I’ve seen scientifically brilliant products fail because somewhere between the lab and the market, the story broke.
For years, I assumed that if an innovation had strong science behind it, success was mostly a matter of making people aware of it. Then I sat in meetings with scientists, physicians, investors, and commercial leaders, and listened to each group judge the same product by a different standard.
Each group asked a fair question. The scientist wanted to understand the evidence. The physician wanted to know how the product would fit into clinical practice. The investor wanted to understand the size of the opportunity and the path to growth. The commercial team wanted to know whether anyone would actually adopt it. Each conversation made sense on its own. The problem only showed when you looked across all of them.
That’s when I saw what holds many promising innovations back. The meaning of the science changes, or gets lost altogether, as it moves from one audience to the next.
A product can be scientifically elegant and still confuse buyers. It can answer an important clinical question and still ask too much of physicians, laboratories, or patients. It can produce strong data and still give the market no reason to act.
The work between scientific truth and commercial success is a discipline of its own. I’ve done it for several years, though I didn’t have a name for it when I started.
Over the next few months, I’ll use these essays to look at why some innovations make it from the laboratory into everyday practice while others disappear despite remarkable science.