Why Outcome Driven Innovation Falls Short: The Power of Mission Driven Innovation

[00:00:00] Jared: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the medDesign podcast. Today, we're thrilled to have Andrew DiMeo joining us once again. Andrew is a renowned health innovator, biomedical engineer, design philosopher, and an overall incredible human being who has made significant contributions to the field of healthcare innovation.

In our previous episode with him, we delved into his framework for enabling evolutionary design, a topic that Dr. DiMeo has continued to build upon since our last encounter. And if you hadn't had a chance to listen to that episode, I highly recommend going back and checking it out. You'll find it as episode two on Spotify and YouTube.

But today we're shifting our focus to explore mission driven innovation, a concept Andrew is deeply passionate about and Ty as well, we'll discuss why it's critical, how to effectively implement it and the profound impact it can have on the success of your project. And welcome back to the show. We're happy to catch up with you.

[00:00:51] Andrew: Yeah. So, so good to be here. I don't know about renowned, maybe around, I've been around,

but yeah,

[00:01:00] Jared: Renowned to some of us. And so I guess just starting off with mission driven innovation, how do you define it and why do you believe it's critical in healthcare and I guess healthcare innovation?

[00:01:12] Andrew: Wow. How do I define it? Mission and vision and why I'm so fired up about this, I think critical to successful businesses.

Critical to our plan. This is why I'm fired up about this. I think that if you ask a lot of people, they would be upset about some of the huge giant businesses that are destroying our planet and doing terrible, bad things to our planet and to human beings. And, the challenge that I have for everyone listening to this is how many times have you been at your company and pulled into a meeting that has to do with we're going to work on our vision and mission statement.

And what was your attitude when pulled into that meeting? Like, were you like, Oh God, here we go. The mission and vision meeting. And it's like, get serious about this shit, man. You know, like I'm kind of getting upset about this topic in a way that it doesn't feel like it's getting the attention that it needs.

And the way that I think about this is in businesses or entities. They have, tax ID numbers, kind of like a social security number. They can own things, they can own property. And when we start a company, it's like having a child. We're bringing a new entity into the world and there's a pretty good chance that if that is a successful business, I think a lot of people, when they start a business, they want it to be successful, it's going to outlive them.

It's going to become run by other human beings, maybe outlive their lifetime. Right. And, you know, this is kind of like , the idea. So mission driven innovation as a play on the term outcome driven innovation, which is a derivative of jobs to be done. So, like, that's a whole topic we could get into if you want.

But if we do the work of outcome driven innovation. It's kind of like raising children to have skills and knowledge, but not giving them any values. Like, how are your children going to grow up? What type of person are they going to grow up without a value system? So if you're not taking vision and mission seriously, in the companies that you're starting or the companies that you're working at, then frankly, you're part of the problem of why these companies are growing up to be these evil, terrible things, these evil, terrible entities.

That were born without any sort of soul any sort of mission. So anyway, that's why I'm fired up about it. I don't know if that defines it.

[00:03:45] Ty: No, that's such a great start to it. Because, I mean, without that, I don't know, North star. Let's say, that core vision for what, you know, like a thesis you might have about what is the change you want to bring about as a result of starting this entity.

Like that then becomes a filter. Any strategy is a process of saying, no, you've got the hell, no, that's kind of out to the side of the vision, but then you've got progressively more no's before you finally get down to what actions are we taking. And those series of choices have to be driven by that north star that enables a lot of choices. But you still need to have a boundary for that. We're saying we're not going to go here. We're not going to go here. We exist to serve a purpose. And that process of narrowing down helps to make choices and go faster. Indeed.

[00:04:35] Jared: Yeah. And what you talk about kind of reminds me of just what people say is wrong with capitalism in general, right?

Just consuming to consume and to drive profits constantly. And I think, this kind of innovation is something that hopefully we see more of. And so I guess, sticking on the topic, what would you say the key impact of adopting mission and innovation is

[00:04:56] Andrew: Yeah, the impact would be that your entity has this north star, which is about a mission and vision and not about an outcome.

Right, I mean, we can start to think in terms of businesses that have outcomes. And think about some of the meetings that we've been in, you know, what is the outcome that we're trying to achieve? And we work towards this ultimate outcome. And is that ultimate outcome. If we achieve that outcome at all costs, then how many terrible things can we do to achieve that outcome?

