molding the fog

This summer, I landed an internship at Ethicon-Endo Surgery in the worldwide business development and strategy department. Ethicon-Endo is an operating company under Johnson and Johnson and makes medical devices for minimally invasive surgery. For the first two-three weeks, I had no idea what my department did...or what I was supposed to do. My boss affectionately called her role"molding the fog." Aka, things we do are so vague that there's no solid, definite description or job. A lot of the projects are top secret because we're thinking 4-7 years and 8+ years down the road. Now halfway through the summer, I think I can somewhat accurately describe what BD (Business Development does). We're separated into three categories: strategic planning, strategic marketing, and licensing&acquisition. These three groups work together to identify "white space," or areas that EES doesn't play in yet. We try to predict the future of healthcare and create Ethicon-Endo's strategic plan accordingly.

Part of my job is to develop a tool that helps EES envision the future and draw out implications for our industry and business. The environmental scan helps BD identify key trends in world that may impact healthcare, and specifically surgery. I won't bore anyone with the specifics of the environmental scan--I only brought it up because I think has significance in our everyday lives.

I wish we all had this sort of radar that monitors the our external environment to guide us through our future. Sure we have subjective feelings, but oftentimes we dismiss them because they're "hunches" or "feelings" with no quantitative data to back them up. However, the human brain and human body are incredibly complex machines, and that alone should validate our subjective feelings. I've suspected my dad's affair since the 3rd grade. One day, I was drawing in his office when he received a phone call--I didn't know what an "affair" was back then, but I knew something wasn't right. Since then, that uncomfortableness has been in the back of my mind, I just never thought I could trust my instincts.

We need to learn to trust our brains and our bodies more. They're absolutely amazing machines that work so hard to protect us and keep us alive--if they can fight off disease and repair bones, they can definitely help us "mold the fog" and guide us in our human experiences, emotions and interactions.

On a side note: I've been playing tennis again albeit terribly. I think I jammed/sprained my pinkie while doing so. Ouch.