The key to innovation: Ideas

The noted business author Jim Collins writes that the most innovative companies don’t necessarily generate the most ideas. They’re simply more receptive to ideas — the ones their own team generates and those that come from, well, anywhere. 
 
Exact Sciences embraces that notion. It empowers its team of world-class innovators to come up with new approaches while also brainstorming with and learning from outside groups, including students. Their fresh thinking reveals even more ways for the company to work toward its purpose of helping eradicate cancer.   
 

Creative audience outreach | Savannah College of Art and Design 

When Mark Fallai learned that his alma mater had a program that paired companies with groups of students that could design solutions for specific needs, he jumped to get involved. 
 
Fallai heads Customer Experience at Exact Sciences. One challenge the company is examining is the differing levels of adherence rates for its Cologuard® test, an at-home colorectal cancer (CRC) screening test that looks for both abnormal DNA and blood in patients’ stool. Even after health care professionals prescribe the test, some populations are less likely than others to complete and return their test kits. Not taking that step leaves people, including those in communities of color, unscreened for CRC. 
 
Half of premature CRC deaths are related to racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic inequalities.¹ The most marginalized patient populations often go unscreened for CRC,² which is one reason these communities are up to 11% more likely to be diagnosed with CRC in later stages,³ when the disease is less treatable.^4,5    
 
The SCADpro program at Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design excited Fallai. He wondered how students would address the adherence gap, being free of preconceived notions and available to focus time on developing solutions.   
 
When he went to his leader for support, he remembers saying: “If we want to make a difference, we need to look at acting differently. What would young minds do with this question?” 
 
Ten students joined the project from a mix of disciplines — advertising, graphic design, performing arts, and others. After 10 weeks of work, the group presented its research and ideas to a group from Exact Sciences. Their multichannel campaign included a striking interactive experience — set up to look like a restroom — video, radio spots, and ads, plus a strategy for spreading awareness. The campaign included a distinct look and feel, as well as English and Spanish messaging tailored to suit the target audiences.  
 
Advertising and branding major Sydney Nitschke led the SCADpro team. She said that when the group learned that embarrassment was one possible reason behind lower adherence rates, they challenged themselves to create a campaign that would feel authentic and reach people on a personal level. 
 
“We’re not ignoring any of the embarrassment,” Nitschke says. “Sometimes that’s an uncomfortable conversation, but why? We’re talking about our health. It affects all these people around us, and we need to start destigmatizing the way that we approach it. 
 
“I think that’s the future of advertising and the future of marketing, that we can start to create bonding points beyond selling points. Everything should feel like it’s a human talking to a human.” 
 
For Fallai, the project hit the mark. He looks forward to exploring how the campaign ideas could unfold to support the company’s work.  
 
“Design can motivate action,” he says. “Action can motivate screening. And at Exact Sciences, we know that screening changes lives.” 
 

Commercial viability of a potential product | Arizona State University 

Elle Grevstad, Ph.D., works in product strategy at Exact Sciences. She’s focused on potential new cancer screening tests in the Exact Sciences pipeline.   
 
A key step in bringing a new product to market is understanding whether the product makes good economic sense for a company to pursue. To help explore that question for the pipeline test, Grevstad tapped into a group of graduate students studying biomedical diagnostics at Arizona State University.  
 
For the first half of 2024, around eight students dug into questions about the size of the potential market, how the product might function in a clinical workflow, what regulatory and policy requirements to consider, and other factors. The students researched the industry, conducted interviews, and evaluated their data before reporting their findings.  
 
“Everyone benefitted from this,” Grevstad says. “The students leaned into a hands-on project. The team considered many of the things we need to account for before taking the next step to invest in a new product. The students learned to apply their classroom work to a real problem, and we learned more about the market nuances.” 
 
Grevstad spent part of her career as a research professor at UW-Madison and relishes the chance to continue working with students after transitioning from academia to industry. 
  
“I enjoy working with students,” she says. “As a company, we already know a lot, but we don’t know what students are going to come up with. Why don’t we look to them to help us see what we didn’t think about or look into avenues we haven’t yet explored? 
 
“Their insights and energy can change how we look at things. It’s really valuable.” 
 

Laboratory function improvement | University of Wisconsin-Madison  

Siddhant Jain remembers what it was like to be a biomedical engineering student at UW-Madison working on a design project with an outside company. 
 
“The design program was one of the best aspects of my college experience,” Jain says. “It gave a much better idea of what exists beyond college.”  
 
So after the systems software engineer joined Exact Sciences, he knew he wanted to help give students a similar experience and introduce them to the exciting work happening on his team.  
 
"When I was in the program, I knew of Exact Sciences as more of a research company. I didn't realize all the technical engineering work that was happening, like the robotics and automation,” he says. 
 
Jain and a fellow systems software engineer, Robbie Van Zante, polled their teams’ managers and came up with a project idea for students. Van Zante breaks down the complex challenge into simple terms: “getting rid of wires.” 
 
Teams have to regularly calibrate equipment in Exact Sciences laboratories to ensure accuracy. Today, that process generally involves plugging a series of wires into each machine to evaluate how it’s working. Like any process that involves a bunch of wires or cables, that can be unwieldy and slow, plus a technician has to be physically at a machine to monitor it. Jain and Van Zante asked students to devise a way to conduct those checks wirelessly for specific machines used in the labs that process Cologuard tests.  
 
Designing a new method isn’t easy, especially when equipment doesn’t already exist to do the work. Teams of students worked on the project for two years with support from Jain and Van Zante. They presented their progress on campus in the spring alongside other student projects.  
 
“We chose a project that wasn’t on a critical timeline,” Jain says. “We don't need it right now; this is something that would be nice to have as a process efficiency that may be implemented in the future” as the company continuously improves its ability to serve patients. 
 
As Collins writes, not every idea will lead to bold breakthroughs and instant success. But seeking out ideas from inside and outside their walls, keeping an open mind about them, and then doing something with the promising ones? That keeps a company innovating and moving in the right direction. 
 

References 

1. Jemal A, Siegel RL, Ma J, et al. Inequalities in premature death from colorectal cancer by state. J Clin Oncol. 2015;33(8):829-835 
 
2. American Cancer Society. Colorectal Cancer Facts & Figures 2023-2025. Atlanta: American Cancer Society; 2023. 
 
3. Ho, Chanda, et al. Late Presentation of Colorectal Cancer in a Vulnerable Population. American Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 108, no. 4, Apr. 2013, pp. 466–470, 10.1038/ajg.2012.256. Accessed 16 June 2020. 
 
4. Siegel RL, Giaquinto AN, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2024. CA Cancer J Clin. 2024;74:12-49. 
 
5. Itzkowitz SH. Incremental advances in excremental cancer detection tests. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2009;101(18):1225-1227. doi:10.1093/jnci/djp273