Gary,

I would like to help you ahead, but the question is not very clear at this stage. What is the balance you are looking for ?

• Yes you need to figure out where the market is going, and
• Yes you need to innovate against these needs.

In my mind/experience these are not necessary the same resources, hence I feel that I have not really understood your question. Can you rephrase it, and I would be more than willing to help.

John

Happy to talk about this offline - bottom line regards starting with context first and then abstracted needs.

Within healthcare, after a lot of diligence in and out of it on tech and startups, I'm always shocked at how folks come up ideas about saving lives and then are perplexed when they are not funded. Sad, because improved survival and outcomes is assumed - what seemingly is not are costs with regard to resource consumption - time, people, money. It's that context (what's your insurance code dude!) - the context - that guides folks in helping to imagine the "what must be trues" of abstracted concepts devoid of the literal and dimensional. The priorities become then more general - what can make the what must be trues true? The mind opens up and now research priorities, methodologies and targets become clear.

Adam - thank you for the clarification, and you make an excellent observation. I can relate to your observation also well beyond health care. People coming up with solutions assuming 1) they really understand the current challenges and 2) that there is money - a market need.

As I help start-up's, I always ask them to first clearly define the problem that they want to fix BOTH in terms of understanding the "customer need" (and I think that "the world" is getting better at this with design thinking taking root), but equally in terms of revenue generation. So much better to FIRST try to sell your solution (even if it only exists as a drawing/web page) and find out whether there really is a market for it - before you start the development work...

Which leads me to a counter question - what would it take in health care to get a set of clear opportunities defined - both in terms of improving patients lives, as well as there really being a revenue model - through insurance companies or patients directly - or massive savings vs. current procedures etc. Would be fantastic if there would be like a list of 10 great needs AND opportunities and getting that out broadly to the start-up community. What think ?

John