Steven Collens | CEO, MATTER | Accelerating Medtech Innovation with Collaboration & Entrepreneur Ecosystems

Steven Collens, CEO of MATTER, an incubator & innovation hub, discusses his journey and the impactful work MATTER does in healthcare innovation. Steven shares his transition from Abbott Labs and Capitol Hill to leading MATTER, emphasizing the importance of collaboration in accelerating healthcare advancements. He provides insights on how MATTER supports both startups and large companies and also reflects on personal moments that confirm his career path and the strengths that help him lead in the industry.

Guest links: https://matter.health  

Charity supported: Innovation Development Institute

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com. 

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Host: Lindsey Dinneen
Editing: Marketing Wise
Producer: Velentium

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Episode 047 - Steven Collens

[00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

[00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

[00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

[00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

[00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

[00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to introduce you to my guest, Steven Collens. Steven is the CEO of MATTER, the premier healthcare incubator and innovation hub. MATTER opened in February 2015 and nurtures entrepreneurs and innovators building next generation health IT, medical device, diagnostic, and biopharma technologies. MATTER has worked with more than a thousand healthcare technology ventures and the company partners with dozens of industry leading companies, health systems, and universities.

Steven holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He chairs the board of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and serves on the boards of 1871 and the Chicago High School for the Arts. He is a member of Chicago Next, the Chicago Mayor's Council of Technology and Innovation, a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow, and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Steven. I'm so excited to be here talking with you today.

[00:01:57] Steven Collens: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:59] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course! Well, I would love if you would start off by sharing a little bit about yourself, your background, and maybe what led you to MedTech.

[00:02:09] Steven Collens: So myself, I guess it's all intertwined together, so after business school, I went to work at Abbott and I was at Abbott labs for about 10 years. That was my introduction into healthcare and medical technologies of any sort. And after that, I went to work at an investment firm. On behalf of them, started an incubator that was not focused on healthcare, and then had the opportunity to do what ultimately became MATTER, which was starting something that could really help accelerate the pace of change of healthcare and figuring out how to combine elements and do that.

And our basic thesis at MATTER is that collaboration is the way to accelerate the pace of change of health care. And so MATTER is structured as a not for profit entity. We functionally incubate startup companies. They are different types of technology. It's primarily software and devices. They're all over the world. It's a membership model and we've got a suite of resources to help them at different stages of growth.

And then on the other side of it, we work with big companies, so big life sciences companies, health systems, insurance companies, and we help them innovate more effectively. We help them collaborate with entrepreneurs. We help them harness innovation in ways that they're otherwise not necessarily wired to do. And by putting all of that together you know, almost 10 years in, we like to think and certainly hope that we're helping make a change in healthcare.

[00:03:40] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I know you are and I know that by your mission and the way that you go about your organization, and it's very exciting to see how the companies that have come through the program have continued to thrive. And I was wondering if any of those, particularly companies that you've worked with, really stand out to you in terms of making a huge difference in the way that you could come alongside them and work with them to make that difference.

[00:04:09] Steven Collens: Yes, for sure. There are companies where people come in and they come from the healthcare industry and they know a lot, and the ways that we help them are different than companies where the entrepreneurs come in and they're not necessarily from the industry. And we love working with all of them. We will work with entrepreneurs, but we don't have anywhere near the level of screening that a venture capital firm would do, where it's a more of a democratized approach. We look for companies that are trying to solve something that's meaningful in healthcare. So if they are successful, they will help advance healthcare in a direction that's meaningful.

We look for entrepreneurs and teams that give us some reason to believe they can be successful. Could be prior success, it could be that we're just so impressed by how smart they are. It could be their passion. It could be some combination of a variety of things. It could be somebody else has invested in them already. And like, "Well, we know they did a lot of diligence." And then the only other criteria is like people we want to work with and be around and that are going to increase the general level of joy and happiness in our environment.

And so, there's one guy who met his co founder at MATTER. He's more of the business guy. The co founder was more of the inventor, scientist guy and, you know, it's an example of a company that's solving one of these problems that if you're not in healthcare, you just sort of scratch your head as to, which in healthcare, there's like an endless number of these problems where if you look at it with a more rational lens or from an outside perspective, you're like, "Huh, that's how healthcare works? I don't, that's so strange."

