INNOVATOR INSIGHTS: A Conversation with NEMIC Fellow Ben Mitchell

In this episode of Innovator Insights, Ben Mitchell, Group Director of Innovation at MMID, discusses how NEMIC's MedTech Leadership program provided valuable networking opportunities as well as skills preparation for a career in MedTech.

Transcript

0:08 Williamson:

Welcome back to another edition of Innovator Insights here at NEMIC My name is Andrew Williamson I'm the business and engagement coordinator here at the New England Medical Innovation Center. I'm joined today by Ben Mitchell who works at MMID as an innovation consultant. Tell me more about that.

0:28 Mitchell:

Yeah So um I work at MMID product development uh in Providence Rhode Island uh down the road here And the “ID” in MMID stands for integral development and we help people develop products that protect improve save lives and innovation consultants a little vague Um, I'm really client relationships sales, business development.

0:46 Williamson:

I'm interested So how what was sort of your journey into maybe getting into that role?

0:50 Mitchell:

I grew up here in Rhode Island I knew I was going to stay in Rhode Island I was looking for my next uh role Um and I did health plan sales uh at Virgin Pulse which health plans are pretty complicated and those sales are typically pretty complicated Um so I was looking for another sales business development role Um and uh yeah I found MMID through a friend at Rhode Island Commerce and here

1:11 Williamson:

I am I guess I know that you took our MedTech leadership program last year and so for anyone that's familiar with NEMIC and the work that we do we focus on medical device innovation. But more broadly uh health technology I think and so thinking about somebody like yourself, how did you–aside from the connection–what what appealed to you about metech leadership, and say like okay I'm going to take this course? 

1:34 Mitchell: Yeah so um really since I started working I've done something outside of work uh to continue my education an online class uh something I'm currently taking a class through IDOU for design collaboration Uh before NEMIC I actually took the Harvard Business School and online core program which is like a pre-mba program Um so I got a sense for you know what these courses tend to include the structure of them what kind of tools you get to use and how much they cost Um and when I dove into the medtech leadership program after I sort of discovered NEM I realized it was full of so much And as a Rhode Islander it was free And for me it was really a no-brainer Um I knew that I I was going to be here from October to March uh two years ago Um and it's Mondays and Saturday mornings Um and I like to meet people So really when I was learning about that part of the Metech Leadership course yeah I got excited and I signed up.

2:26 Williamson

That's interesting So tell me about maybe what you what you thought what you maybe thought the Metech Leadership program was before going into it and then taking it and saying "Okay this is now I have a better grip on what it is." Or was there any correlation between those two things?

2:41: Mitchell

it was really different Um yeah so I thought it would be this really highly technical maybe it's not for me medical device crash course um sort of uh class and environment There's so many different courses You get to sort of cover everything from you have an idea to launching the product and pricing uh throughout the the MedTech leadership course But I really thought it was this highly specialized thing that I would be sort of this obscure person in the cohort It'd be engineering students from Brown and people that work at Johnson and Johnson And I was I was very wrong Um people who have sort of just a fuzzy idea in their head that they wanted to think about commercializing were here People who just wanted to meet people and take the course and better understand what the medte spaces in Rhode Island which is me were were part of the class There were students there were you know parents who are coming back to the workforce after having kids So for me it was yeah it was really eye opening Um you get to meet a lot of people and you'd be surprised You don't need a technical background to come and take the the medtech leadership course at all.

3:35 Williamson

I think that's great because I there could be um I think it's logical to look at the curriculum and look at the description and wonder oh maybe this maybe this is for somebody with a highly specialized set of skills um but then having gone through it to realize yes I mean that's also part of it but it's not a requirement right that you can kind of go through and really get a lot of it on the on the industry side of things not strictly on the technical side of things um and so I taking that into account what what were your biggest takeaways from the program?

4:06 Mitchell

you go really broad and you sort of get to pick how deep you want to go in every one of these buckets It could be quality assurance It could be commercial viability If you're someone who's ever had a medical uh product idea like why don't they have this that's out there Um the medtech leadership course can really quickly teach you how to tackle you know who pays for it who buys it who cares Maybe you're interested in the regulatory side or the legal side uh the pricing strategy side So for me there's a couple of those buckets that I cared most about and I got to decide how deep I went There was no obligation There was no exams But I think the number one takeaway and Aiden Petri actually told me this um he believe he's a big believer in entanglement I met so many people through the medtech leadership course Um I still engage with neck yeah almost every other week and people who I met through the medtech leadership course introduced me to other people who are mentors uh friends investors that I know in the area Um so I think really the biggest takeaway for me is the network I think that's critical to highlight

