On Sunday morning three high school students were anxiously waiting for their science experiment to be lifted into orbit on board a SpaceX rocket that was scheduled to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). The students had been waiting for this day for eight months. Eight months ago the same students from North Charleston, South Carolina had watched as their experiment was launched on board an Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia. Just a few seconds after liftoff the rocket had exploded knocking one of the students off of his feet and giving off a tremendous blast of heat. This time would be different. Surely lightning wouldn’t strike twice?
Over the last year I had the opportunity to discover a hidden innovation gem in my own back yard. A group of companies had banded together to help each other build more innovative organizations, or at least organizations that could drive innovation with a higher degree of success. Innovators International was formed in 2007 out of work commissioned by the Mayo Clinic. Today it is a member partnership of 50 of the world’s most innovative companies who are working together to build each member their own structure for driving sustained innovation.
In an NY Times Op-Ed article yesterday, neurosurgeon and journalist Sanjay Gupta (@sanjayguptaCNN) cited a recent anonymous survey where orthopedic surgeons said “24 percent of the tests they ordered were medically unnecessary.” The suggestion was that the surgeons were performing the unnecessary tests as a form of “defensive medicine” that is meant less to help the patient than to protect the doctor and hospital from lawsuits. Why has it come to this? How has society come to expect “zero defects” from the medical industry?
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