Lessons From Tesla – Brand Identity for Consumers, Clinical Value for Healthcare

In my last post, I mentioned Tesla’s brand identity – technology, performance, design.  Tesla consumers pay up for the brand and its design. In brand strategy, I (and others) see a lot of parallels between Tesla and Apple. Both are status brands, and both use their brand identity to maintain premium pricing. Tesla has clearly been paying attention.

Take a look at Apple’s brand – design, performance, and reliability. People pay significantly more for Apple products than for similarly performing products from other companies. When the iPhone first appeared, its performance blew away other then-existing smartphones. Over time, it’s hard to say that Android phone performance hasn’t caught up with the iPhone. All the same apps. Great processing, camera and screen technologies. Sharp-looking industrial design. Most reviewers rate Google Now as better than Siri. Yet Apple is the smartphone company making the profits.

Apple leveraged their early technology lead to build their brand, and now the brand delivers the economic rents. Apple Music is a late entrant to the streaming music market, but its brand enabled it to quickly become a top player.

Now let’s look at Tesla and its electric vehicles. Nothing else on the road performs like Tesla’s current lineup, and Tesla can charge a premium for their products. Like Apple, Tesla’s product design, manufacturing quality and subsequent product reliability are outstanding. Tesla is using its early technology lead to build its brand identity for technology, performance, design and reliability. If/when competitor technologies eventually catch up to Tesla, Tesla will still be able to earn economic rents on their brand.

So what’s this got to do with medical devices?

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Lessons From Tesla – Segment Sequencing To Build A Brand

tesla-product-roadmapI’ve had a series of Tesla posts on my mind for a while, but finding the time to write them has been elusive until now. I’ll post them over the next few weeks.

Tesla is today’s “It Car” – the cool, sexy, electric performance vehicle of choice. Who wouldn’t want to take a Model S for a spin? While there is a lot to admire about Tesla’s vehicles, Tesla Motors has also been masterfully executing its business strategy. For those paying attention, Tesla’s business activities can teach important lessons about bringing innovative products to market. Medical device companies could learn a thing or two. Today I’d like to talk about segmentation strategy and building a brand.

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Star Medical Device Engineer – Done Is Better Than Perfect

done is better than perfect facebookAlongside the well-known “Move fast and break things” sign at Facebook was another sign: “Done is better than perfect.” The fact that this phrase needed posting is a reminder of the ubiquity of most engineers’ tendency towards perfectionism over timelines.

I tend towards perfectionism myself, but I recognize that perfectionism can work against me and my team. People across my company, and outside my company, depend on me to hit my commitment dates. Trade show dates don’t move, so presentations and product introductions need to be ready. Clinical trial sites make a huge effort to arrange trial dates – coordinating a variety of hospital staff, and postponing normal activities – so clinical product needs to be ready on time. You get the picture.

So, what can you do about it?

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New England Venture Funded Medical Device Startup List 2015 Q4

strongbarrett-moneyI’ve been tracking first-time venture financing of medical device companies in New England since 2005. Whew!

Startups are where innovation really happens. It takes the dedicated focus of a startup to drive real change to our healthcare system. A first venture funding is a validation of technology, market and business model. A key metric of the health of our local medical device innovation economy is the rate of new startup funding.

I also track startups because I want to provide a list of funded startups to the local community – job seekers, venture investors, and service providers. Startups have a hard time finding the right connections in the community, and vice versa. Maybe I can make it a little easier.

I’ve counted nine venture-funded medtech startups in 2015, of which one is a restart, one has no medical device products (but may), and one is a Ukrainian company with a Boston-area office. Given the venture funding environment, 2015 was a respectable, thought not stellar, year for venture funded medical device startups in New England.

Read on to access the list.

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Star Medical Device Engineer – Needs Versus Wants

I had coffee with a former colleague last week, and he told me something surprising he learned about himself. His new company has bench desking, and everyone’s space is a little less than three feet wide. At his previous company, he had a large desk with a sweet window view. He told me that “If someone had tried to get me to give up my old desk I would have put up a big fight, but at my new company, it’s not an issue. The space works. When we hire a new person, everyone squeezes together to make room.”

He learned something about himself.

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Critical Action Planning – How to Manage Through Poor Visibility (e.g. Concept Phase Projects)

English: Tree in fog Visibility next to nothin...
English: Tree in fog Visibility next to nothing on bridleway through Foxlane Plantation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Managing concept phase projects is challenging with any project management tool or technique, because you start with almost no certainty about the tasks that will be needed. We can surely imagine some work on concept brainstorming, preliminary requirements definitions, market research, component ordering, prototyping, concept testing, and report writing. But it’s really hard to be much more granular than that, when we haven’t even defined requirements or brainstormed concepts yet.

What’s a Critical Action project manager to do?

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Critical Action Planning – Eleven Best Practices For Managing Long lead Items

FabricaRusia
FabricaRusia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Vendors have lead times. New custom components can have really long lead times. Long lead components are the most incompressible of project tasks, so you need to manage them closely.

I’ve seen all the screw-ups: parts and orders misplaced, fires at vendor plants, incoming inspection backlogs, you name it. As a project manager, it’s your job to prevent these errors and keep the trains running on time.

Here’s how.

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Critical Action Planning – Rock Simple Capacity and Skills Planning


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Your project is capacity limited, but without a Critical Action Plan, you don’t know how limited. You may think you need another engineer or technician, but a Critical Action Plan can really help you define and justify hiring needs.

Here’s how.

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