OR_Sempre Health_Timothy Berendt: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Rich Prest:
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Sempre Health Outcomes Rocket Podcast, where we talk with healthcare leaders and technology leaders on the state of the industry, patient engagement, technology, innovation. I’m your host, Rich Prest, and today we’re fortunate to be speaking with Tim Berendt, who has the awesome title of Innovation Director and Corporate Venture Capital Lead at Jacobs, probably one of the largest consulting firms you may not have heard of with over 65,000 employees globally. From the moment I first bumped into Tim at HLTH way back in 2019, I knew he was super smart, cool guy to stay in touch with. It’s been awesome to watch his career evolve since then, spanning large organizations and tiny startups, and academia. I’m looking forward to hearing what lessons Tim can share with us today. Welcome to the podcast, Tim.
Timothy Berendt:
Thanks, Rich, pleasure. I’ll try and live up to the cool word that you mentioned … and I appreciate that. Always a battle to stay cool as you age, I think.
Rich Prest:
That’s it. Well, it’s very cool. Now, did you have a dream career when you were growing up?
Timothy Berendt:
It’s a great question. I think I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial and I didn’t know what that was. I think from an early age I was trying to figure out how, what could I do around the house, maybe to make money or to make things easier, and I think that later led to an obsession with emerging technologies and the intersection between design and entrepreneurship and building things. So I can give you a fun example, maybe I won’t send this podcast to my mom with this example to bring up bad times, but back before CD recording was a major thing, I was in middle school, I was mowing lawns to make money and there was a catalog by the name of Crutchfield that had basically professional recording equipment and studio items that you might see in a music studio, so long story short, I saved up all my yard work money and I bought a cassette-to-CD converter. And at the time, Rich, it was so slow, so I’d literally have to pop in a tape and then set it before I went to school, get home, and the CD was done, and then I bought a jewel case maker, I would create art for, and I would trade tapes for a lot of bands that were touring back when you could tape them. And eBay was formed and I started selling them on eBay. Well, long story short, you’d sell these things for 50 or 60 bucks on eBay at the time, it wasn’t long, and I hadn’t made a ton of money before I had a letter from a certain government agency talking to me about copyright and trademark infringement that my mother so gently came running to my room to show me. So that was my kind of my, I feel my first entrepreneurial thing of breaking the rules. I’ve always liked to break the rules, but yeah.
Rich Prest:
You moved a little too fast.
Timothy Berendt:
In fact, too early, yeah, yeah. I love teaching, I love connecting with folks, and that was always on the, and coaching, so that was always on the back burner as well, and fortunately, I’m able to do these things in my career now.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, well, maybe, perhaps you could give us a little short summary of how you sort of ended up following the path you’re on where, to leading to your role at Jacobs today? Yeah.
Timothy Berendt:
Yeah, I don’t know if there was any purpose for one, but a lot of things happened. I think personally and professionally. I spent a good amount of my career in healthcare, you know, 15, 16 years, a lot of that time at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. I was bouncing around kind of the organization from when I started there when I was 23 and trying to learn as much as I could about healthcare, you know, working in customer financial management and provider financial management, working in an alternative quality care base contracts, that some of the initial ones in the country that kind of launched that value-based care. And, you know, truthfully, it wasn’t that exciting to me. You know, I was about 7 years in and I was like, you know, maybe I should start thinking about doing something else or getting out of this industry. Coincidentally, I started to have a lot of serious soccer injuries, and I got to really utilize the healthcare industry during that time. And not to many, surprise, I wasn’t overly impressed. And I started kind of going down rabbit holes of research from physiology to emerging technologies and startups that were trying to kind of help within healthcare. And I had three of these injuries in a row, and at the same time, I got into this financial development leadership program at Blue Cross where you could rotate around, so I got to experience market intelligence and segmentation. And while I was in one of those rotations, one of the leaders I was meeting with said, Hey, we’re launching a corporate venture capital strategic investment arm. This kind of hits those things that you like, entrepreneurship, you’ll be meeting with entrepreneurs. You like emerging technologies, I’m sure you’ll see a bunch of that, so it kind of scratches that itch. So we started working with that team in the development of that arm and almost a few years in, similarly, the corporate innovation arm had been announced, and the CIO was hired. I started working with her organically and we kind of just were a perfect marriage and started building with a few others, the corporate innovation arm known as Well B in Blue Cross and Mass. So that in conjunction around that time when I started with the investments, I got my MBA at Babson and was exposed to innovation methodologies like design thinking there for the first time, probably nine years ago or so, and become kind of became obsessed with all of those intersections since.
