Challenge
Scoping digital opportunities.
F. Hoffmann LA Roche is a multinational life-sciences company that operates worldwide under two divisions: pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Compared to the pharmaceutical sector, the business value of diagnostics has been historically lower. Change is in the air: as new technologies are shifting the focus of healthcare from cure to care, diagnostics is the first field to benefit from this transformation.
In this scenario, Roche invited Board of Innovation to Basel to co-create a digital strategy and design and execute an innovation vision and strategy to discover new digital health offerings for Roche, with the aim to do what patients need next!
Board of innovation helped us to design a novel innovation strategy and translate it into a structured process. Together we were able to build a tailored process that was applicable to our specific industry.
Richard Batrla-Utermann, medical director, Roche Diagnostics
Solution
Human-centered innovation strategy.
Board of Innovation brought together the diagnostics and pharmaceutical divisions to draw a human-centered digital innovation strategy for Roche.
As a result, a joint vision and strategy were created. With the support of Board of Innovation, diverse teams created new business ideas, fueled by tools, trends, and start-up landscaping.
Aside from the digital innovation strategy track, Board of Innovation guided interdepartmental teams to focus efforts and increase transparency by using Lean Startup and Design Thinking tools and techniques to launch new digital services to the market.
At the time of writing, a development track is currently going on to push the winning ideas into the market.
Impact
A coordinated strategic framework for Innovation in healthcare.
Board of Innovation had impact by:
1. Bringing the diagnostics and pharmaceutical divisions together to create a joined vision. This promoted a human-centered perspective on Roche’s customer journey through prevention, screening, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and monitoring.
2. Bringing transparency to ongoing innovation activities. Board of Innovation tidied up current projects across different departments in Roche, and subsequently screened and mapped them into strategic buckets.
3. Mapping out the field of digital innovation in healthcare. This helped Roche to identify threats and opportunities in the healthcare arena, especially pertaining to customer trends and emerging technologies.
4. Creating a strategic vision for digital innovation and turning it into action. One ad-hoc innovation team was established following Board of Innovation’s strategy and ideation tracks.
