Many Life Sciences companies recognize the need to innovate, but struggle with where and how to begin. That’s not a surprise. Why? Because the pressure to innovate is high, and the landscape is complex: evolving tech, data challenges, regulatory demands. Not to mention other root causes like poor organizational performance and power dynamics. To overcome the challenges of the industry, leading Life Sciences organizations are finding that workshops, in collaboration with industry partners, are a better way to focus and align their innovation strategies for success.
A way to avoid dead ends and bad investments
Our own experiences with clients and hearing their stories of failed innovation strategies have flagged some common consequences. These include:
- Teams fatigued by “pilot paralysis,” where nothing ever scales
- Business-IT relationships becoming strained by misaligned goals
- Innovation budgets diverted to projects with low or unclear ROI
- Reputational risks when innovation provide no tangible results
- Failed initiatives that delay product timelines or even compromise compliance
Workshops provide fertile ground to engage the key stakeholders, take them on a shared journey to get them on the same page with a common innovation vision, strategy, and plan of action. Do workshops ensure that dead ends and bad investments can be avoided? That’s the hope. What’s vital though is that the workshop is a space where critical conversations and agreements can take place between external Life Sciences experts and internal stakeholders. But more on that later.
Importantly, Life Sciences companies need to remember that innovation is not a single project with a beginning and end. It’s a continuous process. Yes, in a complex environment like the Life Sciences industry, it’s easy for efforts to stall or drift in the wrong direction. But with the right guidance, which a workshop provides, the real costs of missteps can be reduced: lost time, credibility, and momentum.
The Innovation Day format: A practical approach
At Tenthpin, we’ve put our own workshop format together for our clients: Innovation Days. The format is structured, but flexible, tailored to the organization’s context, challenges, and teams. Why? Because we know that every Life Sciences company has its own pain points that it seeks to address. Plus, with our expertise in this space, we can ensure each client receives the knowledge that they can’t get anywhere else during their session.
Innovations Days provide a personalized exploratory space, hosted by our Life Sciences experts, to:
1. Explore trends and disruptions relevant to Life Sciences
The landscape is always changing and keeping pace isn’t easy when the goal post shifts every week. To say it’s overwhelming is an understatement. But Innovation Days give you the chance to delve into the hot topics taking place in the Life Sciences industry, with our experts working with yours hand-in-hand to pick out the ideal focus points that are relevant for you.
2. Evaluate practical solutions within SAP and beyond
Knowing which intelligent innovations and solutions for Life Sciences in the SAP ecosystem are right for you isn’t easy. Understanding the right choices that exist beyond the legacy systems of SAP is another challenge too. Innovation Days give clients ample room to discover which Life Science innovations and trends they are potentially missing out on, which could help them stay current, competitive, and make it easier to achieve their business goals.
3. Align business and IT stakeholders around shared priorities
Silos are an issue when it comes to innovation. This is especially true between key stakeholders and IT. For any leap forward to happen, everyone has to be on the same page. Innovation Days provide senior team members across departments a space where red flags and long gestating topics can be aired. That way, alignment can take place. The external Life Sciences experts will air their own opinions too based on their expertise.
4. Identify concrete use cases through interactive workshops and breakout sessions
As SAP’s Global Life Science Co-innovation Partner, we know the hot topics and the best use cases within the industry e.g. BRH, CGTO, and AI-enabled solutions. This is why the interactive breakout sessions can be the most important part of the Innovation Day. Why? Because understanding these particular use cases ensures that the right steps are taken collectively. Understanding the art of the possible is how you align your innovation strategy with your goals.
The goal isn’t to pitch. It’s to explore, prioritize, and decide where innovation can deliver the most value.
What an Innovation Day looks like in practice
We’ve already put Innovation Days together for our clients and have seen the rewards from all sides. But what really happens and are there any key takeaways that we’ve seen from the process?
Well for starters, let’s outline how we set out the agenda for our Innovation Days:
How Tenthpin supports you:
- Crafts the agenda for this 4–6 hour event
- Ensures your specific requirements and objectives are met
- Brings 6–8 Life Sciences experts
- Presents innovations that could transform your business
Within the above, you also get the following on the agenda:
- Industry trend keynote
- Functional Trend keynote (e.g. Supply Chain Management)
- Functional deep dives (client-specific)
- Co-innovation deep-dives (client-specific)
Your team in action:
- Chooses 15–30 decision-makers from IT and business functions
- Engages in dynamic discussions, breakout sessions and workshops
- Works intensively to select concrete options for your company
- Enjoys a fun and valuable session
How do we know that we’ve got setup right? By the feedback of course:
Outcomes that matter
A clearer sense of where the Life Sciences industry is. Where their company is. How competitive their functional areas are. Which innovations could be most promising for them to level-up their business. This is what participants of a good Innovation Day walk away with.
The sessions typically conclude with a shortlist of innovation opportunities that make sense for the business, along with a clear roadmap for next steps. Whether that means optimizing existing systems, piloting new solutions, or exploring opportunities for co-innovation. By turning exploration into tangible direction, Innovation Days help Life Sciences organizations move beyond discussion into action.