Rich Prest:
Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah, so it sounds like definitely when you came across an opportunity that piqued your interest, you went down that path and that’s served you well, giving you a wide range of experience. And yeah, maybe, maybe you could help us understand this awesome job title and what that sort of means in terms of what you’re trying to get done, and a sense of those daily activities.
Timothy Berendt:
Sure, yeah, so as you mentioned, you know, Jacobs, I think historically has been known as an engineering and construction firm. But we’re moving, we’re, we’ve transformed into maybe a solutions and digital transformation type firm. We are a consultancy, but I think there’s been a lot of movement for us to conform and to modernize, and that’s been great for me and the title that you like so much ….
Rich Prest:
It’s a mouthful, yeah.
Timothy Berendt:
Because I kind of wear two hats, from the innovation side, you know, Beyond If, which is the innovation arm here at Jacobs was launched in, officially kind of, in 2019 off of some, I think the legacy of some former initiatives or strategies, and it was more mature, I would say, outside of the United States or North America. There are some great success in UK, but there was a, there was kind of a need for it in North America. So I saw this kind of blank canvas, which interested me. It brought me back to sort of that blank canvas at Blue Cross of how do we launch an arm, how do we operationalize it? And there’s no silver bullet for that because every organization is different, cultures are different, industries and markets are different, and people most importantly are different, which is the main thing that makes innovation work. So the two side of piece of the innovation work is, I think, what I just said there, as well as project initiatives and how do we look at inside-out innovation and maybe get the business more comfortable with outside innovation, and what I mean by that is really customer-centric exploration and incubation and commercialization. The customers can obviously be internal and external. So that’s side A to my mixtape, side B, you know, truthfully was, I didn’t know when I took the position, but I’m thankful that I got the opportunity to help lead assessing and standing up the corporate venture capital arm and worked pretty hard over the last year or so in assessing and operationalizing that. And we’re iterating, of course, as we go, but we’ve, I think, have a great foundation for a process in place, as you can imagine, being 60,000 plus employees, you know, a lot of deals can come from other places, there’s always that burn old burning question of, was this a merger? Is it an acquisition? Is it a partnership? Is it business development? Is it an investment or is it a strategic investment? Which I think can have some different guidelines. And what I’ll say in kind of, this long-winded explanation of my title is, I think that there’s a benefit when you can have the marriage of corporate venture capital and innovation within the same area in organizations. When that works well together, there’s great exposure to benefits on both sides, as well as the business of identifying holes and/or opportunities to incubate or to invest in.
Rich Prest:
I think that makes a lot of sense. I think, it’s been interesting watching pharma try to build out these digital teams and trying to work out how does that team also play a role in deciding on strategic acquisitions or investments as well. It certainly makes sense that if those two are too separated, you could easily be missing out on opportunities or, for duplicating effort.
Timothy Berendt:
It’s important to stay connected to those efforts as well, even if they’re M&A activities or other corporate development activities don’t necessarily sit within the innovation. There is a marriage that exists between those departments as well that’s very beneficial, so good to keep those communication lines open, I guess is my advice there.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I know you’re early in your career in many ways, but is there an accomplishment that you’re most proud of?
Timothy Berendt:
Yeah, I mean, most recently I think just having some buy-in for innovation and corporate venture capital activities that’s, you know, that’s been great. To think of it, if you’re starting this a year ago, what we’ve been able to accomplish in a year for such a large organization and getting certain people on board or interested has been great. I would say prior to Jacobs to stand out, you know, at Blue Cross, I was fortunate to get, to have some amazing leadership at the time that gave me a green light. I think she used the phrase, you’re really weird thinker, but you’re perfect for this opportunity. I don’t know if that was a compliment at the time, but I think it was to build out sort of an innovation garage. I think, as you probably know, within healthcare and corporate healthcare, bureaucracy, politics, the way we’ve always done things can really stifle and stall innovation. So I had the opportunity to similarly kind of assess and get up and running an innovation garage, which at one point was a top-secret kind of shop where we were looking for transformative, you know, opportunity areas and solutions in health. And even though we were a payer and a health insurer, it wasn’t strict to that because there’s so much opportunity, I think, to be able to diversify and actually mitigate some of the risk that you have as you look to explore emerging spaces. So that was a great team, incredibly creative. We just operated very freely and that broke down the barriers, I think, of healthcare and innovation personally and professionally, just to see what we could produce in such a short amount of time. I think we were really groundbreaking and there was a lot of national interest in that specific operation and how we went about it, how we were thinking about it, etc, so.
