Why is Developing a Commercialization Plan for Healthcare Innovations so Hard?

So many healthcare entrepreneurs assume that developing new innovations that customers need or want will automatically result in market success. However, this is far from what research indicates.

The reality is that commercialization is a complex process with many inter-woven factors and decisions that affect success. To put it simply: it’s hard.

Apart from missing the complex nuances of the process, there are three key issues that help explain why so many innovators struggle to develop an effective commercialization plan:

1. Many healthcare leaders think more about developing a go-to-market plan as opposed to the entire commercialization process. (Learn about the difference between launching and commercializing in our recent blog post.)
2. Most innovators don’t have a proven, repeatable commercialization framework that ensures all the right strategies and decisions are being made — and at the right time.
3. Many innovators fail to acknowledge the strategic differences between commercializing a radical vs. an incremental innovation — one of the many CoI insights that are often hidden in plain sight.
   Models continue to evolve to guide innovators along the commercialization path. The probability of commercial success is maximized by different commercialization strategies depending on ovation is in the diffusion process and the type of innovation. where the innovation is in the diffusion process and the type of innovation.