Where Do New Product Ideas Come From?

How a sketch on the back of an envelope becomes the next blockbuster device — or doesn’t.

Frank Celia
Contributing
Writer

The profession “cultural anthropologist” conjures images of a heroic figure wearing a pith helmet, machete in hand, hacking through jungle to discover the secrets of a lost civilization. In fact, one member of the profession feels his forays into the unknown—while perhaps not as fanciful—can be as foreign and as bizarre as any adventure in a distant land.

 “An operating room is a pretty exotic place,” said Benjamin Chesluk, senior research associate at Design Science, a product design research firm based in Philadelphia, PA. “It is hidden and secret. And the things that go on there would get you arrested if you did them anywhere else.”

In the course of his work as an anthropologist, Chesluk spends a lot of time in operating rooms, among surgeons, nurses and support staff. He observes, videotapes, takes notes and asks questions. He is looking for connections, shortcuts, stressful moments, wasted movements, anything relevant to what is going on. Sometimes he spots things even those present every day fail to notice.

“The goal of a cultural anthropologist is to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange,” he explained. “We are highly trained as systemic observers, and we don’t take anything for granted.”

Chesluk is not affiliated with a university and his data is not published in any academic journal. His firm is hired by businesses that want a knowledge base from which to draw ideas for medical products. What he practices is called ethnography, a hot new buzzword in the business world. In the past, industries gauged customer needs and wants by asking them direct questions. Ethnography goes a step further by observing customers in their natural habitats, to understand their jobs as well as they do, if not better—in essence to anticipate the needs and wants of customers before they even know they have them.

The rise of ethnography is part of a trend in the design and development phase of medical device manufacturing. The same cost-cutting, time-saving pressures that brought Lean manufacturing to the factory floor now seek to pare down, codify and standardize the very process of creativity itself. An idea, a notion, an innovation, an invention, a wild hunch—these may seem as ephemeral as moonbeams. But, in fact, generating ideas and bringing them to the market are corporal processes that can be refined and improved as substantially as any activity on a production line.

Cast a Wide Net

New products are the lifeblood of a successful OEM. Many new products are next-generation models of existing devices, but others are unique inventions born from fresh ideas and new ways of thinking.

Orthopedic OEM DJO  Incorporated, of Vista, CA, conducts a meeting about once a month to review new product ideas. “In this committee we have the head of marketing, and myself, who is the head of R&D, an orthopedic surgeon, and we also get a lot of sales perspective from our marketing managers,” said Rich Gildersleeve, vice president of Research and Development at the company.

Today, the average time it takes to turn an idea into an actual product at DJO is 6.8 months. In the 1990s, the company’s average product cycle time was longer than a year. Photo courtesy of DJO Inc.

Ideas come from orthopedic surgeons and often from the company’s sales force of 300 employees. Salespeople pass on ideas not only from physicians but physical therapists, athletic trainers and orthotists. In addition to medical professionals, many other ideas come from engineers within the company and occasionally outside ones as well, Gildersleeve said.

In a typical year, DJO may introduce 30 new products to the market, and about a third of them come from ideas generated from outside the company, Gildersleeve said. At every monthly meeting, the product reviewing committee receives 10 to 20 ideas for new products. Of those, perhaps four of five are considered worthy of a second look.

“It’s almost a little like [the television program] American Idol,” he said. “You get a bunch of stuff you have no interest in. For some we just get a laugh, and then all of a sudden there’s a pearl and everyone gets really excited. Then we tell that person to do a little more research and come back and see us next month.”

The committee tests ideas against some basic criteria. First, they assess whether the idea fits one of the sales channels and would be useful to customers.  If the idea appears useful, the question is whether the product is something new. There is little point in duplicating existing products. If the idea is new, the committee then assesses the company’s ability to create and manufacture such device. If within the company’s abilities, the idea must then clear the most crucial hurdle: can it be made and sold at a price that is both affordable to the customer and profitable to the company? This is where the rubber meets the road in product development. The most clever, innovative product in the world is worthless if it has no chance of making a profit.

Those in the industry say the novelty criterion is becoming scarce in the world of orthopedics. People are rushing to jump in on this hot market without having anything innovative to offer. Steve Maguire, general manager of Orchid Design in Shelton, CT, sees a market flooded with “me too” products. “For example, an independent distributor who does not have his own product line decides: ‘Gee, if I had a product of my own, I could achieve much better margins,’” he said. Thus the market gets crowded with more of the same.

According to Gildersleeve, the most difficult thing to predict about a new product idea is how well it will sell, whether it will be 100 units a month or 10,000. “That is where a little bit of the magic goes,” he said. “We never get it completely right, and we are always trying to figure out improve our forecasting methods.”

Sales predictions can be influenced by the inventor’s identity. OEMs tend to favor surgeons and professionals who are well respected in their field and whose names and connections will help generate interest in a product, and such opinion leaders command higher royalties. “The royalty percentage is very much tied to how far [the inventors] have developed the concept, and how influential they are,” said Gildersleeve. “Is this someone who is actually going to promote the product? That is very different from someone who just gives us a vague idea, and then we never seem him again.”

Working with Surgeons

Input from surgeons is obviously paramount to development and design, but sometimes simply asking them questions does not produce the best results. Top surgeons spend a lot of time in the operating room doing procedures they have done time and again for many years. Much of their actions may be by rote or intuition and they themselves may be unaware of certain habits. 

