Syndicom

“If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Sir Isaac Newton.

In making this statement, Sir Isaac Newton paid homage to the collaborative nature of all innovation and development. These are not solo activities. We do not have the capacity to see all angles and all perspectives of a problem. It is together that we rise. But in order to rise, we must participate. What does it mean to ‘participate’? Is it just signing up? Or is it showing up? What counts as participation?

To participate is to take a part or a share in something. It also means to be actively and voluntarily involved in decision making, contributing to all activities of the team and to coordinate with others. When we participate, we play a role in building or sustaining a group, team, project or community. This is why participation is so tightly related to co-creation, another term recognizing the potential for greater innovation that comes from working with others. Co-creation is currently a hot topic in the management world as argued by C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy in their book The Future of Competition.

In medicine, co-creation involves developers (in this case, medical device companies) and stakeholders (in this case, spine surgeons) collaborating together to develop products or services for those who will be benefitting from the actions (in this case, patients). It really comes down to optimizing usability and value for all those involved in spinal care.

As the people of NuVasive have found, there is beauty in watching a community of leading surgeons engaging with tools under development. In one instance, Dr Paul Slosar of SpineCare Medical Group came across a particularly challenging case for the XLIF product under development due to the patient’s petite size. After posting the case and receiving feedback from the SOLAS XLIF discussion group on SpineConnect, NuVasive suggested he try a different product they had under development at the time that might be better suited to the case characteristics. Slosar was able to use the prototype and in the process, NuVasive developers were able to adapt the device based on Slosar’s feedback. This product is now being made available to the larger surgeon community as a result of participation, collaboration and co-creation. Slosar doubts this would have happened without the SOLAS XLIF discussion group. For Slosar, “this type of situation shows how company loyalty is developed. A company that is responsive to my needs certainly earns my loyalty and makes me advocate for their devices.”

Kirsten Broadfoot

Tags: challenging cases, co-creation, collaboration, company loyalty, continuous innovation, feedback, NuVasive, participation, SOLAS XLIF, SpineCare Medical Group, spineconnect

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Blog.