Tips for Otolaryngologists Who Want to Enter and Excel in Entrepreneurship

More painful, he said, is when failure comes late, after large investments have been made. “That’s a tough situation, and it’s often challenging to recover,” he said.

To minimize the occurrence of late failures, Dr. Makower stressed the need to follow the data. “You must listen to early data and try to obtain really clear signals to build confidence to move forward. But even more importantly, you need to be willing to say that if something isn’t good enough and if it can’t be easily fixed, it should be terminated before too much time and too many resources have been wasted,” he said. 

Relying on good data is also the foundation to meet the strong skepticism that awaits all entrepreneurial activity, he said. “When you have the data and the conviction, you can stand up against critics and persevere against skepticism,” said Dr. Makower. “Try to understand what the skepticism is about and answer it with data rather than opinion.”

Understanding skeptics requires what Dr. Makower sees as a key quality for innovators: an open mind that requires careful, unbiased listening. “If you’re biased toward one solution before you even understand the real needs, you can easily be led down a pathway to a failure.” 

Mary Beth Nierengarten is a freelance medical writer based in Minnesota.