“A surgeon may say, ‘Well I never do that’ but then five minutes later you see him doing it,” said Chesluk. Asking questions can be useful, but it is no substitute for witnessing a procedure first-hand.

Another concern when working with some surgeons is they may not have the firmest grasp of business matters. “Clearly, working with surgeons is a great way to solve clinical problems,” said Maguire. “But there are business needs that might not always be at the forefront of their minds.” Often physicians are less sensitive to issues such as distribution, intellectual property, manufacturing costs, competition, etc., he noted.

Lean Design and Development

At DJO, the average time it takes to turn an idea into an actual product is 6.8 months. This is a huge improvement over the 1990s, when the company’s average product cycle time was well over a year and some products took two years to develop. About five years ago, Gildersleeve and others in the company wanted to speed up this process, and implemented the Stage-Gate process developed by Dr. Robert G. Cooper, a thought leader in the world of new product management.

This process outlines every detail of the product development process, so that nothing gets forgotten. “Even the best project manager is not going to remember everything that needs doing in perfect chronological order,” Gildersleeve explained. “Stage-Gate acts as a kind of roadmap. It helps avoid hold-ups, like the launch date being postponed because someone forgot to have the product insert translated into nine different languages. It sounds trivial, but these things do happen.”

Another way the company saves time and effort in product development is by organizing development teams for each product idea. A member from product development, marketing, manufacturing and quality sits in the group. This prevents miscommunication early in the process. Without development groups, an idea may originate in the marketing department, be given to the engineering department and then passed on manufacturing. And when it finally gets back to marketing, the inventors often fail to recognize it, Gildersleeve pointed out, because each department made so many little changes along the way.

“With development teams, team decisions and required compromises are made up front with everyone’s buy-in, greatly reducing the possibility of miscues and redesign efforts,” he explained. “A lot of times that is what design is: compromise.”

Finally, advances in the field of rapid prototyping have offered considerable timesaving opportunities. A few years ago the company switched from stereolithography (SLA) to selective laser sintering (SLS). SLS offers a wider choice of materials, which allows the company to quickly manufacture prototypes that can be field tested right away. This means fewer iterations of prototypes are necessary, which translates to saving months of time on some projects, according to Gildersleeve.

Any OEM or contract manufacturer serious about the business of product development and design needs to be on very familiar terms with rapid prototyping. In fact, operations such as Orchid Design, which contracts exclusively in the field of orthopedics, are set up to produce prototypes, not large manufacturing runs. A job often may require a prototype to be machined, rather than produced by traditional rapid prototyping platforms such as SLA or SLS.

Creative Manufacturing

Product design and development pertains not only to the product itself, but also to how that product will be manufactured. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this step because the details of how a product is manufactured will directly impact its profitability. As such, OEMs put as much thought and effort into manufacturing innovations as they do into the clinical aims of the device itself. To do this, they often seek out the advice of experts.

Orchid Design, which contracts exclusively in the field of orthopedics, is set up to produce prototypes, not large manufacturing runs. The company aids clients with research, design, engineering, rapid prototyping, testing, product management and manufacturing. Photo courtesy of Orchid Design.

Larry E. James, of New Concepts in Redmond, WA, is one such expert. He often is involved in designing new products with his clients. “We stay away from specific design issues related to function or the device’s clinical aspects,” he said. “That is what our customers do. What we can help with a lot is how to make the device or part more manufacture-able.”

His firm excels at reducing setups and manual labor. He knows when robotics is useful and how they can be used to produce rapid prototypes of the highest quality. When his prototypes need to be machined, as they often do, James claims his multi-axis machines are the best available, able to manufacture parts to within 10 millionths of inch. “These are the newest machines. I get them from Japan, and I order so many options that they have to build the machines from scratch,” he said.

Surgeons or medical professionals with little or no understanding of manufacturing can also hire experts to help develop an idea before trying to pitch it to an OEM. Creative Orthopaedics, of Cheshire, CT, often works with doctors in researching new products. Run and operated by John R. Pepper, who has 24 years of experience and was an engineer with Smith & Nephew, the consulting firm offers help with everything from brainstorming new ideas to patent research. He also works with OEMs that are affiliated with a doctor who may have some bright ideas but needs assistance getting something on paper. The OEM brings the doctor and Pepper together in the same room to bounce ideas off each other.

Computer software always is a major part of any design project. As in other industries, computers improve communication logistics enormously. “I can have a customer in Pennsylvania and it is just like we are in the same room with a big white board, like it was in the old days of engineering,” said New Concepts’ James. “I have customers with whom I’ve participated in the entire development phase of a new product launch, and I have never met them face to face.”

Employees at DJO are looking into the possibility of implementing product lifecycle management software, according to Gildersleeve, in the hopes that it will further reduce product cycle times. This software allows companies to keep all the information pertaining to a single product in one computer application. “Basically the entire product record is readily available to everyone,” he explained. “This could be a huge improvement in data management. It will make sure we don’t have two people working on the same part and saving things in different files and losing things. You can have someone in France working on a component, collaborating easily with someone in San Diego, and it’s all integrating. The bills of materials are updating, everyone can see what is going on with a particular project all the way though its lifecycle.”

This is the essence of product development, said Gildersleeve, not only to provide the customer with a useful product, but at the same time finding ways to save money on the manufacturing side. “A general motto we have around here is ‘differentiation at lower cost,’” he said.  

Frank Celia is a freelance healthcare writer based in the Philadelphia area.