But if we climb higher on these levels. And we can get into those details, and it comes to a mission and then even higher a vision and now we're talking about answering to that highest level within our business. Then we can achieve those same outcomes that we wanted to do for our business, but we're not doing them at all costs or at the cost of our employees or at the cost of our planet.

[00:05:58] Jared: And this, is this the same thing as say, for example, you founded a startup there a few years in you during the branding process, you established brand values and say, you've got like five of them and your core leadership team, they really harpened on it from the top down. Like they're like, man, we really are about transparency and safety and you know, whatever else you kind of chose.

Like it's that same thing or are you saying there's a greater mission above sort of the values area of the brand process?

[00:06:31] Andrew: It certainly could be you're doing it right, you're in those early meetings and you're doing those brand asset exercises, you're trying to come up with your core values, your mission of your company, right?

I mean, first of all, take it seriously. This is the thing. I think a lot of people just don't think that stuff's important, which is maybe half the problem or more than half the problem. So yeah, if you do that right, you should be writing down a vision and a mission that are really meaningful.

Now, the, when you get down to how to do mission-driven innovation, it's like it takes the lessons, it takes the teaching of outcome, driven innovation or jobs to be done and many other areas. I mean, I'll get into where all the inspiration comes from, but it creates alignment. It creates alignment from that vision statement and that mission statement all the way up here down to the manufacturing floor.

That is traceable. Like we didn't do this mission and vision exercise and then put it in a drawer. And now we're doing an outcome driven or jobs to be done or voice of customer type activity. And it's in a silo, you know, we're not looking at that vision and mission that are in the drawer.

It's like, no, we actually put that on the whiteboard and that becomes part of this whole process of doing our jobs to be done with soul. There's nothing new about this work. The technical details of sitting down and doing this work are exactly what they've been for decades.

It's just about what we're putting on the page that makes it different.

[00:08:15] Ty: And this is some of what I've been talking about of empathy first versus ideas first is that a company founder might just get super passionate about their technology, pursuing their idea with ego attached to ideas.

And then somebody comes along after the fact and says, Hey, you should do some of this branding exercise. And it kind of gets layered on as an afterthought, or they're not really putting that thoughtfulness up front. And maybe with mission driven innovation, you're emphasizing the importance of starting with that, right.

As like a foundational DNA, would you say that? Or like what order would you place these?

[00:08:53] Andrew: Actually? No. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. You might be surprised. So go back and listen to evolutionary design.

[00:09:00] Ty: Okay.

[00:09:01] Andrew: Right. So evolutionary design gives freedom to start from anywhere, like there's no right place to begin a process and I'm not going to tell, a neurosurgeon who's like, oh, man, I've got this idea for a technology.

I'm not going to tell a biomedical engineer in a lab, who's like, oh, man, I've got this new idea. Right? Like, I'm not gonna say no, no, no, no. You got to start with, you know, vision 1st, right? It doesn't first of all, it just doesn't happen that way.

Where the seed is planted. What's the 1st piece of the puzzle in an evolutionary way? What I've done with mission driven innovation is provide a framework that goes from vision, all the way down to specifications. Right and so that first thought just goes there on that page, and maybe that person in the room doesn't necessarily want to, or maybe they're not great at even traversing up to the vision.

Maybe they can't even necessarily think about it. And they've got this, like you said, maybe they've got a little ego attached to the piece of technology that they want to drive. And there's just nothing wrong with that at that moment. Sure. But there is a point at which you say, hey, are we really doing this?

We're starting to put a team together, we have some traction, there's a market here, and now resources are starting to get put into this endeavor, right? And so I think traditionally, the different people in the room would just have completely different perspectives, right?

I mean, maybe the engineering team is just like, how do we build it? How do we keep the cogs low? How are we going to manufacture this thing? Maybe there is somebody that's really passionate about the brand and the brand language, and the archetype of this business and they come, they do that exercise, but they're all these sort of disparate things.

So it's kind of taking evolutionary design and saying, Hey, you can start anywhere and you can build a puzzle in any order. But here's the framework from the top to the bottom and just make sure you're filling in this whole thing. And make sure you're connecting the dots in a way. And as you build this company, you're building it in a hierarchy, you're creating it in a way that is going to be meaningful and make a positive impact on the world.

[00:11:33] Ty: Yeah. That gives so much more, I guess, flexibility and forgiveness for how people approach innovation. I think if you're trying to teach it for the first time, let's start where we'd like you to start.

