Innovation Finalist Interview with Robert Lord, Co-founder, Protenus

1. In your opinion, what makes a company innovative?

What makes a company innovative is being able to think from first principles about how the world should look, in an ideal state, and systematically tackle the barriers that stand between the present and that potential future.  In taking this approach, innovation becomes a step-wise process of overcoming, piece-by-piece, small challenges that ultimately add up to a transformative change for the better.

2. What makes your company innovative?

We approach every problem without any preconceptions about the correct answer, and instead work to systematically understand our customers and their problems.  By building out our solutions agnostic to technology or technique, and simply focusing on solving problems using a variety of disciplines, we are able to tackle problems in completely novel ways.

3. What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you and your team?

We actually had this discussion a couple of months ago over a Friday lunch.  As many of us have backgrounds in science and mathematics, famous innovators like Galileo, Aristotle, and Curie came to mind.  Contemporarily, we’re content to jump on the bandwagon of being inspired by the likes of Elon Musk and his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, which looked at big problems in entirely new ways, and most importantly, executed on an audacious vision.

4. What are some publications, print or digital, you read daily or have read that help you stay on top of your game? These could be books, magazine, blogs, e-newsletters, etc.

We try to stay abreast of our respective backgrounds and look for innovation there, so whether that’s reading the Economist for political and economic insights, medical journals, physics journals, or various extremely niche blogs on HIPAA and patient privacy, we strive to keep aware of both the broader world around us and our specific area of focus.

5. What advice would you give to up-and-coming leaders striving to be innovative in today’s business environment?

Surround yourself with great people and never compromise on the team that you build.  Great teams tackling important problems fuel all innovation, and the moment you stop paying attention to the people you bring on-board is the moment that you compromise your fundamental capacity for changing the world around you.

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