5:01 Williamson

I'm glad that you mentioned that I think the networking piece and our greater network is a an integral pillar of part of who NEC is in the work that we do um and arguably a huge component of MedTech leadership program I mean it does sort of culminate with our um pitch night and graduation where there's typically you know hundreds of people attending from all different parts of the sector industry professionals service providers um entrepreneurs startup folk and so when all those people converge um I think that's a huge maybe lesser indicated benefit of the course because it you know is focused heavily on the curriculum but I'm it's great to hear that that was part of it because I think that is a huge part of it Um so thinking that you've had sort of this path which took you through uh different places including MTLP and NEMIC um and now MMID um how did you feel as though MedTech leadership sort of um played any role in preparing you for MMID? or um I'm curious if there's any relation there.

5:58 Mitchell

I think it definitely played a role MMID is a 33y old company now Um we're international so we have offices across Germany and the Netherlands and the United States Um and so the culturally we're European and we're American which is really fun Um but there's so many people you need to meet here It takes a village So for me I think it definitely helped from a network perspective I I sent a client over to an investor I met through Metech Leadership uh last week Um and uh I think also from the sort of the the breath that we talked about perspective I learned a lot in my role at MMID Um and I' I'd have to say that yeah the medtech leadership course helped me close some of those gaps And actually we have colleagues at MMID who are also taking the medtech leadership I think they're in the current cohort Um and they're more specialized than me because I'm business development client relationship sales Um they are mechanical engineers educated in Cambridge and at Brown University RISD and URI Um so they're highly specialized and so they go really deep into one of those buckets product development or quality Um and then Nek the medtech leadership program for them really helped them sort of branch out from breath and understand our clients better Yeah Um so I think it's it's it's helped people on the client side and on the engineering side at MMID.

7:08 Williamson

That that's so interesting So okay so thinking about um an organization or a company like MMID I and I've heard one of the things we always envision Medtech leadership program was as career preparation u technical skills um and preparing folks whatever that may be on the other side of it and to your point it's there's a breadth there um but so do you think that there would be utility to people various folks within an organization to take medtech leadership program as it pertains to their specific role?

7:39 Mitchell:

I think so I think when you get trained to do something highly technical and specialized you sort of dive in in really deep somewhere and you can sort of miss things And the medtech leadership program really is a bunch of Mondays and Saturdays where you get to you get a huge crash course and all the other stuff it takes to run a medtech leadership company grow it sell it exit etc Um so I think if you're a specialist in any one of those buckets you're a regulatory person you're uh a manufacturing person um you have an idea or you're in sales and you want to better support and understand your clients um yeah I'd say the medtech leadership program will help

8:13 Williamson

Is it fair to say that there's some sort of utility to folks going through and and um almost as an on not an onboarding tool but as a um maybe it's career development is the right term but in in other words being able to have this resource that's available different folks from different walks of life but kind of converging at a point to prepare them for their career or to add add value to their skill set to a career Would that be a fair assessment?

8:38 Mitchell

I would say so Uh actually during some employee evaluations I had for myself I mentioned MedStech leadership uh as part of my onboarding It helped There's so much that happens here in Rhode Island You might be surprised Um there's so much research just around Alzheimer's and dementia here in Rhode Island And I think when people think of innovation they think of Boston They think of San Francisco There's so much here in Rhode Island Um and part of that onboarding is getting connected to all those people and understanding how they do business And I was originally exposed to that here

9:06 Williamson

Um I mean it's you're sort of one of those um compelling people to talk to with really interesting insights and things to say Um and you've had a really I think interesting path along your way to where you are at MMID now Um are there any takeaways for somebody who's interested in maybe getting into um a medtech type of career regardless of maybe what the role may be?

9:25 Mitchell

yeah I think my tip is take the medtech leadership class only because you're gonna you're going to rapidly meet a ton of people and you're going to find out really quickly who's in your space who's in the spaces that you're interested in Um and you're also going to get a a lot of exposures And I frankly think this is something you guys undersell as part of the class You get a lot of exposure to real life stories Everything from something that you need a surgery to get into the body all the way to apps all the way to new kinds of simple inhaler You rapidly learn about successes failures what happened to real companies So yeah I'd say if you want really rapid exposure to people in the medtech space in the area whether it's technical or not and you want to sort of get a deep dive of real life real company stories of how they how they grew exited sold etc Yeah I'd say take this class because it has all of that.

10:15: Williamson

Awesome That's fantastic And thank you for mentioning that Um so Ben Mitchell it's been fabulous Thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today For those of you watching who would like more information of course you can visit us at nemic.org, or join our newsletter That is where we do all of our announcements and pertinent updates which would be nemic.org/news

10:33

Thank you Andrew Thank you