BICB Entrepreneurship Seminar Series: Making a Difference

Disruptive Innovation: How was retail healthcare founded?

On Thursday, December 9, 2010, Linda Hall Keller presented as part of the BICB Entrepreneurship Seminar Series: Making a Difference.

Retail healthcare: from 3 tiny kiosk clinics in Minneapolis grocery stores in 2002 to over 1200 "MinuteClinics" nationally in CVS, WalMart, Walgreen's and Krogers by 2010. Named by Forbes magazine as one of the ten most innovative disruptors in a decade, along with Google, BlackBerry, iPod, Skype and Nintendo, MinuteClinic created a new sector in the healthcare industry. Former CEO, Linda Hall Keller told the MinuteClinic story - what were the core strategies, key milestones and most difficult challenges from launch through exit when CVS/Pharmacy acquired the company for $200 million in 2006. She also described how these principles can be applied to generate other breakthrough businesses.

Linda Hall Keller is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management as well as a consultant with Mayo Clinic and a retail healthcare company in Finland. She has recently consulted with Children's Heartlink and BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota.

She serves on the advisory boards of Primex Wireless (private company - wireless GPS clock technology for hospital and university campuses), General Blood (startup - global blood distribution) and 4 non-profit boards including the Minnesota Women's Economic Roundtable, Minnesota Women Corporate Directors, the InterOrganization Network and the Board of Governors for Opportunity International, a global micro-finance non-profit organization.

Keller is best known for having launched retail healthcare as CEO of MinuteClinic from 2002-2005 preceding its $200 million sale to CVS/Pharmacy. MinuteClinic was named by Forbes magazine as one of the top ten disruptive companies of the decade, along with Google, BlackBerry and iPod.

Her career has ranged from a variety of leadership roles at Honeywell (IT, international marketing, commercial HVAC controls; home automation), president of an employee benefits management firm, executive at UnitedHealth Group and CEO of a pediatric home healthcare company.

She has served as a director for 3 public companies over the past 15 years, including HealthFitness Corporation (HFC-AMEX) and August Technology (AUGT-NASDAQ) until their successful mergers and 11 years on the MTS Systems (MTS-NASDAQ) board until her term expired. She has chaired Governance, Compensation and Nominating committees, served as a member of Audit and held the role of Lead Director. She also served on the board of a Chicago-based venture backed start-up, BrillStreet+.

Keller is a former director of the 9th District Federal Reserve Bank, Science Museum of Minnesota and the Minnesota Zoological Society. Twin Cities Business recognized her as “Outstanding Director” for 2010, and has been named “Director of the Year” by Twin Cities Women in the Boardroom. The Minnesota Business Journal named her one of the 50 “Hardest Working Board Members” in 2003, 2005 and 2006. KPMG awarded Keller the Instrument of Change Award in 2006.

The CoLAB – A Collaborative Innovation Model for Creation of Invention Capital

Thursday, October 14, 2010
4:00 - 4:50 PM
Presented at UMTC Peik Hall 165
Videocast to UMR Rm 397

Presented by:  Gary Smaby
Managing Partner, Innovation by Design Ventures Fund

Gary serves on several start-up and non-profit boards including Algos Preclinical Services, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum. He graduated from St. Olaf College in 1971 with dual majors in East Asian Studies and Art.

Gary Smaby recapped the University’s five-year Innovation by Design initiative to create a new model to enable university/industry collaborations that advance innovation and entrepreneurship through the creation of new intellectual property.

In his remarks Smaby highlighted the inherent obstacles with the nation’s leading public research universities that inhibit development of alternative commercialization pathways. He provided an overview of how the new CoLAB model addresses the challenge to transforming the academic culture by:

• Openly embracing economic development as a key element of a land grant University’s mission of teaching, research, and public service.

• Encouraging talented research faculty to pursue commercial innovations that benefit society; thus serving as models for junior faculty and students.

• Reinforce the premise that researchers have a social responsibility to help promising research finds its way into commercial products and services that improve quality of life.

Following a ten-year entrepreneurial career, Gary spent two decades as an internationally recognized high-tech analyst and strategist: first on Wall Street and later as an advisor to F500 executives and high-profile entrepreneurs.

Mr. Smaby is founding managing partner of Quatris Fund, a seed-stage VC fund. He has also served as VC-in-Residence at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School since 2004. In 2006, Gary created and led a novel multidisciplinary initiative to foster collaboration among rising-star graduate students, distinguished faculty, global industry partners and venture investors. Dubbed Innovation by Design (IBD), this three-year, campus wide pilot program “tackled big ideas of social import that defy answers within a single discipline”.

In August 2009, Gary completed a one-year appointment as the Director for Collaborative Innovation within the University’s Office of the Vice-President for Research where he engineered the design of a new independent, IBD-inspired venture funded by the University of Minnesota Foundation. Gary is a senior fellow at the University’s Technological Leadership Institute as well as the Center for Spirituality and Healing within its Academic Health Center.