If you're picking somebody who doesn't actually come in with an idea and walk through a progression. But if you do have somebody that's fired up and wants to go, then I don't know if it's necessarily backing up, but it's kind of like you're five why's of like, why are we passionate about this idea?

Well, we're trying to solve for an outcome. We're trying to solve for a need statement. Well, what is that? Can we articulate that and work our way back to the overall problem scope? And yeah, Andrew, you've kind of hinted at this, but I do want to give you just credit for and appreciation for, in our coursework, you brought us the concept of levels of alignment and we've been talking about this through mission driven innovation, but that's been a foundational concept in our DNA in how we approach things.

So just an appreciation for everything you've taught us in this space.

[00:12:30] Andrew: Well, there are so many people that have come before me, you know, I had my aha moment with like, Oh wow, this is an interesting concept that I want to dig deeper into. So any way that I can help explain it differently to the universe. I'm happy to do.

[00:12:46] Jared: And something that you also talked about that kind of got me thinking as well as when you talked about how people don't take this process seriously enough and it really, grinds your gears in a lot of ways and we've kind of seen that process, I think, as well, when we're working with companies, they're starting a brand, like, some founders are really, really into it, and like, it's really wonderful to see the way that they embrace the branding process, and developing their mission from an early stage, and others are, it's like grinding a chalkboard when you talk to them, because they just don't believe in it at all,. And people don't take it seriously. And for those that don't take it seriously, how do you get them to buy in?

[00:13:31] Andrew: Right. So individually, if you talk to any one human being at a time, I tend to believe that people are good people. I think that in a vacuum, a human being is like, I want to do good for the planet. I want to be a good person. I want to be a good human being. And I think that if you start to look at some of the biggest, baddest, worst companies we have on our planet today, if you could go all the way back in time and meet them when they were just forming the concept, just coming up with the idea, I'd have a hard time thinking that they were like a terrible human being.

People might want to brand them that now go ahead, but I think they were probably a pretty nice person. It was just like, had a cool idea and it took off. Right? So that's 1 piece of it. You know, tap into what's good in us already. What's good in all humans. But then change the experience.

I think it is a joke because it doesn't lead to anything. Right, like, yeah, yeah, we're going to sit in this room. We're going to do this vision mission work, blah, blah, blah. And it's going to go into a folder and it's going to go into a cabinet, it's gonna be posted on a wall or on a poster. This is a waste of my freaking time.

I'm like an engineer. Just let me go back to work. You're wasting my time. It's another meeting and we don't have much evidence to show that this work is doing anything. Yet, if you talk to a lot of the same people, if you're sitting and having lunch with someone, they might say, yeah, there's not a lot of meaning in my job, or I don't feel impassioned with my day to day job yet. They're working inside one of these machines While boycotting another one of the machines.

[00:15:19] Ty: Right.

[00:15:19] Andrew: Feeling that they don't have meaning in the job that they have while going to one of these meetings and being like, Oh God, this is a waste of time because it doesn't do anything.

Right. So part of it is giving a framework that does connect the dots. Like this is important. Hey, look, this work that we're doing connects everything from the bench to the boardroom. You know, it connects everything from the manufacturing floor to the shareholders. Right? Like, if you can show and demonstrate that the thing we're doing is going to impact why we're doing what we're doing.

And if that engineer could be sitting at lunch and saying, well, you know, I work on this widget, but that helps do this, which does that, which does this, which is doing this for our planet. I think they're going to be a happier human being. They're going to kind of be able to know and tell the story of the company that they're working on and feel proud about it.

And understand when they're maybe writing this code and don't know exactly why and they just give me the specification. I don't care. Everything else is a waste of time. They are going to say that because their time is valuable. Writing code, that's the most that's their most valuable time writing code.

But if you just give them a minute and say, this is the story, your code goes into this application, which goes into this and this and this and this mission into this vision. And they're like, Oh, that's why I'm writing this code. Okay. Let me get back to work. And now they're feeling proud about the work that they're doing and they're building a good entity.

[00:16:53] Ty: Engaged in the bigger why behind the organization and see, they're 1, you're getting to solve an interesting problem, but deploy their skills in an interesting way. And if they're getting a chance to reflect on it, they're also seeing the connective tissue to how this is performing a mission, a cause that they believe in and connect with.

The first time I went through this exercise, early days of Trig had pulled together a few of the designers that were on the team. And I was like, checking off a list from a book I had read of, okay, which time to go through and do this exercise. And I was like, Hey guys, here's kind of what I think.

