One of the very first questions I had to answer in my doctoral journey was, “What business problem do I want to spend the next five-to-six years on?” As I thought about it, two trends set my heart on fire.

• Trend #1: There is an explosion of innovation happening in healthcare. BUT…

• Trend #2: 95% of innovations brought to market fail to reach any adequate level of customer acceptance or financial performance + research indicated that over half of digital health startups were “zombie startups, at risk to die.”

Unlike other industries, our quality of life — and our very lives — depends on getting these health innovations through the complexities of the commercialization process and into the hands of the people who need them the most. In many cases, it could be our loved one’s health or even our own at stake!

It’s head-spinning to think about how many technologies and advancements healthtech innovators dream up that end up in a zombie graveyard. It's not that their products don’t solve a real problem or aren't superior to competing solutions. It's because commercializing an innovation is hard, especially in healthcare. And, growing a company from an idea to the first million is the most critical stage of the innovation journey.

From telehealth to AI-enabled solutions, digital therapeutics, remote monitoring tools, on-demand primary care — you name it — many things must go right to go from an innovative idea to a profitable business.

In 2017, I graduated from Walden University with my doctorate in business administration (DBA) and my doctoral study on commercializing technology innovation in healthcare. This prompted me to change Legacy DNA from a healthcare marketing agency to a healthtech growth firm.