It's a device for when a surgeon is putting screws into a bone, the way that they need like a, some sort of a depth gauge to determine what size screw to use. And it's like a reusable thing that they all use. It's totally analog. It's not a sophisticated piece of technology. They learn how to use it when they're doing their training and they just keep using it. And obviously they wash it and sterilize it, but you know, it's not ideal for a lot of reasons.

And so this company developed a digital and disposable version that is more accurate, more sanitary, obviously, you know, we don't always want to advocate for things that are disposable versus reusable, but in this case, having this combination of accuracy and not dealing with any issues around sterilization and cleanliness, is a big improvement.

And, it's a medical device, took a couple of years to develop. Again, he met his co founder at MATTER. He met a lot of other people who provided different guidance and advice and support and financing through MATTER. And so now the products in market and doing great, and they're working on other other products. So that's one of the companies that, that pops to mind. I mean, I, we could use up the entire time talking about different companies, but I'll pause there.

[00:07:27] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I'm sure that we could. So, at the beginning, you talked about collaboration and how that can be the key to success for these companies that you're working with. And I'm wondering, I feel very strongly that collaboration is the key in so many ways to amplify success, and even to get to a point of success, because we don't know everything ourselves, but how do you get past-- and or help up maybe some of the companies that you work with-- get past sometimes a more competitive mindset where it's hard because you're very protective of your IP, you're very protective of your process and your business. So how do you help companies understand the value of collaboration and what we can do together to rise together?

[00:08:11] Steven Collens: I think it's such an interesting question, and I'll take you all the way back to when we first were creating MATTER. And so I had just recently built this other incubator, not focused on healthcare, more like web mobile tech stuff at the time. And I was working with the same architecture firm and real estate people. And one of the things that we were trying to figure out, because we knew it needed to be different, for that because healthcare is different. It's a different set of people. It's different archetypes. In some cases, it's even different motivations. It's just, it's a different milieu.

And one of the things that we spent a lot of time trying to figure out was, IP is so much more important when you're dealing with medtech as compared to your average software company, which is more about speed of execution. And I mean, it's about a lot of things, but it's, in the early days of most software companies, IP isn't top of mind. Whereas in the early days of most medtech companies, IP is top of mind. And how is that going to work? Are people going to be collaborative?

And so we spent a lot of time, we talked to lots of people, tried to figure out how to deal, it turns out it like doesn't even matter. For 95 percent of the entrepreneurs out there, obviously they care about their IP, but there's collaboration in two veins. One is, other entrepreneurs are not doing the exact same thing. They're almost never directly competitive. Knock on wood, we've supported a thousand companies who've been around for 10 years, and we have not had one entrepreneur steal another entrepreneur's technology and try to run with it. God forbid that we land in that stage.

The more complicated question is in dealing with the large players in the industry. And so on that dimension, some of the entrepreneurs are reasonably a little bit careful. Our basic thesis is that if you are building a new technology that you're trying to put into the healthcare system, you need to know more than you probably think that you need to know about how that system works, how things get paid for workflow solutions, decision making processes. It's just, there's so many areas of healthcare. Even if you've been in healthcare, unless you're just exactly in the space that you know inside out and backwards and forwards, there are so many areas and aspects of healthcare that are not intuitive, that frankly, if you were coming up with a design system, you'd never design something that way, because this doesn't make a lot of sense. But that's how it works. And you need to understand all of that if you're an entrepreneur in order to be successful.

And so, one of the ways that we help with that, we've got lots of mentors and executives and residents and folks, but we also have lots of relationships across the industry with payers and with providers and with medtech companies and pharma companies and software companies, big ones. And they are immense sources of knowledge and resources and understanding. We have actually had one case where a large company met with one of our startups that was not really a medtech company. It was not a regulated device and they didn't have any IP. Just had an idea, they had a prototype of it, and the company basically went and did it on their own and it was really quite disappointing. And so we did not bring them back for anything. And, that was disappointing. So far, it's a one in 1000 events and that still more than we want to have, and hopefully we won't have that again.