I've got like 30 minutes on the agenda for us to talk about this and like, okay, so we can move on from here. That was not what happened. I think we've spent maybe two hours on it and realized we need to spend another two hours on it later. And I just really hadn't, it was like the first time I like really properly understood how much time you should put into this.

I don't know, Andrew, what your experience has been, because I know you've led lots of teams through this exercise, right?

[00:17:53] Andrew: Yeah, right. And I think in many ways, what you're alluding to is that the concept of mission driven innovation when done correctly has been there well, before I wrote down this newest framework, which kind of defines a whole bunch of levels.

Right?

[00:18:07] Ty: Right.

[00:18:08] Andrew: When you actually sit down and before we have the current definition that exists today. And you go through the exercise, it would stretch out further than you could realize and be like, oh, my gosh, our template has five levels, but we're going 20 deep, you know?

Okay. And so it's always been there. The process has always been there. And mine has been similar. I would be invited to do a 2 hour session on site at some company. And the next thing, everybody's looking at their watches and saying, like, can you stay all day?

Let's cancel everything else on the calendar and let's go for another 2 hours. Let's go to lunch. Let's come back, let's keep on doing it, and it turns into a full day session. And they're like, when can we reserve another day to come back and do it again? It was like, when people start to see it unfold in front of them, it gets really fun to watch.

[00:19:05] Ty: Well, and I'm sure as a teacher, you get the delight of seeing light bulbs go off in people's faces are like, Oh, they get the big concept, but this is the kind of thing where it's a gift that keeps on giving from that standpoint. Right.

[00:19:19] Andrew: Oh yeah. The whole thing about being a teacher and then practicing it, I look at my own, mission, I actually put it out there for the world. I've got an article that's about defining a personal vision, using I can't remember the exact title of the article, but it's using jobs to be done and yoga or something to that effect and I put my personal mission driven innovation whiteboard out there for anybody to go look at. And if you look at it, it's like none of the syntax is exactly right. You know, I mean, it's messy, right? It's not exactly like the perfect way that I would teach it in a classroom because in practice, it's a lot harder.

There's no one right answer to the whole thing. And it does start to expand it becomes expansive. So you do have to have a more pragmatic mind in the room. I tend to be expanding this whole thing and we do need the help of someone that's okay, let's start to, converge this into something useful.

[00:20:19] Ty: And start serving coffee, you boost the motivation and domain pathway and you get more convergent anyway.

[00:20:26] Andrew: Right? So, so yeah, it's, but I feel like I've got to practice it too, because it's one thing to go in and say, oh yeah, check out this framework. It's another thing to use it and see how challenging it can be, to apply myself.

[00:20:42] Jared: Yeah. And maybe if you could just dig into the framework more specifically, like really, what is it and how can medical innovators implement it into their work. And when we think of medical innovation and you talked about doing work that I think people are aligned with and make them feel really good for what they're doing, like medical innovation.

I mean, that's the perfect space to implement something like this, right?

[00:21:05] Andrew: One of the things I'll say.

This here if you can see it. Is the one that I was just talking about. This is my personal vision exercise that I've been doing and what's cool about this is that these levels from vision mission objective strategy tactics requirements concepts specifications these levels are a combination of inputs that I've taken from so many different sources.

One of those inputs is the medical device design controls. Which is user needs design inputs, design outputs. And they can be mapped to here and if you read the mission driven innovation articles, they actually map them in specific detail, I don't have those right in front of me. But your user needs might be your strategy, your outputs, your tactic, or your inputs are your tactics and your outputs are your requirements.

So needs, inputs, outputs could be those 3 levels. I say that the reason why I say could be is because what's fun about this process is things slide up and down as you dig in. So they're relative to each other.

But they also come from yoga, they also come from what is your Dharma, what is your sort of personal life North star? Why were you born? Right? So your Dharma, if people are familiar with that, is all the way up at the top. And there's these desires of art, comma and they all sort of hang out in this

top region of the framework, but it also comes from outcome driven innovation, right? So you've got and jobs to be done. There's jobs and there's outcomes and so they kind of hang out here. It's interesting if you read almost any book on innovation or entrepreneurship, they define their own 2 or 3 levels.

You've got the start with why. Who's that?

[00:23:21] Ty: Simon Sinek.

