Product and service development in medical technology involves enormous investments and long lead times. In order to realize a substantial return on investment, development leaders need to identify “whitespace”, or relatively un-exploited territory. They also need to identify such whitespace far in advance of commercialization. Systematic Design and Innovation amplifies and accelerates that process.

Systematic Innovation explores and combines multiple attributes for an ideal or un-discovered product or service configuration. The magic of Systematic Innovation is that it combines both art and science. The “science” is the generation of various combinations of attributes and identification of feasible or relevant configurations. The “art” is the identification of relevant attributes as the basis for combinations. Every solution space is unique. As a more robust approach, Systematic Innovation can integrate product/service attributes and customer attributes.

We will explore some examples of Systematic Innovation, and we will consider ways that Systematic Innovation can enhance and accelerate product and service development in medical technology.