For innovators, the experience at the typical industry conference exhibit hall is usually focused on selling their newly designed products and services.
However, this year's TEDMED, which meets to encourage breakthrough thinking, launched The Hive to bring a variety of health and medicine innovators together to connect, converse and essentially cross-pollinate with each other to spark new ideas and possibilities. Selling products was secondary, according to participants.
For The Hive, TEDMED selected 50 companies that reflected inventive ideas to solve healthcare challenges as well as approaches to innovations, including accelerators, government-run challenges, academically-led programs, start-ups from inside and outside healthcare and labs supported by Fortune 500 companies, said Shirley Bergin, TEDMED partner and chief operating officer. The setting enabled these innovative companies to communicate and collaborate with each other, with the possibility of further innovation.
"From potential investors and acquisitions to high-level meetings and important new relationships, the start-ups that were part of TEDMED are communicating business opportunities that go well beyond anything they've experienced in a traditional exhibit hall at a single-focus medical conference," she said.
And participating in The Hive is just the beginning for these entrepreneurs, who will continue to get support and access to the TEDMED community and other start-up companies through a partnership with the StartUp Health Network, Bergin said.
In innovations, one never knows where the next idea or inspiration will come from and that is why a setting like the Hive is so "profound" said the Hive participant, Patricia Salber, CEO of Health Tech Hatch, a crowdfunding resource for the healthcare industry. The Hive "filled a hole in the start-up ecosystem," she said, because with the focus off selling you can begin connecting and innovating.
"Open up your mind and be willing to talk with everyone and learn from everyone, which is opposite from what you hear in start-up land, which is focus, focus, focus," she said.
"You're there to meet people, buzz around in that hive analogy, make connections, and have conversations that you might not have had otherwise," she said. "We ended up having wide-ranging conversations that may or may not be directly related to what we do in the future but made us smarter."
Through conversations at the Hive, she was able to find out how other start-ups are doing and find out how and what they're doing, which gives her a chance to evaluate how Health Tech Hatch is doing. Additionally, she got to meet people wgi could become potential strategic partners with Health Tech Hatch.
TEDMED selected 50 companies, like ViS and Health Tech Hatch, that reflected inventive ideas to solve healthcare challenges as well as approaches to innovations, including accelerators, government-run challenges, academically led programs, start-ups from inside and outside health care and labs supported by Fortune 500 companies, said Shirley Bergin, TEDMED partner and chief operating officer. The setting enabled these innovative companies to communicate and collaborate with each other, with the possibility of further innovation.
"From potential investors and acquisitions to high-level meetings and important new relationships, the start-ups that were part of TEDMED are communicating business opportunities that go well beyond anything they've experienced in a traditional exhibit hall at a single-focus medical conference," she said.
Participating in The Hive is just the beginning for these entrepreneurs who will continue to get support and access to the TEDMED community and other start-up companies through a partnership with the StartUp Health Network, Bergin said.
Conversations among entrepreneurs like those in the environment of The Hive can foster more innovation, she said. "We are all using the lean start-up approach. We're not just going in the back room to design what we think everyone should want, but we're learning what people want by talking with them," she said. "Other innovators can suggest doing something differently, explore designing an innovation in another way or point the way to potential strategic partners."