[00:23:22] Andrew: Yeah, Simon Sinek or something like that, the start with why guy. Yeah, right. And he's got the why the what the how so he's defined like these three levels and he shows how they relate to each other. I think is it play bigger.

That's got the. The concept of,

[00:23:39] Jared: category kings. Yeah.

[00:23:44] Andrew: Yeah. The whole category design concept, if you like dig into it, it's like, Oh, this is just a couple of layers of things, right? You can start to get into more, psychology and philosophy and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? And these things

[00:24:03] Ty: actualization at the top of the pyramid.

Right?

[00:24:06] Andrew: Right. Yeah. So what's interesting is everyone gives it their own lexicon, and so yeah, this is the DiMeo's lexicon, but what I am not seeing in any of the things that I read is much more than three layers. Like everybody's doing three layers and I kind of laugh sometimes because the teaching examples are so often down here, like people don't need a quarter inch drill, what they need is a quarter inch hole.

It's like, okay, where is that on this thing? Like, what is the drill? You know, an idea to make a hole to do what right? Like, so that example is living so low on the levels of abstraction or levels of alignment, levels of need or job, that this is one of the reasons why I think that these companies do start to go awry, right?

Because we sit down and we do this exercise and we're like, how are we going to do it? What are all the ways, why are we doing this? And they're living here and this is their highest why right here, the tactic is their highest why? And I'm like, no, man, you can go, what is your strategy?

What's your objective? What's your mission? What's your vision. And I start to define these things. Like, this is your, the visions, your North starts this enduring thing that's going to last a hundred or more years. It's going to last beyond your life. What's the mission? Okay, that's a statement that we're going to talk about trying to achieve in the next three to five years.

Objective, okay, this is the thing we're working on now, six to eighteen months, you know, your objective should feed your mission, your mission feeds your vision, right? Okay, what's the strategy for that? What are the tactics? What are the requirements? What are the concepts? What are the specifications?

And you can take things like medical device product development and design controls and fit them right on to here. If we're talking about the medical device industry, but it applies to any industry or I'm doing this for myself, if you look at the things that says on it, this is where Andrew's living, right?

Be a caring and thoughtful warrior for true self expression.

[00:26:17] Jared: I love that,

[00:26:17] Andrew: Empower goodness and freedom and thought and expression. Right. So these are the kinds of things that I'm working on personally.

[00:26:25] Ty: Oh, I was looking for health and happiness for all. I see you've leveled up a few beyond that.

[00:26:30] Andrew: Yeah. Improved health and happiness for all used to be at the top of my pyramid.

[00:26:34] Ty: Yeah. I remember that was in your email signature. Every time I'd talk to you, you were about that. And so, yeah. Wow. Yeah.

[00:26:39] Andrew: So I've gone layers up and these layers really come from the yoga piece, you know, the more spiritual piece.

But then it's interesting to say, what have I done in my life? Yeah. I've been a college professor. I write medium posts. I've been an entrepreneur, I ride motorcycles and fly airplanes. And do downhill mountain biking and you can like it's interesting to watch them trace their way up.

You can literally draw the lines to the activities that you self select in the jobs you choose and the career path that you take. And you can also see where I live like if you take a look at it this is largely empty down here.

You see where my weakness is, right?

When I'm on a team, I need the folks that are gonna sit down and write the requirements and do the specifications documents. Like I can do that, but I don't like it . 'cause I live up here.

[00:27:38] Ty: And I was thinking about the exercise you just went through for yourself.

Is one where you're self sovereign, you can create your own personal vision.

[00:27:47] Andrew: Right.

[00:27:47] Ty: And at the same time, you probably don't have a lot of leeway, say in your NIH consulting, to get in and start saying, Hey guys, the vision needs to change and let me present to you the new vision. Right. I think we've run into that before where like we've been talking to an organization and like you're starting to push on that upper limit.

And like that's beyond my pay grade. That's a conversation that's way up beyond the scope of this team. Right. And I think one of the, I don't know, maybe it's a missed opportunity for medical innovators is that, if you've ever had a mandate to do this beyond just your own personal vision and mission, but rather to get to create that because you're at the foundation of a company, right?

This is like a unique moment in time at that formation of a new entity to be able to be a core contributor to this kind of exercise. It's very unique, right?

[00:28:39] Andrew: Yeah. There's a couple of different challenges doing it for yourself. You don't have to collaborate with anybody, right?

