In January 2013 at TEDx Beacon Street, Harvard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter shared Six Keys to Leading Positive Change. Let’s look at how can we apply them to grow our Bioscience and Healthcare Industry here in Arizona so we can individually and collectively keep things moving up.
So WHAT are the Six Keys…
and HOW can we use them?
1. Show Up
Being in the right place at the right time to make a connection that matters for your or your business starts with making the decision to invest your time by showing up. That is why AZBio lists the events that are going on across our state and in our region and shares them with you every week via IN THE LOOP. It’s also why we gather today’s thought leaders and tomorrow’s (our students) for Leadership Conversations, the AZBio Expo, The AZBio Awards, White Hat Investors, SBIR: Ask the Experts and Trailblazers. The people who can help you reach your goals is here in our community. Don’t miss your chance to meet them.
2. Speak Up
Speaking up means taking every opportunity to get the message out about what is happening in our bioscience industry. The May/June issue of AZBusiness launches HEAT with a focus on our Healthcare, Energy, Aerospace and Technology industries here in Arizona. Our April Op Ed in the The Arizona Capitol Times made a case of investing in Medical Innovation and the paper also features our bioscience industry this week.
Speaking up also takes place on a national stage. Arizona leaders are heading to San Diego to show the world what Arizona has to offer the global bioscience community in the Arizona Pavilion coordinated by the Arizona Commerce Authority. Mayor John Lewis of Gilbert and Mayor Jim Lane of Scottsdale will be on hand to represent Arizona’s elected leaders and their communities while a record 9 Arizona Bioscience Leaders will take the stage as speakers, moderators, and panelists.
- Joan Koerber-Walker (AZBio): “Maximizing the ROI in Quality Innovation”
- Phil Schneider (UA College of Pharmacy- Phx) and Marcia K. Horn (ICAN): “Ensuring the Safety and Commercial Success of Biosimilars in the United States”
- Ron King (BioAccel): “Transforming Academic Innovation: A Systems Approach”
- Mara Aspinall (Ventana): “EY 2014 Biotechnology Industry Report” (Super Session)
- Louis Bretton (Calimmune): “Stem Cells and Gene Therapy, a Great but Challenging Marriage”
- Martha Brumfield (C-Path): “FDA’s Critical Path Initiative: Progress in the First Decade and Promise for the Next”
- Robert Bowser (Barrow) and Diane Stephenson (C-Path): “Leveraging Clinical Trials for Biomarker Discovery”
3. Look Up
So often, as leaders we are heads down, working diligently to move things forward, but we need to take the time to ‘look up’ and remember why we work so hard. It is arguable that no industry has a higher purpose as we work to discover, develop, and deliver innovations that can heal the world, feed the world and fuel the world.
Our national and global economies are depending on us to develop new ways to bend down the Health Care Cost Curve and diagnostics, devices, and therapies being developed here in Arizona may just hold the answer.
Patients are depending on us to find ways to diagnose disease at the point when we can most effectively treat it, to develop vaccines that can prevent it, and to develop therapies and devices that can help them survive and thrive when they face health challenges.
4. Team Up
We know how to ‘team up’ here in Arizona. Whether you call it “Arizona’s Collaborative Gene” or site examples including Arizona’s Bioscience Road Map Steering Committee, the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, pre-competitive consortia at the Critical Path Institute, the expansion of Arizona Cancer Center in Partnership with Dignity Health, the Mayo Med School in partnership with ASU, or the first International School of Biomedical Diagnostics in partnership with Ventana, ASU and Dublin City University, Arizonans know how to team up.
We’re teaming up to fund innovation too. This August, SBIR program mangers will travel to Arizona for educational sessions and one-on-one meetings with Arizona innovators. Arizona will be home to the first Annual White Hat Life Science Investor Conference presented in partnership with the National Venture Capital Association and the state bioscience associations of Southern California, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada.
We’re working with our elected leaders at home and in Washington, DC to keep our state and our nation competitive and to ensure that the life science innovations that are born here, grow here and benefit the people who live here.
5. Never Give Up
Our purpose may be one of the highest, but our journey from discovery to development to delivery is a long one and at times one filled with challenges that can seem insurmountable.
We’ve all been there and we will probably be there again. That point where we wonder if the road looks too long or the benefits of the journey seem far in the future. Going the distance and inspiring others to stay the course is probably the greatest test of our leadership.
Each small success builds on the one before and lays a foundation for the ones to follow. That’s why our community comes together each fall for the AZBio Awards to celebrate success and inspire each other to push ever onward.
6. Lift Others Up
Each success we achieve brings with it a responsibility to reach out and lift another up. The milestone you just past is one that your neighbor is striving for. By sharing your insights with a student, mentoring a co-worker or leader at an emerging company, making a contact for someone else or simply making time to listen, we lift each other up.
It’s Time….
to Show Up…
to Speak Up…
to Look Up…
to Team Up…
to Never Give Up and…
to Lift Others Up.
It’s time for Arizona to Move Up.