Ventana Founder Tom Grogan at the Tom Grogan Innovation Awards
This summer I joined Roche Tissue Diagnostics (RTD) in Tucson, AZ as an intern with the DISCOVERY team. RTD was founded in in 1985 by Dr. Tom Grogan, a pathologist who sought to improve the lives of patients by automating the tissue staining process. In 2008, his company, then known as Ventana was acquired by Roche. Every year, we honor the innovative spirit of RTD and Ventana through the Tom Grogan Innovation Awards. This year my group made it in the top two in our category (Market Access), so I had the opportunity to watch my supervisor Mark Hellewell present a tool that hasn't been released publicly.
I loved listening to Tom Grogan speak, and here are some key takeaways I learned from him:
1) In hockey, you don't skate to where the puck is. You skate to where the puck will be. #Innovation
2) Dr. Grogan started his company after 10 years of manually performing tissue staining and realizing that there had to be a better way. It took 10 years to gain the necessary foundation of experience and insights to then launch his innovative startup.
3) As a closing remark, he gave a shoutout to all the people in the trenches who work hard all day, yet some days, nothing seems to go according to plan. He assured us that some of the best lessons come from the toughest failures. Also during those days when nothing seems to go right, Happy Hour would be awesome.
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A slightly shorter version of this post, which meets LinkedIn Post character requirements, is published on my Linkedin.
I loved listening to Tom Grogan speak, and here are some key takeaways I learned from him:
1) In hockey, you don't skate to where the puck is. You skate to where the puck will be. #Innovation
2) Dr. Grogan started his company after 10 years of manually performing tissue staining and realizing that there had to be a better way. It took 10 years to gain the necessary foundation of experience and insights to then launch his innovative startup.
3) As a closing remark, he gave a shoutout to all the people in the trenches who work hard all day, yet some days, nothing seems to go according to plan. He assured us that some of the best lessons come from the toughest failures. Also during those days when nothing seems to go right, Happy Hour would be awesome.
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A slightly shorter version of this post, which meets LinkedIn Post character requirements, is published on my Linkedin.
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