Innovation Leadership: Intuitive Surgical
Leadership Model
Intuitive Surgical utilizes the transformational leadership model. Transformational leadership helps management promote motivation, morale, and job performance. Under this leadership, employees and management will be able to help each other grow, which in turn helps the company become more innovative. In comparison to other leadership styles such as applying Nayar’s Employee First, Customer Second (EFCS) culture, Intuitive Surgical falls into a different business industry that acts as a monopoly. In these types of cases, things fall into one roof meaning the company’s goals should be passed down from top to bottom.
Some strategies that Intuitive Surgical practiced to ensure success in the organization was to follow strategic objectives that helped growth within the company especially when their 2016 patents expire (Hoffman, 2010). According to Hoffman, the company’s objectives were to focus on key objectives, develop industry alliances, focus on key institutions, focus on leading surgeons to drive rapid and broad adoption, maintain market leadership, and increase patient awareness. By creating industry alliances, companies can collaborate with each other to create innovative ideas together so that the best products can be produced. Under developing industry alliances, Intuitive Surgical “will continue to establish strategic alliances with leader medical device companies… in areas of product development, training, and procedure development and marketing activities” (Hoffman, 2010). By focusing on key institutions, “the firm focuses on academic and community hospitals” (Hoffman, 2010). The company will ensure customer and patient satisfaction by bestowing the knowledge needed to use their robotic systems. Also, by increasing patient awareness through the Internet, Intuitive Surgical “will educate potential patients and healthcare providers on the benefits of robotic surgery via the da Vinci system” (Hoffman, 2010).
Five Discovery Skills
Intuitive Surgical represents the five discovery skills in a number of ways. For one, the company implemented many “barriers to entry” and it shows that Intuitive Surgical is being proactive by taking the necessary steps to protect themselves from future competition. The skills required are mostly questioning and networking. They also know that their patents will expire soon and communicated this with hospitals and physicians to preserve the much-needed connection between their product and their customers (Hoffman, 2010).
Associating
The first, and most important skill, is associational thinking or associating, which “refers to how the brain synthesizes and makes sense of novel inputs [to] discovering new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas” (Dyer et al., 2011). Because the article is more informational and discusses the business model and financial stability of the company in depth, it fails to address the relationship between the company model and the associating discovery skill. And in doing so, it insinuates that associating may not have been an important factor for the company since market share of the da Vinci or any type of product has been entirely with Intuitive Surgical. However, they may have to consider using this skill when their patents start to expire.

Questioning
Lonnie Smith, CEO of Intuitive Surgical, and the management team realized that when their patents expire, their competitors have the opportunity to enter into the market legally. By knowing this, they questioned where their company will stand in terms of how they will continue to persuade hospitals, doctors and patients to use their robotics systems. Intuitive Surgical knew they needed to strategically prepare for these types of questions. By having a strong skill such as questioning, they will be able to help themselves stay as the top companies in robotics systems. With the knowledge they already have, they can improve so that even the smallest alignments on their systems will have a lower margin for error.
Observing
While they continue to question where the future of Intuitive Surgical will be in the future, the CEO and management team have been researching on potential ways they can produce new innovative ideas using their current patents. As wars oversees continue, they observed that their competitors have been inventing smaller, more portable robotic surgical systems, and the opportunity to enter into this market is available. An investment in the reduction of size and weight of its existing technology may provide future opportunities for military application (Hoffman, 2010). It is important that Intuitive Surgical is constantly aware of the trends of the robotic systems market and proactive to take the necessary steps to be continuously innovative.
Networking
The networking skill is also important for innovators to achieve their goals or solves their problems. A diverse range of resources is crucial for creating new ideas and innovations. Like the associating skill, innovators need to have all the different pieces of the puzzle to accomplish the masterpiece and in order to do so, they must have a diverse group of intellects to use for advisory purposes. One of the objectives that Intuitive Surgical had was to create industry alliances, and they have done so by teaming with companies such as “Gyrus ACMI, Johnson & Johnson, John Hopkins University, Novadaq Technologies Inc., Olympus Corporation, Power Medical Inc., SurgiQuest Inc., and USGI Medical Inc.” (Hoffman, 2010).
Experimenting
Lastly, after questioning, observing, and networking, innovators need to dive into the experimenting skill. Innovators are constantly trying out new things and experimenting to reach their ultimate goal. Innovators use this trial and error method to gain even more insight on what pieces work and don’t work. Intuitive Surgical does not take the necessary steps to experiment into other ideas and products as they solely are putting all their efforts into their da Vinci robotics system. It recommended that they make an investment into other ideas to give them other options since their financial stability is in good standing and they are not in any financial debt (Hoffman, 2010).
Culture And Processes
The three organizational DNA factors that The Innovation’s DNA presented were people, processes and philosophies. Intuitive Surgical’s most important organizational DNA factor is the processes of the company. Processes “rely on systematic processes to find people with strong discovery skills who thrive in environments that embrace their use of those skills” (Dyer et al., 2011). Since Intuitive Surgical has one specific product that has been keeping the company running and in good financial stability, finding people with strong discovery skills plays a significant part in their future. By having a set of strong discovery skills, people can be more innovative, which we can clearly see that Innovative Surgical is not since the da Vinci robotics system.

References:

Dyer, J., Gregersen, H., & Christensen, C. M. (2011). The innovator’s DNA: Mastering the five skills of disruptive innovators. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Hitt, M.A., Haynes, K.T., & Serpa, R., (2010). "Strategic Leadership for the 21st Century". Business Horizons, volume 53, issue 5, pages 437–444.

Hoffman, A. (2010). Intuitive Surgical, Inc.: How long can their monopoly last?. Ref No. 310-106-1 Rotterdam, Netherlands: RSM Case Development Centre.

Nayar, V. (2010). A maverick CEO explains how he persuaded his team to leap into the future. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved September 3, 2014, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.library.capella.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=5318be5a-6741-41fd-90ce 3c5905c279bb@sessionmgr4003&hid=4104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=50765547