Article: “The Middle Path to Innovation,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 2024
Authors: Regina E. Herzlinger, Harvard Business School, Duke Rohlen, Ajax Health, Ben Creo, Harvard Business School, and Will Kynes, Ajax Health
Related Case: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo. “Ajax Health: A New Model for Medical Technology Innovation.” Harvard Business School Case 323-043, November 2022.
Summary: “The Middle Path to Innovation” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2024) delineates a new model for how to make health care innovation happen. It explains how both large firms, struggling with sluggish revenue growth and product development, and start-ups, struggling to obtain the resources they need and “not invented here” cold shoulders from the large firms, can work together to achieve their goals.
The article is based on the actual results achieved by co-author Duke Rohlen as he implemented this model to quadruple Cordis’s growth rate in two years, with the funding and expertise of PE firms KKR and Hellman & Friedman. The authors then illustrate how this model has been deployed in the moribund film industry and can be used to increase laggard defense innovation. (Herzlinger, Regina E., Duke Rohlen, Ben Creo, and Will Kynes. “The Middle Path to Innovation.” Harvard Business Review 102, no. 4 (July–August 2024): 134–145.)