Mm-Hmm. . So the idea of this is a collective process that we're all going to work on together and that we are all gonna collectively start to agree on these layers. That's where, you know, Trig calling it levels of alignment, like that alignment in a team is critically important. And so, one benefit of that is buy in from the whole team.

Another is when you can talk up and down the thing, you know everybody, let's remember we're making the drills to make the holes to access the brain to do the surgeries to remove tumors, et cetera, et cetera. And then, you sort of lead with the main thread of the business from the top to the bottom and say, now we're here at this manufacturing facility.

So, hey, everybody, we're going to kind of be talking on this level. Is everybody clear? You know, it's like we're all aligned in what we're trying to do, but now we all are kind of clear on what layer we're speaking at, which is hugely helpful. So that's one thing that's really different about doing it alone. When you've got a mandate that's beyond you.

And I know you mentioned NIH, because, you know, that I am a mentor and a business advisor for many NIH programs. So I'll throw out a disclaimer. I'm not paid for by, yeah, I'm not paid by the NIH. I'm not an employee of the NIH and my thoughts and comments are mine and mine alone here.

This is Andrew DiMeo speaking. Who listening to this podcast has an NIH grant or award or contract of any type and has read the mission and vision of the NIH, has read the mission, knows it, understands it, right? I ask you that. So how seriously are you taking mission?

Right. And that's the thing that boils my blood, right? That's the thing that's getting me upset. And when you start to read the mission of the NIH, there's language in there about improving the health and economy of our nation. That's part of the mission. It's not the whole mission. It's part of the mission of the NIH to improve the health and economy of our nation, right?

And so you've got some basic science research grant again, are you going through your mantra from the top to the bottom? Are you walking into your lab and thinking? Okay. I am working on this technology to do this for this kind of patient for this for this to improve the health and well being of our nation, are you saying that.

Are you saying anything that has anything to do with the mission the NIH. When you're doing your work. And the other question I ask myself is why would a government anywhere on the planet choose to put taxpayer dollars into an organization to fund the work that you're doing? What is the reason we're throwing taxpayer dollars into this bucket?

We want an outcome that is improving the health and the well being of our nation, right? Like, that's what my taxpayer dollar is going to. So, even though the work oftentimes basic science research is intended to be without the pressures of a commercial entity. This is not being driven by a commercial entity.

I'm a college professor. I have a shield of protection that allows me to ask basic science research questions without the pressure of a commercial organization twisting my work. That's true and great. Is it for you to advance your career? What is the dollar for though? Is it for you to have a lifelong research?

Is it for you to keep your company doors open? What is it for? And there is a mission tied to it. To improve the health and the economy of our nation, right? So there's no pressure. There's no commercial pressure on you to lie about something for the sake of some company, but there is a mission for you to live by when you do that work when you do that research.

Right. And so I think again, I think that this mission in our daily lives is missing from the work that we're doing.

[00:33:15] Ty: Such profound comments there. The often puzzled over healthcare just is an industry unique from others in that it's both a public good, meaning putting out new innovations, new devices that can change outcomes, that can save lives, that can, make people healthier is a public good.

It's a benefit for all of us to be healthier, and yet it also has to comply with a unit economic because it is a system that relies on financial inputs and outputs, and it has to live within both. And so that duality that I think the NIH recognizes that you point out is one of the just it's like endlessly complex and challenging to figure out how to balance those 2 factors.

[00:34:03] Jared: I will say you were masterful at switching into talking about the NIH and like I didn't have to prompt you about it. This is just mastery at work here. and so I appreciate you kind of talking about the funding paradigm with NIH. And I guess also sticking with that a little bit, what are some of the biggest challenges that you've encountered in securing government funding for healthcare projects?

And, in your mind, like what are the makings of a great project in the NIH's eyes? Or it is, does that, it has to exist. They're funding things all the time.

[00:34:37] Andrew: Yeah. You know what? And I think this is a heavily nuanced and complex answer, right? It depends on what type of funding you're seeking.

Right. So there's different programs, there's maybe more traditional R01 research grants where you've got a research question. It's an unanswered science question. Right and then you've got this concept of a translational research where you're trying to move something, which the research questions are largely answered. The research questions are largely answered and the risks that remain are more technical and product development specific. Right so, where I see issues is when you're asking for one type of funding, but you maybe have a different type of question, right? You're asking for a translational research dollar, but you really have a basic science research question. The other challenge that I see is when you're not living up to the mission of the NIH, you can kind of see through it and see they're just trying to keep their engine alive. They're just trying to keep this research endeavor going. It's not producing anything.

