Embracing ever-increasing complexity
I've just finished Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants. The central thesis of the book is that technological advance is an inevitable extension of the natural development of, well, everything. Kelly grandly posits that technology ('the technium') should be seen as the seventh Kingdom of Life, alongside archaebacteria, eubacteria, protista, fungi, plants and animals.
Kelly describes a number of key trajectories for his technium, one of which is 'complexity': -
This arc of complexity flows from the dawn of the cosmos into life. But the arc continues through biology and now extends itself forward through technology. The very same dynamics that shape complexity in the natural world shape complexity in the technium.
I've spent my entire career working on product launches; i.e. trying to anticipate the Next Big Thing the consumer wants, building that thing and making it available. I've always believed this drive for novelty to be one of capitalism's fundamental impulses but I'd not before seen it as embedded in the very fabric of the universe. It makes sense: increased variety engenders complexity thus life will get evermore complex, be it in the jungle, supermarket or hospital pharmacy.Kelly, p.287
Last Thursday I was discussing an upcoming oncology launch with a new client. I made the pedestrian observation that ever-expanding choice in cancer treatments added complexity to the medicine and therefore to the marketing task also: -
Once upon a time there was no treatment for cancer at all. Then there was surgery. Then chemotherapy. Then radiotherapy. Then tumour-activated monoclonal antibodies. And so on.
The oncologist's job has gotten more complicated at every turn, especially as alongside a dizzying variety of potential combinations, sequences and so on, the original option (do nothing at all) is still on the table and must always be entertained.
Me
Marketers charged with launching a new drug must acknowledge that they are automatically complicating the customer's working life. Doctors understand that part of the job of medicine is to understand all of the available options, which in a launch-heavy specialty like oncology can seem like a full-time job on its own. Time-poor doctors will often actively resent the advent of a new therapy, especially if it doesn't represent an immediate and obvious medical advance. There has to be clear communication that this additional complexity is justified by a worthwhile improvement in clinical outcome for a sub-cohort of patients.
Inexperienced marketers tend to focus on the novelty of the treatment (hence the proliferation of messages around 'mode of action', etc.) whereas the key word is sub-cohort. Because we now know too much about genetics to take an undifferentiated approach to therapy disease, no cancer drug will ever again be right for all patients.
We are in the business of increasing complexity in the world and we need to embrace it. It is the inevitable consequence of a defined population of cancer sufferers getting better treatment today than yesterday.