Opinion: Ideas are on their deathbed; now what?

There was a time when a truly great idea and a few thousand dollars spent on a patent application could earn you a windfall. If you made some noise about the greatness of your idea, a big player in the industry would eventually swoop in and buy or license your patent, and you’d never have to worry about money again. At least, that’s how the story goes.

But even if such a time did exist, those days are over.

I oversee the commercialization of medical devices and other health care products as part of a product development team based inside one of the nation’s largest and most innovative health care systems. Our objective is simple: to get our products to the market as quickly as possible. So licensing our technologies to established players in the med-tech industry was our primary strategy, as it usually resulted in a quicker time-to-market and somewhat less risk than, say, spinning out our technologies into new startup companies. But over time, we began to see fewer of our projects getting the attention of large corporations.

When we took a step back to understand why this was happening, we discovered a recurring theme in what we were hearing from these companies: They wanted products, not ideas.

What’s more, they were using very specific definitions for those terms.

A product is something that has established adoption from customers and is generating revenue. An idea is everything else.

Patents, 3-D CAD drawings, prototypes and even manufactured parts are not considered products as defined here; they’re ideas. It’s not until a customer buys what you’re selling that you’ve truly created a product. For those who are hedging their bets on a patent being sufficient to get the attention of industry leaders, this can be a hard pill to swallow. But is it really all that surprising that industry leaders are turning up their collective noses at unproven ideas? Taking a product to market is often a very expensive, time-consuming endeavor, so why bank so much time and money on something that looks good on paper but has no evidence of commercial viability?

Instead, these companies can bide their time and wait until the product is disrupting the market. Then they can swoop in and license or buy up the intellectual property and assets of a turnkey and proven product. Yes, they’ll pay more for it, but now they’re betting on a sure thing.

In a way, this transition to a more risk-averse, product-driven ecosystem represents the death of the idea. If ideas are no longer valued by potential buyers — even when backed by solid intellectual property protection – then ideas are basically worthless. But what does have value in this type of ecosystem is execution. Scrape together the resources and expertise needed to turn your idea into a real product, launch it onto the market, grow as quickly as possible, and then, if you’re lucky and you’ve executed effectively, you’ll get the attention of the big players in your industry.

Our product development team noticed the changing innovation landscape early on, as med-tech was one of the first industries where this trend began. In response, we implemented a process wherein we build maximum premarket value for our technologies by prototyping and testing aggressively. Instead of looking to industry leaders like Medtronic or Johnson & Johnson as our preferred commercialization partners, we look to spin out our technologies into startup companies by finding talented entrepreneurs who can take our medical technologies to market and turn them into truly successful products.

I’m making the process sound simple, but it’s not. Taking an idea and turning it into a product is by no means easy. It’s a complex, messy process that isn’t easily reproducible project-to-project. I would argue that it’s largely an experiential learning process that is reliant on careful planning and a thorough understanding of how and when to leverage a wide variety of resources. To understand how to effectively execute on your ideas, your best option is to just go do it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling hand-knitted mittens on Etsy or commercializing a class III medical device; going through the process of building a product and gaining customers is what’s most important.

So find something you love, are passionate about or that you are uniquely capable of, and make some money from it. At worst, it will be a hard-won learning experience. At best, your ideas will change the world (and as it turns out, not be so worthless after all).

Cody Stringer, who holds a doctorate in biological engineering from University of Missouri, is an entrepreneurial specialist with Mercy Research & Development in Springfield. He can be reached at codystringer@mercyrnd.com.