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Trilogy Tidings

May 2013

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in this issue
Medical Insight versus Medical Morality
Spreadsheet Errors Are Rampant
Product Positioning: Doing A Job
Resources from our Archives
What does Trilogy do?

     Diverse topics from a diverse mind, as usual, this month.  Pay special attention to my first topic.  It deals with the new Sunshine Act and two letters to an editor, one published and another (mine) likely not.  Our industry's ability to glean important information from physicians is at risk.  The result is likely to be less innovative, or at least less useful, medical products.

 

Regards,
Joe

 

 

   Change Ahead

 

Medical Insight versus Medical Morality
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     Physicians' conflicts of interest are a known threat to patient well-being. And the newly legislated Sunshine Act is an attempt to expose and ultimately moderate those conflicts. But there's a problem. The provisions of that act, as I and others come to understand them, are likely to inhibit the exploitation of physician expertise and guidance in medical-product innovation.

Sunshine Act  

     I feel strongly enough about this potential problem that I wrote a letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal on April 26. Publication of such letters presents a high bar, so we'll see. Anyway, I'd like to share my letter with you:

 

"Dr. Robert Pearl, in his April 24 letter headlined 'Medical Conflicts of Interest Are Dangerous', makes a strong case for somehow restricting payments to physicians for promotional activities in the interest of optimizing patient care. There is little doubt that some such restrictions are needed to counteract the moral failings of some, perhaps many, physicians. However, in his proposals and in his Kaiser Permanente physician-employment policies, he neglects another important albeit secondary role that physicians play in their relationships with device and drug makers--namely legitimate consulting roles dealing with the research, development and commercialization of new medical products. Physician expertise, guidance and advice are of pivotal importance in such roles. Our firm, along with hundreds of other market research enterprises, relies upon compensated consulting relationships with thought-leading physicians to assist our clients in identifying unmet medical needs and conceptualizing new products. No promotional, marketing or sales activities are involved. Health care employers and governments must recognize the critical importance of these legitimate consulting relationships and carve them out of the policies that aim to regulate conflicts of interest."

 

     Please share your views on this issue with me, and perhaps with your elected representatives, too.

  

Spreadsheet Errors Are Rampant 

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     I was fascinated by Ray Panko's findings published by MarketWatch in this recent online article. He cites a 2008 study which suggested that almost 90% of spreadsheet documents contain errors! In large spreadsheets with thousands of formulas, there will be dozens of undetected errors. Given that there are close to one billion Microsoft Office users worldwide, errors in spreadsheets are, by implication, pandemic according to Panko.

Spreadsheet  

     This observation is at first surprising, until you realize what a powerful, complex, error-prone product Microsoft Excel is. Most of its users hardly scratch the surface of its capabilities. The lesson is clear: Check your work, either on your own or (even better) with a second set of eyes or one of the available software tools for that purpose. The results of a spreadsheet error can be embarrassing or, in the extreme, catastrophic. 

  

Product Positioning: Doing A Job 

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     I highlighted an article about Clay Christensen last month. And now, another one, entitled "Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing". The title refers to marketing the job a milkshake is designed to perform. (I would have chosen a better analogy.) The piece is about his suggestion that companies start segmenting their markets according to jobs-to-be-done.

Christensen  

     This is a very powerful business concept, albeit not a new one. The good news: This approach to understanding and characterizing markets can pay handsome dividends in increasing the success rate of new products. The bad news: It's hellishly hard to implement, requiring some very creative indirect customer research techniques. It also requires segmenting markets very differently from historical methods, thereby abandoning lots of historical market data.

 

     Dr. Christensen cites examples primarily from the consumer-products arena. I think this approach is equally applicable to medical and life science markets, and perhaps even easier to implement there.

 
Resources from our Archives 
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     Check out our Reading Room to view my published articles, presentations and white papers on a variety of topics.
  
     And, you can examine an archive of my prior newsletters (since February 2007).

 

 

What does Trilogy do? 

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     Trilogy Associates facilitates business growth and renewal through commercialization of new products, providing the following services:
  • Opportunity assessment
  • Business planning and enterprise growth strategies
  • New-product conceptualization, commercialization and marketing
  • Market research and competitive assessment
  • Business development and partnering
  • Market and technological due diligence
  • Assessment of the therapeutic and diagnostic potential of novel technologies
  • Design of efficient and effective development strategies for early-stage biomedical products
  • Business and technical writing/publishing

     Inquiries to establish whether and how we might support your business initiatives are always welcome.  Contact us.  And check out our partner, Innovalyst, A Catalyst for Innovation.

Contact Information
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ContactInfoJoseph J. Kalinowski, Principal
919.533.6285
LinkedIn Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/trilogy
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