Rich Prest:
It’s awesome, very cool thing to be part of. So then looking forward into the future, is there some big thing that you’re hoping to accomplish or?
Timothy Berendt:
Yeah, I mean, I hope to change mindsets, you know, one person at a time and pushing against kind of status quo and corporate engines, how to get those comfortable with a little more risk and show how that actually mitigates future risks or can lead to potential diversification and portfolios or exploring spaces that companies people in departments aren’t used to being and showing that value. I really think that, that starts for me with human-centric or human-centered design thinking where there’s empathy and putting your customers really first all along the process. I think a lot of what you’ll see in literature is we start here with design thinking and then you maybe go into Lean Startup. I just don’t think you ever lose that bottom structure layer of, you should always be close to your customer or whether you’re exploring a space building, you’ve already built out a solution or you’re trying your next iteration of your solution. I think that’s just vitally important.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, I think that’s very insightful, right? That, because I think often people may start with that. Maybe they start with the patient journey, but then they don’t go back and really check that the work is still being driven by that sort of foundational understanding.
Timothy Berendt:
And have we ever been more guilty of that than in healthcare? I’m not sure.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, that’s right. I guess, yeah. I just think back to your story of the three soccer injuries, and if you had to repeat that, whether you’d feel like the process was any better or still much the same, so.
Timothy Berendt:
It might be more expensive, but.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, that I’m sure of. Yeah, you’re out of pocket component is bound to be more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I’m fascinated, right, because you’ve worked in small organizations and big ones and so have you learned something about how to make innovation happen in these bigger organizations? Because I mean, Jacobs, particularly, as you say, it’s a very large firm, it’s well established. And it was, it must have been the same with the Blues of Massachusetts as well, right? So what do you think are some of the secrets to actually getting innovation to happen in these big orgs?
Timothy Berendt:
You ask this, Rich, this is that silver bullet question that you’ll always see on every innovation panel at every conference since the beginning of time, but it’s an important one. You know, I’m not mocking the question. And I don’t know if there’s one answer to that, but I think there’s one constant and it’s relationships. I think the better you can, a lot of people miss that innovation. I say, no, we got to still design thinking. We’ve got to unearth this innovation here and get some runs on the board. Well, that really doesn’t happen without some trust and some, and that stems from relationship building, networking, and I think communicating the power of working collaborative innovation is vitally important. Not to come in with all these fancy innovation terms that probably a lot of people don’t understand and that you’re here to show people how to innovate, it’s more, I want to show you how to actually unearth the power of the innovation that’s in you and the creativity that’s in you and your team, and maybe break down some of those walls that have existed within the organization. I mean, we think of healthcare 15 years ago was a really, really bad word or phrase to say, hey, this payer is going to talk to this provider. And, you know, look at the last 15 years, a lot of those walls have been broken down and shown the value. So if you break that down into organizations that that exists, you know, it’s widespread. So how can innovation kind of be the catalyst or conduit to help do that?
Rich Prest:
Yeah, I think it does seem like, that a lot of folks have got so wrapped up in why their thing is better that they miss the importance of really connecting with the folks that they need to work with.
Timothy Berendt:
That’s an innovator’s laughing point, is my playbook is better than you, or yours. You have to build out an innovation playbook, and there’s a good reason for doing that, you know? Like I said before, every organization is different, so it’s at least very powerful and there’s validity in going through the process of building out a playbook. But as I say, with a lot of these design methodologies, with innovation methodologies, there’s a huge difference between academia and reality, and you have to get folks comfortable with that reality. If you put ten shots on goal to incubate, maybe one’s going to be still standing in ten years, but the importance is getting comfortable with getting a lot of those shots on goal early, building, measuring, and learning from them and getting folks comfortable with that process. If not, you’re stuck in the status quo and maybe you’re only doing one out of those out of ten and your percentage of being successful is decreased substantially.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, yeah, it’s, yeah, I mean, I think these are all change management, right? And it is, continues to be, it takes people and really got to invest in.
Timothy Berendt:
Well, can I ask you a question, Rich? So you’ve been around in the healthcare industry for a while. Do you have, in your experience, and you don’t have to name names, have you seen folks who have been better at kind of going against the status quo and having some risk of putting things out there? Maybe not worried as much about their brand or how folks are going to react to it. In your experience, have you seen folks better than others that come to mind?
