The defining factor to success is never resources, it is resourcefulness.

I wish I could take credit for that insightful message, which belongs to the great American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though he lived more than a century ago, his message remains especially pertinent in today's economy.

I recently gave a talk on “Resourcefulness in R&D” at the Marcus-Evans Medical Device Summit in Boca Raton, FL, where I was joined by several leading R&D experts specializing in medical devices and equipment. The speakers shared their “pearls” gained from years of experience in the medical-device market. Here are some of the highlights:

• Rich Gildersleeve, senior vice president, global R&D for DJ Ortho, Vista, CA (djoglobal.com), presented on “The Seven Deadly Sins and Lean R&D.” He mentioned that among the most overlooked areas of waste in R&D is the failure to perform “knowledge capture.” That is, the failure to document what is learned in an R&D cycle and then preserve this in a structured way that can be referenced later. An insidious area of waste is forgetting what you have learned as an organization and engaging in “reinvention.” Gildersleeve also spoke on “Protostorming,” prototyping plus brainstorming, and recommended reading Lean Product and Process Development by Allan Ward.

• Shane Mao, program manager, global R&D for Bausch and Lomb, Rochester, NY (bausch.com), revealed another source of waste and ineffectiveness ? excessive multitasking. Mao presented research showing that the maximum number of projects an engineer or designer can focus on is three. After this, Mao says, the effectiveness of the designer on any one of the projects drops dramatically.

• Dr. Peter Burke, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Steris Corporation, Mentor, OH (steris.com), had these observations: “It is much harder to evaluate a new technology financially than technologically” and that the traditional tool of financial analysis, discount cash flow (DCF) is ineffective. One thing that makes this a particularly sticky problem is that a company needs such hard-to-evaluate breakthrough products to grow, and “a company cannot grow on incremental improvements alone.

• Laura Whitsitt, senior vice president, global research and innovation, for Smith+Nephew, Memphis TN, (global.smith-nephew.com) had this insight about the “voice of the customer.” She explained, “This isn't about asking customers for solutions, but it is about understanding their needs.” Whitsitt also shared a technique for objectively evaluating technology -- “Step back and look at it as if you were an investment banker,” she explained. She also suggested to audience members that they ask themselves the following, “Does this technology have a compelling value claim that would want to make me open my checkbook and invest?”

• Mukund Paravasthu, director of R&D for DePuy Mitek, Inc (Johnson & Johnson company), Raynham, MA (depuymitek.com), had this to say about disruptive innovation: “Disruptive innovation at the beginning tends to have defects, low margins, and performance problems.” This is what makes it hard to evaluate and easy to miss. And this on efficacy and effectiveness: “Efficacy is when a product works in the hands of an expert, effectiveness is when it works in the hands of an average user.”

Another key area of wasted resources is poor design, or no design at all. Often, so much time and so many resources are expended on the engineering functionality of a product that efforts to address human factors and ergonomics are left to the latest stages of the project. By then, the design may be frozen and it could be too late to make meaningful changes. This is also the stage when any changes are the most expensive and most disruptive to the project.

Richard Lambertus, senior manager for design excellence, Cardinal Health, Dublin, OH (cardinal.com), said that “44% of all product recalls are from poor usability due to poor design.” He went on to state that the best practice when it comes to user errors is to “design it out — don't train it out.” This is a powerful argument for bringing in usability design at the beginning of the project, rather than trying to paste it on at the end.

Finally, here are a few bits from my talk, summed up in three quotes:

• Above all, innovation is not invention. It (innovation) is a term of economics rather than technology… Innovation can be defined as the task of endowing human and material resources with new and greater wealth-producing capacity.” -Peter Drucker, business management theorist and author

• Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations, which are in infinite minority.” -Jules H. Poincare, mathematician and philosopher

• That which doesn't make money I don't want to invent.” -Thomas Edison, inventor

If you have “pearls” to share, as these speakers did, volunteer to present at a conference through your professional society, or write for a magazine or newsletter, such as Medical Design and Medical Edge. Collectively, we all benefit from the pearls.