And we spend a lot of time with these large companies, and for the most part, they understand what the dynamic is, and they come and work with us for multiple reasons. One of those reasons is that generally large companies cannot innovate as fast as technology is evolving. And so if they want to capitalize on new and emerging developments, new and emerging technologies, one of the best ways to do that is find entrepreneurs to work with, maybe eventually by the company, it depends on the dynamics could be, you make an investment, could be you just collaborate, could be you buy it. I mean, there's all sorts of different structures, but that is a tried and true way of accelerating innovation within a large company to advance goals.

The challenge is that large companies don't necessarily know how to find the right entrepreneurs. Once they find them, they don't necessarily know which ones to work with. It's not as straightforward as picking Deloitte or Accenture or something with a massive track record. And so it's more complicated than that. And then once they do decide to work with one, working with an early stage startup is a very different experience than working with a very large company. And a lot of large companies just aren't very good at that. And so that's, we help them. And again, 99. 9 percent of the time so far, it's been successful.

[00:13:39] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing about that and your philosophy behind it. And also, I appreciate you being willing to share that one story because it's, you know, even though of course we wish that would not happen and never did happen, but the idea that you can still be successful in collaboration and there's still so much opportunity for mutual growth and learning. And yeah, you might have the bad actor every once in a while, but for the most part, to your point, 99. 9 percent of people really have that spirit of collaboration, which is great. So now you come into MedTech from a different background than some other folks. And so I was wondering if you might share a little bit about your early career and how that actually helps you now, because those skills I'm sure translate a little bit, but I would just be curious to know a little bit more about how that has played into your career.

[00:14:35] Steven Collens: Yeah, well, my early career, so I in college, I studied political science and French literature, like the farthest thing from, I walk by the engineering building and be like, "I don't, I have no idea what's going on in there. I'm going to go back to my French literature class where I feel comfortable." And then I went to work on Capitol Hill. So I, I was an aide to a Senator for almost six years. Spent most of that time working on education policy and transportation policy, loved it, but sort of looked around at a certain point and there weren't a lot of people where I, I looked and I said, " In 20 years, I want to be like that."

And it wasn't obvious to me what my longer term trajectory is. I didn't have the faintest idea what I wanted my longer term trajectory to be. So, you know, I sort of, tried and true strategy went to grad school. So that's when I went to business school and I ended up at Abbott because, when I came out of business school Abbott at the time had a kidney business, a renal business, and they made a drug for dialysis patients. At the time it was a 300 million or so product and Medicare, and this was a long time ago, the structure of how dialysis treatments get paid, get are paid for as different now than it was then. But at the time, this drug had was in the process of replacing a generic version, which Abbott also sold and it had been engineered and tweaked in a way that ultimately some researchers at Harvard that we had nothing to do with showed that it had a survival benefit compared to the old one.

But before we, before they showed up on our doorstep with this New England Journal of Medicine study that they were, it hadn't been published yet, but they said, "Hey, just FYI. We're, we've done this massive analysis and the New England Journal of Medicine is going to be publishing it and your drug prolongs life and there's a survival benefit based on all these." And we're like, "We thought that, but thank you for proving it."

Before that, Medicare looked at these two drugs and they said, "These are basically the same thing. One of them is way more expensive than the generic one. And we want doctors to stop prescribing that because we don't see the evidence." And, you know, obviously we believed in our own data and we showed it, but they did whatever analysis they did and they came to a different conclusion. And so they were trying out these different tools that they've never used before, because Medicare doesn't have the right, the ability today, and certainly not back then even less, but not today, to dictate what doctors can use and what they can't use. And they were trying out these new tools to effectively get around that and force doctors to use the generic. And so the business unit within Abbott was looking for a couple of people who had a mix of business and an understanding of politics and policy and how Washington works, and so I joined that team and focused for the first year and a half or two years on trying to solve this problem that Medicare was trying to essentially put this business out of business.

And then after we've solved that, I had a more traditional marketing job and then I kind of moved around within the company. Some of those jobs I had within the company are directly tied back to the experience I had in Washington. So I wouldn't have gotten that job, first of all, had I not had that Washington experience. After my sort of stint as a normal product marketer I went and wrote speeches for the CEO, which I was only qualified to do because I'd written a thousand speeches when I was in Washington. And so that moved me then into sort of a role around messaging and communications for the company, which I was in for a while in different roles.