It's not turning into anything. And so, when your work doesn't align with that mission, you've got issues. Right. And so if you can articulate that, when you can articulate, I've got this basic science research question. And I'm seeking RO1 type dollars, but I can start to tie that to the mission of the NIH in my proposal.

That's something you can look at and say, oh, okay, if this question gets answered, that will advance knowledge for everyone moving towards that goal. This is great. Right. You've got to align with what the grant or the award or the contract for that matter, depends on what type of funding it is, what it's intended for.

When it becomes more and more about we need the money and less and less about, we want to answer this question or move this endeavor forward, that's where the challenges come in.

[00:36:45] Jared: And I guess, where would you say the current funding of the NIH is like focused towards today?

[00:36:52] Andrew: Technically it's everywhere, right?

There's all the institutes and they're funding many, many things. We're seeing a trend in some new types of translational funds. And they're largely spin outs from what happened. And if anyone on the call is familiar with RadX, the rapid acceleration of diagnostics tests for COVID 19.

So what happened during COVID is we had a shortage of tests in the nation. We needed everyone from garages to big companies to, to submit, what do you have? And we needed to rapidly get that stuff commercialized so that we could deploy it to the nation. Right? And so, the NIH and many other organizations came together and started to build a process to rapidly move through phases of is this a research project or is this translational? Okay. It's translational. What's the risks associated? Okay. Let's put some mentorship and support around it and let's move it to the finish line. Right? And so as a model that started with RadX, and at the end of the day, it was successful.

It's like, oh, wow, we moved stuff from there to the finish line. So, let's start to look at very specific areas. There's a program called Blueprint. It's focused specifically, neuroscience and neuro technologies, right? There's calls that are uber specific, like, HIV testing at the point of care.

Right and so it's like, you'll start to see very specific requests for proposals coming from the NIH that have this new translational flair that have been born out of the world of RadX and. I give RadX a lot of credit. There was a lot of ingredients that went into that before COVID ever happened.

There's the Wallace Coulter Foundation and the Coulter Translational Research Grants. There's organizations, like CIMIT in Boston, and, VentureWell and BME Idea. And there's a ton of ingredients that came together to help build that model because they have been practicing this type of innovation program for decades before the pandemic came along.

So, I'm giving RadX a lot of credit. It's all the ingredients before that too.

[00:39:16] Jared: And I guess one like other topic is just talking about like first time startup founders, people that are getting their first project out there and going after funding.

And what is the likelihood that they're actually going to receive this grant funding. I'm pretty sure it's minuscule, and they're going to have to bring on people like Ty, people like yourself. Grant writers, like, you know, how do they even get across that finish line when it seems like it's almost impossible from outsider's perspective?

[00:39:44] Andrew: Yeah, it is challenging, right? I mean, they are very competitive awards, right? I would say honestly, though, if it were me, I'd be focusing on team building around what our deficits are., you can see my deficits, right? I just showed you my deficits when looking at my vision. Right?

So if I'm starting a company, right, I need to think about who do I want to surround myself with. And, you know, I might need if I'm looking for, say, an NIH grant. I'm not the best grant writer that doesn't necessarily mean I want to hire. I don't know if I want to hire an outside resource to help me write the grant or if I want to bring somebody onto my team that's got that skill set. That's good at that. Right? One of the last companies I started was a software company and I'm not a software engineer. Right? I'm not a UI UX designer. I don't sit down and do that work right? And so I began to recruit a team that could support what we were trying to do. And if grant funding is in your strategy. Then you want to have a team that's looking to do that. I'll kind of go back because is it in your strategy and should it be in your strategy? And that maybe comes back to some of the challenges that people have.

The NIH is there to provide funding that comes from taxpayers dollars to do things that the commercial environment otherwise is not going to support.

So if you have a very clear risk hurdle, hey, we need 200, 000 to achieve this next milestone for this huge market opportunity, huge market opportunity.

Right, then there should probably be high net worth individuals that would pay for that. And the NIH will start to look at it and some of these new translational research awards that are operating like RadX have people like me on them looking and reading and meeting with the teams and trying to understand why do you need the money?

And if we look at it, and we're like, Hey, this is something you could take to this huge company and propose this research collaboration, and they will be interested in licensing it. You should do that or, hey, this seems like something that angel investors would probably be interested in this is more of a target for them.

