Technology trends transforming the future of life sciences and health care

From “doing digital” to “being digital,” that’s where the life sciences and health care industry needs to go. To help your business navigate digital disruption, this series provides a life sciences and health care perspective on Deloitte's 2018 Tech Trends report. From blockchain to digital reality to the no-collar workforce, explore eight trends that are shaping strategic and operational transformations and redefining life sciences and health care.

What makes a top-tier biopharma cluster? The standard answers involve a critical mass of resources including the brightest scientific and business minds capable of attracting public and private funding; powerhouse universities and healthcare systems, with endowments reaching into the billions; research institutes, often named for billionaire benefactors; and drug and tools & technology developers that can translate investment into net income.

In August 1955, LIFE magazine published an article with the now-vaguely-sinister, then-celebratory title, "Throwaway Living." The idea, it seems, was that humans had entered a kind of wanton Golden Age, when cleaning up after ourselves was just one more quaint waste of time, and tossing more and more of our used-once items into the trash was another sign of modernity's relentless ascendancy over the drudgery of the past.

BENTON, N.H. — The hiker trudged up a logging road and into a valley, tracing a route that seemed unremarkable. There were no sweeping views of the mountains that towered nearby. There was no summit to scale. Yet he stopped suddenly, jubilant, after about four miles of walking. He had found exactly what he was searching for: quiet.

When the graduating classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011 hit the job market, their employment prospects were depressingly bleak. Unemployment rates were at historic highs and job openings were scarce. Nine months after graduation, only 56% of the class of 2010 had found a job. Many of those who did find work held jobs that were temporary, lacked benefits, or did not require a college degree.

On Thursday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan met with representatives from some of the most powerful tech companies in the region at City Hall before racing south to catch the launch event of sea.citi, a group trying to get everyday tech workers more engaged with civic life.

The back-to-back events reflect an effort by Seattle’s tech industry, one of the top drivers of rapid growth and change in the region, to take a more active roll in community life and the challenges the city faces.

Image: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, Amazon public policy manager Eileen Sullivan, and sea.citi CEO Nick Merriam announce the launch of the new organization. (GeekWire Photo / Monica Nickelsburg)

There are two restaurants side by side that serve the same cuisine. One of them is swarming withcustomers, and the other is relatively empty. Where will you head for lunch?

You might have a great product or service that you’re proud of. You might have well-optimized processes, clear goals and a great team in place to help you get there. But nothing is more attractive to customers and investors, than seeing TRACTION. In order to fall in love with you, people need to see how much you’re already loved.

Imaginativeness may be widely acknowledged as a vital entrepreneurial trait, but what exactly is it and what role does it play?

A new study has identified and assessed three separate types of imaginativeness – creative, social and practical – as important in generating valuable entrepreneurial ideas.

Researchers developed an “imaginativeness scale” and measured these three cognitive abilities in more than 500 people in the United States, ages 19 to 88, with varying degrees of entrepreneurial experience.

In a corporate environment, the focus of a job interview has long been demonstrating your match to the skills and experience outlined in the job description. In my experience with startups, that is still necessary, but not sufficient. Today’s business world has become totally customer driven, so customer-centric and people abilities really make the difference between winners and losers.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Since Harvey hit Houston, Gabriella Rowe has noted a shift in the city’s burgeoning startup community.

Companies who were focused on coding and designing realized that there was more potential for their technology – to directly improve people’s lives, said Rowe, CEO of tech incubator Station Houston.

"It galvanized the startup community around what impact really means, and several startups adopted the idea of impact being a really important part of who they are," said Rowe.

Image: Flooding in Houston, Texas, as a result of Hurricane Harvey. | Photo: Matthew Hager

It’s the 21st century and information is just right at the tip of our fingers – thanks to the wide, wide, internet world. However, in spite of all the availability of information and the easy access to it, many people are still under the cloak of hoaxes and myths – and the business world is no exemption.

Much of the conventional wisdom about the diffusion of new ideas, behaviors, and innovations comes from network science, where it tracks back to two sources: Mark Granovetter’s influential theory of weak ties and Albert-László Barabási’s work on network hubs. But in the past decade or so, researchers have revealed some nuances to their ideas that leaders undertaking change initiatives, especially full-scale transformations, should consider.

Whether you call yourself an entrepreneur, a freelancer, an independent professional or a gig worker, your behavior or experience as a child may have foreshadowed your career direction.

That’s according to new research by FreshBooks, a leading provider of small business invoicing software, that highlights what entrepreneurs had in common as children. The survey of 1,000 entrepreneurs found that 8 percent of entrepreneurs started their first business by the time they were 10 years old, and 26 percent said their parents helped them with their first business plan.

It pays to live in small cities. Literally.

As young people flee to large metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York, some smaller towns are facing labor shortages and dwindling populations.

To remain competitive, these cities are doling out lucrative perks to get people to move there, such as cash handouts, student loan repayments and housing incentives.

Image: Jon Hicks View of Baltimore's Inner Harbor from Federal Hill Park.

It’s an oft-cited statistic that 75 percent of venture capital in the U.S. goes to just three states: New York, California, and Massachusetts — and it has for years. If it’s going to take years to close that gap, why not offer an incentive for investors to put their money in other places?

That’s the thesis behind Opportunity Zones, a tax incentive program laid out by Congress in last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

If you’re an entrepreneur like me, you dream of building the next Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple or (insert name of high-growth, game-changing company here). You have read all the stories of the founders and their struggles in the early days. You’ve also heard about their investors—visionary venture capitalists who were quick to see the future and deliver a term sheet to lock in the deal.

With the end of the long summer holidays, business conferences, symposiums and seminars are popping up on the schedule one after another. It appears that in this season businesspeople and other individuals renew their effort to learn, so that they can catch up with and proactively respond to the waves of new technology.

Corporate directors and executives alike recognize that today’s pace of change continues to accelerate and that firms need to innovate to stay ahead. But are boards doing enough to support innovation, as they should? We conducted a survey of over 5,000 board members from around the world to find out.

Almost all of us have this belief that the knowledge about technology, management and smartness are the more important ingredients of a successful entrepreneurship. But, Alibaba Group’s executive chairman, Jack Ma did not have any of it when he started his business in 1995.

Image: Image credit: YouTube/WEF

As an angel investor and a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I’m always disappointed to see founders who seem stressed out most of the time, and more annoyed than energized by the abundance of challenges they see in building their startup. The entrepreneurial lifestyle is a tough one under the best of circumstances, and it’s one you have to love in order to succeed.