Bookshelf CASE STUDY 10 Exploring Innovation in Action – Evolving Knowledge Needs
Bookshelf
CASE STUDY 10
Exploring Innovation in Action – Evolving Knowledge Needs
of a New Venture
Helax AB was founded in 1986 by three staff of Uppsala
University in Sweden. The three founders had degrees in physics,
mathematics and computer science, and had experience of using IT
in medical applications, in particular radiotherapy. The founders
successfully raised US$3 million of venture capital from private
and government sources, enough for three years of working capital
without any additional revenues.
The idea for the business originated in a public-funded research
project called CART (Computer Aided Radio Therapy), which
aimed to create an integrated information management system for
the records of cancer patients. This was believed to be desirable
because such patients usually undertook a wide range of different
examinations, scans, diagnosis and treatments over an extended
period. By combining and tracking these data, it was hoped that the
overall effectiveness of the therapy would be improved. The CART
project successfully demonstrated that the success of therapy could
be improved through better management of the patient data,
identified user requirements for such a system, and had developed
a number of the software subsystems and components necessary to
begin building a more integrated information management system.
However, CART did not go as far as hoped, and never developed a
functioning integrated system. Helax AB was created to take the
work further, and to develop commercial applications.
So at start-up the three founders of the company inherited
knowledge of the problem area, user requirements, and most
importantly had formal knowledge relevant to potential solutions
within the combined fields of computer science, mathematics and
physics. Based on the results of the CART project, a process map
of the clinical process was developed, independent of any systems
design. This was circulated to 30 international cancer centres for
feedback, and this quasi-Delphi survey also helped to create
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potential customer awareness and buy-in for the future. The
feedback was positive, and provided the basis for further
development of the system. In 1988 the technology was installed in
two hospitals for clinical trials and evaluation. At the core of this
design was the dose planning system, later to be renamed the TMS
(Treatment Management System). This architecture allowed Helax
AB to act as a systems integrator by adding further components
from other providers and partners.
The potential solution had two very different components. The first
was specific to radiotherapy and concerned the planning of dosage
levels. Dose planning requires knowledge of the relationship
between radiation levels and patterns and their effects on
biological tissues and cells. This subject had been explored in a
PhD project jointly
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funded by Helax AB and Uppsala University. The second area of
knowledge was more generic, and concerned with information
management. These two fields of knowledge evolved in different
ways as the new venture developed. The first was based on the
knowledge generated and accumulated from the CART research,
plus access to an extended external network of scientific research
and clinical expertise. The second was more internal, but required
extension by further recruitment.
Development was grouped into three different areas: hardware and
operating systems architecture; software for the user interfaces;
and quite separately, the development of the algorithms for
calculating the doses, which required access to more basic science.
Within a year the whole CART project group of 13 from Uppsala
University had joined Helax AB, and in addition engineers with
product development and commercial experience were recruited to
help in design and development, bringing the total number of
employees to 20 by 1990. Almost all employees had degrees,
mainly in the physical sciences or engineering, but the company
decided not to recruit medical expertise. Instead, it relied on a
network of contacts in the medical community. By this time the
original venture capital funding had been exhausted, and
arguments between the founders and venture capital owners over
the future direction of the firm resulted in the founders buying out
the venture capitalists interest in the firm.
By 1994 the company had installed its system in 11 of the 15
radiotherapy centres in Sweden, and had also achieved some sales
in Germany and the UK. During this period the company
developed some new knowledge and capabilities in production,
and had an annual capacity to build 12 systems. However, in
product development most of the knowledge-seeking effort was
within the existing system design, and was aimed at fixing bugs
