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Session

Description: There is a remarkable appetite for innovation amongst healthcare institutions, but it is largely fraught with limited success. Why? Health systems are designed to deliver safe patient care while minimizing expenditure in efforts to maintain diminishing profitability. This overwhelming environment severely limits a culture of risk-tolerant and disruptive innovation. Perhaps, it is time healthcare institutions learn from Silicon Valley – the epicenter of startup culture. The key factors contributing to the immensely successful entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley include pursuit of disruption, collaboration, risk tolerance, and a resilient work ethic. Founders of some of the most successful companies from Silicon Valley (i.e. Apple, Facebook, Tesla, eBay, etc.) have a common story – they thought big, they moved fast, they embraced failure, they recruited a great team, and they constantly evolved a great product. Today, these companies have market capitalization over one trillion dollars (USD).
In this session, we will evaluate and discuss the implementation of these factors within large academic health institutions in efforts to design an impactful innovation program inspired by Silicon Valley. In addition, we will highlight specific examples of successful innovation projects, licensing agreements, acquisition, and conversion to independent spin-off companies.