Fast forward, when I left Abbott, I went and I joined this investment firm. I was effectively the chief of staff to the to the guy who was running or one of the two guys who was running the firm. I certainly wouldn't have, without that foundation from what I learned in DC, which was partly about messaging and communications and policy and things like that, but also it was a really strong foundation in two other things. One of just understanding how the world works and how people and groups interact with each other to advance their goals and how that happens. And also how to mobilize other people and organizations to help accomplish one's goals.

And so that was part of what fed into me getting that job at the investment firm. Building MATTER, and even the incubator before, I approached as very much a listening exercise to the community. Now I would say it was very much following a design thinking or a lean startup or those sorts of things where it's, we'd come up with some ideas and then go bounce it off the market and see what entrepreneurs or other stakeholders wanted. And they don't call it that in politics, but I certainly learned how to do that on Capitol Hill, because in order to get anything done, you need a lot of different stakeholders to both be bought into what you're doing. In some cases, you need them to think it's their idea. And so, so certainly that was very helpful and continues to be really helpful in building and then operating and running MATTER.

[00:20:33] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit more about your background and how it has actually aided you getting a few different of the roles that you've had. I think there's always, if you look back, maybe some purpose to the meandering that sometimes happens where you go, "Oh, okay, here I am in MedTech!" And maybe didn't expect it, but I love how it worked out. So are there any moments that stand out to you as confirming along your career, maybe especially with MATTER, but even beforehand, as confirming that "I am in the right place at the right time in the right industry?"

[00:21:13] Steven Collens: Yes. I mean, there's so many. When I left the firm to, and then was starting MATTER, I assumed I would do this for two or three years. I kind of get it up and running and everything. And then I go do something different. I'm still here, just about 10 years later, which sounds to me like a really long time. And I, so I think about, and I have for probably the last five or six years, regularly think about, "Is this really what I want to be doing?" I've been doing this for a long time and, is this really the direction I want to go? And so there's a lot of things that, that keep me engaged and enthusiastic about what I'm doing.

So one of those is, it's probably hyperbolic to say every day, but every week, the kinds of people I get to work with and the kinds of things that they are thinking about and trying to solve, I find very energizing. I love working with entrepreneurs. They, for the most part, are people where their passions are aligned very closely with what it is that they're doing and building. If you want to build a successful startup, you have to be all in. You have to just be passionate about it and committed to it and dedicated to it. And you're giving a part of your life to building this thing and this company. I find that archetype just really energizing to be around, and to be able to help folks like that, I find endlessly enjoyable and and satisfying.

And on the other side of what we do, the people within these large companies that we work with are, almost by definition, trying to push the company in ways that it's not already going. They're trying to push boundaries. They're trying to change things because they are driven by this mission. It's much easier if you're in a big company to just go with the flow. And a lot of people do that. And you need a lot of people to do that in a large company. The things that large companies do really well, they don't do really well because every single person in the company is trying to constantly push the boundaries and innovate and change things. The company couldn't work like that. But there's a subset of people who are trying to do that and they're trying to push harder. And they're trying to go in different directions and experiment and try things, and we get to help them. And I also find that endlessly engaging and interesting and rewarding.

A couple of years ago I did a-- I love personality tests and all these different kinds of things. And so I did one, it wasn't really a personality test, but it was a fairly detailed exercise of, "Are you in the right role in the right industry and are you doing the thing you should be doing?" And I went through this whole thing and what came back was a resounding "yes" that when you just, when you look at it in a whole bunch of different dimensions, this really fits. Is it the only thing that I could be doing that? Of course not. Would I be just as happy and in other roles? For sure. But I get a lot of satisfaction and joy from the work that we're able to do, from the team that I'm able to do it with, and the people that we're able to help.

[00:24:43] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Thank you for sharing about that. So pivoting the conversation just for fun, imagine that you were to be offered a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want. It can be in your industry, but it doesn't have to be. What would you choose to teach?

