Map Opportunity Topology

Once one’s own competency has been honestly identified and refined, it then needs to be mapped out alongside other expertise needed to address the identified opportunity. To understand the entire continuum, it is useful to explore different scenarios on how the opportunity might unfold over time. This exploration can take the form of a sensitivity analysis that includes the primary theory about the opportunity, and several situational shifts that might occur given future regulatory conditions, feedback from market experimentation or incorrect assumptions about the opportunity. For instance, a cardiac rhythm management company might want to enable a pharmaceutical companion solution that addresses chronic heart failure patients prior to passing an adverse threshold requiring the implantation of its Class III device. This solution space might require the development or modification of a device that is Class II or more like a consumer electronic product with an Internet interface, or even a social media aspect. Each step further away from this company’s core focus on Class III implantable devices expands the expertise needs and associated partnering relationships required.

Mapping competencies to opportunities helps strategically identify and rank body-of-knowledge, experience and skill attributes outsides one’s own domain as well as the timing of their contribution. These attributes and rankings become the foundation for initiating a wide range of partnering discussions with key opinion leaders, customers, patients, clinicians, physicians, administrators, regulatory contacts, device developers, manufacturers, distributors and service organizations to name a select few. When approaching these comprehensive, system-wide opportunities, it is rare to find an individual or multiple “one stop shops” for all the needs that would fit a traditional procurement model. With such complexity, it is more common to have a dozen or more partnerships—many with distinct geographic localization—with some overlapping expertise. Therefore, this mapping and expertise identification activity requires true strategic thought and intent to address the comprehensive nature of a system solution.