Lucien Engelen - Issue #32

In my blog post about my ‘sabbatical’, i coined the idea of sending some CEO’s of big corporates an open letter to come and help us. Well, Quartz has just done that, super! Dear Mr. Bezos, Leave rationalizing the market for organic foods to one of your sidekicks, and tinkering with driverless cars to a crowded field of tech companies. You are needed to disrupt the healthcare sector.

A Columbia University team unveiled a “radically new approach” for regenerating lungs by flushing out diseased cells while leaving the blood vessels intact.

Innovation is increasingly a collaborative endeavor, with organizations looking outside of their current workforce for inspiration, ideas and insight. The European Academic Network for Open Innovation recently highlighted how many organizations are engaged in some form of open innovation.

Technological progress has radically transformed our concept of privacy. Will privacy survive the future as government regulations try to keep pace?

Wait, an article about solar panels in my newsletter? Yes, think about the evolution of solar panels from big clunky stuff, to smaller and thinner ones. Then came Elon Musk with solar roof tiles and now: printed ones. The key element of silicon solar cells is the semiconductor, which is usually a semi-rigid or glass-like material. Researchers at the University of Newcastle have developed a liquid which behaves like a semiconductor. Being a liquid, it can be applied by printing, coating or painting.

Our friend Chris McCarthy, who is (amongst other things) the driving force behind the Innovation Learning Network, wrote a great blog about networking, eeuuhh “friends with purpose”

The Internet gives the impression of moving in a fast forward direction. We are still just at the beginning of the Internet as a change maker in relation to healthcare. The Internet and informed patients represent a major transformation in many areas of healthcare for the accuracy of medical procedures. Dr. Google is an important part of the patient journey and patient experience. 

I like the idea of Dr. Watson a lot, on the other hand also was waiting for real breakthroughs on at scale. Of course, this takes a while and at one point will peak through into the plateau of production. Meanwhile, also IBM has some struggles, as all of us innovation do. A former IBM Watson Health employee recounts his experience where repeated promises of AI integration into life science products were never fulfilled as hype overtook reality.

End of June it was over and out. A combination of physical and mental signals forced me to take a break, after being in an innovation marathon for over 7 years that was as compelling as addictive for good reasons. When my body took over I had to decide to take a step back and recuperate like top-athletes do (no pun intended ;-) In this blog I shared some if my learnings that hopefully can help others to identify and take action to prevent running into a burn-out.