[00:25:03] Steven Collens: Wow. A million dollars to teach a class on anything I want. There's some interesting triangulation of of what I'm actually capable of doing, but I guess if I had a million dollars to do it, I could become a lot better at something. It's an interesting way of asking about passions and things like that. It would probably be something around hiking and outdoors and camping and functioning in nature, which is how I spend a lot of my free time.

But I'd also would love to teach a masterclass on healthcare innovation and healthcare technology. I think more people would probably benefit from that than a class on hiking. But I like to think that I've learned a lot over the last 10 years about what makes healthcare innovations go farther, go faster and be successful, even if they're coming from different lenses. They're coming from large companies, if they're coming from entrepreneurs, if they're coming... and our healthcare system just needs an endless amount of innovation and technological advancement and, you name it, it needs everything. And so if I could impart some of what I hope I've learned over the last 10 years doing this, plus 10 years at Abbott labs and other things, but I would love to do that. And it would probably be more useful than a class on the outdoors.

[00:26:36] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay, well I think both sound like good classes, so we can do both. It can be a yes and!

[00:26:42] Steven Collens: Excellent.

[00:26:43] Lindsey Dinneen: Alright, and how do you wish to be remembered after you leave this world?

[00:26:48] Steven Collens: You know, I'm not a religious person, but one of the 613 rules in the Old Testament is basically like a catch all for other things, but if you take aside from all of the prescriptive, very specific ones, there's one that is just, "be holy." And the point of it is that, in this case, God, writes all of these rules about how people are supposed to act in order to create a functioning society. But the people will always get around that if given the opportunity. It doesn't matter how many rules you have. It doesn't matter how prescriptive they are. People have the innate ability, and a lot of people will, figure out work arounds and ways to get around it.

And so this one is supposed to be the catch all for that. Again, I'm not a religious scholar. I'm not even religious, but this is my understanding, and I love this as a concept. And so by being holy, you're supposed to think about what is the intention of all of the different rules or the rules that are tangential or this, what am I trying to accomplish? And is my behavior and action going to contribute to the kind of world that I think that I want to live in. And so, I would love to be remembered for somebody who is acting that way. And that's hopefully people see that or look back, the kinds of decisions I've made, the kinds of things I've done, the kinds of actions I've taken, and see it as a form of being holy in that sense.

[00:28:44] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That's a very thoughtful answer. Thank you for expounding on that too. I really appreciate that. And final question, what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?

[00:28:58] Steven Collens: I mean, every time is a challenge. Most of the time, our six year old kid. Probably dog, most of the time, maybe even... the dog's a lot less complicated than the six year old. And so the level of feelings are not as quite as depth, but also it's a more of a pure, she's just a sweet, lovable dog. So maybe it's the dog.

[00:29:25] Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. Dogs are wonderful.

[00:29:28] Steven Collens: I don't mean to say that I love the dog more than the kid. It's just very specifically your question about.

[00:29:35] Lindsey Dinneen: it is specific.

[00:29:37] Steven Collens: Yeah.

[00:29:38] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. I love that. Great answer. Well, I just really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for sharing about your background, your career, MATTER and how you are encouraging people to do things that matter. I really appreciate the way that you have this collaborative spirit and are helping to propel these companies to success. So thank you for all of the work you're doing. Thank you for joining me. And we just wish you the most continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.

[00:30:10] Steven Collens: Well, and thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[00:30:13] Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. And thank you also to our listeners for tuning in. And if you're feeling as inspired as I am at the moment, I would love it if you would share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time.

[00:30:28] Ben Trombold: The Leading Difference is brought to you by Velentium. Velentium is a full-service CDMO with 100% in-house capability to design, develop, and manufacture medical devices from class two wearables to class three active implantable medical devices. Velentium specializes in active implantables, leads, programmers, and accessories across a wide range of indications, such as neuromodulation, deep brain stimulation, cardiac management, and diabetes management. Velentium's core competencies include electrical, firmware, and mechanical design, mobile apps, embedded cybersecurity, human factors and usability, automated test systems, systems engineering, and contract manufacturing. Velentium works with clients worldwide, from startups seeking funding to established Fortune 100 companies. Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.