide-ranging remarks, Langer recalled his years working with medical pioneer Judah Folkman on his research into tumor angiogenesis, the process by which a tumor attracts blood vessels to nourish itself and sustain its existence. Their work has spawned myriad anti-angiogenesis therapies for cancer, macular degeneration and other diseases – as well as continued research into angiogenesis in hundreds of labs around the world.
Angiogenesis was a game-changer, but it was no overnight success. When Folkman first published his theory in 1971, it was widely disregarded by experts. Then, when he and Langer gained its acceptance, the first pharmaceutical firm that licensed their IP tried once to make it druggable but failed, and dropped it. (This led Langer to remark with some bemusement, “No experiment works the first time.”)
I heard something similar when I met Judah Folkman at a medical writers’ dinner, several years before his death in 2008. I was struck by the man’s modesty. Here he had changed the way we thought about tumors and how to treat them, and he presented his life’s work simply as trial and error and merely being persistent. He acknowledged the many students who had done the daily grunt work and seemed prouder of them than of his own accomplishments.
Is there a message in here for marketers? I think so. We’re in the business of marketing innovation, and we’re always trying to find new ways to talk about it. Consider this: that many innovations never make it to market because someone tried once and failed and gave up. Innovation isn’t just strength of an idea, but strength of character, such as that of a Robert Langer or of a Judah Folkman. So don’t just talk about the what – the cool technological breakthrough that makes your product desirable. Talk about the why – the spirit behind it. Talk to the researcher. Talk to the inventor. Talk to the ones who persevere. Perhaps it will infuse your work with the same passion they bring to their benchtops and boardrooms. Never stop trying to reinvent this notion we call “innovation.”
Postscript: Innovation isn’t limited to products and technologies; it is also needed, more than ever perhaps, in how they get funded. For insight into one new way this is being done, be sure to attend the MassDevice Big 100 Roundtable West next week in Irvine, Calif. You’ll hear the former head of Allergan and Bausch & Lomb, Robert Grant, talk about his new venture firm, Strathspey Crown, the first Medicare-Medicaid opt-out manufacturer in medical technology. After all, with the game changing all the time, it’s important to hear from those doing the changing.