Rich Prest:
Yeah, I mean, I think in healthcare, it’s, it really is the case that if you’re going to work within the existing system, you have to get along with people, right? You have to understand where the money’s flowing and you have to understand how you’re going to work with the organizations, the stakeholders that are impacted by that, by any changes to the money flow or their workflow. I think it’s only when you try to go do an end around, like I think we see some of these sort of direct-to-consumer health plays. That’s the only place that you can sort of do the Amazon model or the Apple model or whatever you want to call it. If you’re relying on the consumer to pay out of their own pocket and not on the existing system, then I think you can you can be a lot more innovative, but you’re also then guided by what medicines and treatments can actually flow that way. So I think that’s, you know, the consumerism has been fascinating to watch, but it feels like at some point it hits this wall of, well, where, you know, reimbursement regulation and it’s, then you’ve got to work with stakeholders, yeah.
Timothy Berendt:
I used to get that question all the time, or do get that question from startups, especially in healthcare. While I’m thinking about trying to get this reimbursement, or I’m trying to think about this regulation, and you have to ask, well, what’s your burn rate? Is it ten years? Because, you know, that’s a big challenge in healthcare for innovators to be successful early if they’re trying to disrupt that system. I think you’re kind of talking about that.
Rich Prest:
Exactly.
Timothy Berendt:
Tends to not have a lot of consumer focus.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, I mean, we would love for somebody to be available for … patients, but, you know, that process of working with CMMI and CMS is not a sure process, right? So that’s a really cool project, I hope it comes good, but I don’t think we should stake the business on it, yeah. Well, let’s talk about some of the key trends that are going on in technology, given that you’re working way beyond just healthcare now. And so I think probably two areas would be interesting to touch on is sort of AI and the metaverse. And maybe we start with the metaverse first, this is an area where we saw those docs drop, and 10 billion a year on investing in this, and some of these investors are not so keen about that. Do you think it’s crazy?
Timothy Berendt:
I plead the fifth, I don’t know. Might be a longer conversation, I think he’s crazy. I don’t know. You know, the tech side of me is like is very, very intrigued. So much potential promise in it. So, yeah, I’m a little, I’m, the human side of me is worried about we already have all of this exposure to artificial light and stimulation all day for us and for our kids. If we bring that to another level, you know, is it harmful, or is it more beneficial since it’s maybe more immersive? I don’t know. The tech side of me sees incredible power in all kinds of adaptive abilities, whether we’re thinking about maybe space exploration, when we’re thinking about immersive power for the global world, and in healthcare, you know, I think we had chatted before. I think of the best of the best surgeons, maybe trying to tackle some of the most challenging surgeries, maybe influencing a robot in a similar space. I think there’s great potential there from a metaverse perspective. So you’re seeing it across the life sciences, tech, real estate, etc, I’m interested to see how the technologies will probably be enhanced by each other when you think of the aggregation of them, of maybe AI, maybe blockchain or other things. What kind of, can they feed off of each other, and is there a lot there for the future to tell? So we’ll see, there’s a lot of investment in it, so it’s hard not to be in it in some capacity.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, I, yeah, I think great opportunities in training and education. I, of course, worry about the dystopian vision of Snow Crash or Ready Player One. I hope we don’t end up there, but as always with humanity, there’s going to be good and bad, and so yeah, lots of exciting stuff there. And I think with AI we’ve had so much interest recently with all of the content creation pieces. I think this is, perhaps caught some people by surprise, right? That there was going to be so much, this generative art through Dall-E and stable diffusion and generative copying through GPT3, and, you know, amazing to see what happens with GPT4. And just kind of curious to get your perspective on this space and how it’s evolving, some of the likely implications and opportunities.
Timothy Berendt:
Well, it’s great to see it coming to life. I think that for years you and I were probably attending the healthcare conferences where it was all about AI, but there was really nothing in the market or it wasn’t actually well understood or the education was lacking a little bit. So to see some things come into the market has been great. I mean, the company I worked for prior to Jacobs, Aifred Health, you know, they’re utilizing this technology and real usage of this technology to help physicians treat and diagnose mental health areas, or mental health challenges, starting with depression. That was a real technology. I think something that you have to be weary from an innovation investment side is vetting the technology. When folks say they have AI or you’ll hear entrepreneurs sometimes in their pitch and say, well, we can just build in that, we can build an AI component. I don’t know if they really understand what that means. That’s a big challenge. So it’s just great to see it hitting the market.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think I had a great idea the other day about, you know, is there a place between sort of the access to mental health support through companies like BetterHelp? And then is there even just for someone who wants to have a chat, who wants to be heard, can an AI chatbot perform a really cost-effective role for tons of people that are feeling lonely? And I think this is going to be some amazing developments in this space as well, and I really.
