TrialDox Blog – Accelerating clinical trials…

We at TrialDox are students of innovation and applying theories of innovation to clinical trials. Two of the leaders of innovation theory offer food for thought for those who are interested in re-inventing the status quo: Clayton Christensen and his disruptive innovation theories and C.K. Prahalad and his bottom of the pyramid theories.

Disruptive innovation

Over the past ten years, Christensen has developed a theory to describe how incumbents in industries are eventually displaced by upstarts who target “non-users” of prevailing products and services by offering focused solutions.  To summarize his theory, the upstarts do these things right:

• Focus on understanding the “non-users” job-to-be-done
• Identify a technology enabler to deliver a product or service that one would “hire” to do the job
• Build a business model (resources, process) to deliver the product or service
• Encourage the development of a “value network” that supports the business model

There’s more to the theory, but we find much inspiration in applying Christensen and his Innosight teams work to clinical trial processes.  You can find more in The Innovator’s Prescription.

Bottom of the pyramid

A prolific business thinker, Prahalad made waves with his observations that entrepreneurs and companies in emerging markets can take practical approaches to innovate products and services in order to meet requirements of demanding customers with limited ability to pay for quality.  While many of the examples Prahalad cites hold true to Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, Prahalad’s example tend to focus on bottom of the pyramid markets that are characteristically high volume and low margin.   We find that if a solution can thrive in these conditions, it is a great candidate for application to markets more familiar in North America.

Welcome your thoughts on how you find inspiration from these thinkers.  Leave us a comment!