So you're falling into this area where okay, wait, you need this 200 K or you need this 1. 2 million or whatever it is based on the size of the opportunity to do something that the market's not going to pay for this is a bigger investment than the market would ask for, but it's going to improve human health, you know, man, this is going to restore, vision to people with low and no vision, not a giant market that, an angel investor wants to come in, but something that we really care about people really care about it. Right. And our taxpayer dollars should be supporting something like that. So, your, non dilutive funding strategy should also be mission driven. Like, again, if you're saying, what are all the ways I can pack money into my company and, let's just get as much non dilutive money as possible, because that'll keep us non diluted and we can be rich.

It's like, you know what? You're part of the problem if you're complaining about Amazon and Microsoft and whoever you want to complain about, you're part of the problem. Right? So, if you're saying, hey, we're working on a real mission driven thing here, this is really important. I don't think commercial markets are going to pay for what we're trying to do here.

This will be a great fit for NIH that will ring true in your application, and that's the kind of stuff that I would think that the NIH would want to fund versus just stuffing dollars in people's pockets.

[00:43:44] Jared: That's fascinating. Your perspective on that, because that really aligns with some of the other founders that we've had on our podcast more recently.

And some of the stuff that's gotten funded, it was stuff that, how are you talking about where it's not maybe as commercially viable, it's not this bright and shiny thing, but it's really impactful to still a good amount of people. And man, that's a really incredible way to put it. I know that we only have five minutes left.

I just kind of want to open up the floor to you. So, what are you working on today? I know you're at Hanger Dreys. That's kind of your, your newer endeavor. How does it align with everything that you've kind of talked about today as well with a mission driven innovation and enabling evolutionary design and just, yeah, what's going on in your world?

[00:44:22] Andrew: Wow. This is fun. So Hanger Dreys is a new coworking concept that I have to synergize a mental, physical, social health in under one umbrella, it's got a bicycle theme to it because I like bikes. But it's interesting. Right? So, this. Ph. D. biomedical engineering guy who's a medical device.

You know, luminary, or whatever you called me at the beginning of the show. Yeah. , co working space. How does that fit in? You know, and I have it on this. You can find it. I think it should be on the, mission driven innovation that I showed you. It comes down to the loneliness epidemic.

It comes down to how important it is for our physical and mental health to have meaningful relationships, and there's a ton of data and research behind that, especially coming out of Harvard multiple programs out of Harvard actually are looking at loneliness and there's surgeon general report on loneliness.

There's a ton of stuff you can read on loneliness and the impact it's having on our mental and physical health. And so, I'm more interested these days in general in proactive health care, in rebounding how healthy are we to rebound maybe from injury before it ever happens.

And, think that getting to the root cause of things, as opposed to being a reactive health care system. And so the idea of the loneliness epidemic really, really rings. And I think it's just, I don't know that everyone is paying attention to how the world has changed. Especially with people getting hired and not relocated, especially with very young people.

There's kids graduating from college. I call them kids, young adults graduating from college. Getting their 1st, ever jobs at a company that's not relocating them. And where are they working from? They're working from their small apartment with their roommates. They just graduated.

And they don't have peers and coworkers necessarily. And we're seeing just more and more of this. And so Hangar Drays is about addressing that issue. So that's one of the things that I'm working on. Of course, spending a lot of time with many of the NIH programs that we discussed, and riding as many bikes as I can when I'm not working on anything else and spending time with my wife and my dog and a camper in the mountains.

[00:46:48] Jared: Doing yoga and meditating. And yes.

[00:46:52] Andrew: And writing, I've been writing a lot on Medium, and that was a little, that was sort of a self commitment. Hey, I want to be a better writer and I want to write shorter, more concise. I tend to be long winded. We're about to go over on time. And so really honing in on how can I deliver a message in a concise package that is readable and interesting.

And so I started doing that. Really, in earnest in January of this year, and I've been accepted into multiple publications, and boosted on Medium, and it's like, what? Okay, this is, I didn't, realized that was going to happen in six months.

[00:47:33] Ty: Well, please keep doing it. It was one of those articles that, provoked, inspired this conversation today.

And, I want to just encourage you to keep doing that because I think it's your writing is awesome. Thank you. Appreciate that.

[00:47:45] Jared: Yeah. And Dr. Andrew DiMeo, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate your insights and just helping us make this world a little bit better brick by brick little by little over time.

I very much appreciate it.

[00:47:56] Andrew: Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks everybody for coming today.

‍