Timothy Berendt:
Like, you know, thinking about it, AI is coming into fruition here a little bit. And you know, to your previous tech, the metaverse, how is that, how are they going to play, how do they play together? How will they play together? You think about simulation environments and how AR/VR might fit within those and what kind of data synchronization can happen behind the scenes utilizing AI power, etc. I just think there’s there’s something great there that’s going to happen and potentially maybe in healthcare or in other industries that I just think we have to wait and see.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, I think those combinations, like it’s hard enough for us. We’re terrible at even linear projections, let alone exponential ones, and then throw in combinations of exponential trends, and that, yeah, it’s almost impossible to predict what some of the exciting things that will come up, come our way. Tim, any recommendations for folks getting started in the industry now? What would you tell them to do?
Timothy Berendt:
I mean, in terms of healthcare, it’s a beast. You know, there’s never a spot where you’re not learning. So you had great value early on in my career, I think of not staying in one area, even though it was within mainly one company for too long, bouncing around, and kind of being a sponge in how different aspects of the healthcare system works, I think was very valuable. And I had someone tell me that early on in my career, fortunately, not just specific to healthcare, which I’ve, which I kind of took to heart, because I don’t like to be doing the same thing for too long. I think that’s why I like corporate innovation so much. You know, we’re, we have a weird affinity to getting punched in the face every day, and, you know, that is, that gives us excitement to go to work. And there’s just something new always happening, or, you know, you have to be okay with being reworked or because innovation always is being reworked, I feel, you know, to try and fit in a different area or different spaces, and that’s just par for the course. But bouncing around, I think, really, really helped me early in my career to learn the healthcare industry. So it goes across that too, in the other complex organizations or complex industries. I think that can be useful too.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, you and me both, I’ve certainly found that diversity of experience has been my most valuable asset. And so yeah, I think that’s great advice for.
Timothy Berendt:
People, most importantly, the people, when you do that and you get to experience different personalities, different cultures, different paths of experience, that’s just really, really, I think, overlooked. And we’re so focused on the content of what you’ve learned there. But I learned a lot from people too, our leaders, about leadership styles, you know, you name it, all those subsets that go along with that.
Rich Prest:
Oh, it’s so true. Yeah, absolutely, and then, of course, great relationships you can form over that at that time as well, so awesome advice. Any favorite podcasts or books that you could recommend for the audience?
Timothy Berendt:
Designing Your life is one of, I constantly, constantly have, my students, actually read, is a great one.
Rich Prest:
That is a great one.
Timothy Berendt:
Yeah, It’s Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
Rich Prest:
Behind that famous course of the D School in Stanford.
Timothy Berendt:
Exactly.
Rich Prest:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Timothy Berendt:
And I think they also have on designing your career as well, one more career-specific. I think The Life one actually hits both, but if you’re looking for a little more specific, but the exercises are fun, that they have in there, if you choose to do them, but really gets you thinking differently. I think about a lot of things we touched on today: your relationships, your experience, your passions, or even your hidden passions that we talked about, what innovation is really unearthing, I think creativity and power and passion in what you do. I used to have, what I call passion check-ins with my teams to make sure that they were … because what more do you get that, someone when they’re like, Yes, this is actually very personal, I’m passionate. So I think it’s an important thing to hold in your career and your life.
Rich Prest:
It’s very cool, yeah, great recommendation. In terms of listeners finding you or connecting with you online, where would be the best place?
Timothy Berendt:
Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the easiest. You know, I have a tougher last name, it’s B E R E N D T, but you know, I’m on there and you can sync up with me there or I don’t you know. For your network they can reach out to you and we can connect and vice versa. I’d love to connect some folks with you to tell them about the great work you’re doing at Sempre and have just a wealth of experience. I think that’s why we hit it off so well at HLTH almost three years ago.
Rich Prest:
I think so, yeah. Thank you so much for the time today, Tim, great conversation, and always a pleasure to catch up. And to our audience, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you got something valuable from the episode and if you did, please don’t forget to review the Sempre Health podcast on your favorite streaming service. Really helps others to find and enjoy the show. Thank you, we’ll catch you on the next one.
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