Identifying Opportunities for Innovation

Michael Schultz is director of venture operations at Portal Innovations, where he is always looking for innovations that could revolutionize the life sciences.

"We work with many startups, and all of them are innovative in their area," Schultz said, "whether that's a new way to treat a form of cancer or a new way to diagnose cardiovascular disease."

Being able to identify opportunities for innovation is an ongoing challenge, and it's one that's shared across jobs and industries. That wide reach was on display at the 2024 Biotech Nexus, an annual gathering hosted by Northwestern Engineering's Master of Biotechnology Program (MBP), where Schultz and three other panelists discussed their approaches to tracking and leveraging innovation.

Here are four key takeaways from their conversation.

Think about what makes you different

Jeff Fairman is vice president of research at Vaxcyte, a vaccine innovation company he co-founded in 2013. The company is developing broad-spectrum conjugate and novel protein vaccines to prevent or treat bacterial infectious diseases.

Fairman said that while many people associate vaccines with killing bacteria, his approach is a little different.

"There's a host-pathogen interaction here that's detrimental," Fairman said. "How can I interfere with that host pathogen interaction? It doesn't necessarily have to kill the bacteria, maybe it helps the immune system recognize the bacteria or eliminates something that decreases the immune response to the bacteria."

Innovation, Fairman said, is not always about coming up with a big, transformative idea. Sometimes, it just comes down to having a unique perspective.

"How you think about it and how you're perceiving it differently from everybody is what gives you that extra edge," he said.

Look internally and externally

LanzaTech is a carbon recycling company that transforms waste into raw materials. As innovation manager, Marilene Pavan needs to have her finger on new opportunities to elevate the company. To do that, she focuses on innovation being performed internally as well as at external organizations.

"I work with a brilliant group of scientists and engineers," she said. "They have the most amazing, crazy ideas all the time."

To capitalize on those ideas, Pavan helps organize a number of company-wide events so that people from different backgrounds and experiences come together to discuss their views on topics and potential opportunities.

"It's a really nice opportunity to come up with new ideas and solve some challenges that we might have," she said.

Pavan also participates in as many external events and conferences as possible to learn about what work is being done by other companies and research groups that could overlap with LanzaTech's operations.

Think about processes as well as products

Kanika Changela (MBP '07) is quality systems manager at Siemens Healthineers, where life-changing equipment is being developed to diagnose conditions like breast cancer, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes.

A company that is specializing in creating breakthrough medical technology is a clear example of innovation, Changela said. While many of her colleagues are focused on product-based innovations, Changela's job is focused on quality and regulatory safety and advocacy.

It's not as forward-facing when it comes to innovation, she said, but innovation still plays a key part in her day-to-day work.

"In terms of some of the innovations that we do, it's not always product based, but also process based innovations," she said. "How do we manage inspections easier? We use different technologies to make it easier versus the old paper-based way we used to do things."

Leverage technology whenever possible

Portal Innovations a life-science venture capital firm that seeks to find biotech companies with the potential to change the future of healthcare.

To do that, Schultz's colleagues developed Stargaze, a program that helps identify university professors who are launching companies they might be interested in funding. A key component of Stargaze is AI.

"They've pulled publications, patients, grants, and previous startups (information) and linked all that data together, applied some of these new machine learning algorithms that are constantly being developed, and are using that to try to identify innovation," Schultz said.