­In 2015 the automotive industry was rocked by revelations that VW, a leading manufacturer, had cheated emissions tests, and so mis-reported the environmental impact of 11 million cars worldwide. This was not a standalone incident, but a single example of the widespread ‘gaming’ of emissions standards across the industry. It laid bare a fundamental failure in the way that cars were designed, tested, and regulated – severely impacting trust across an entire industry.

Today it appears that MedTech may be about to have its own ‘VW moment…

Anyone who has visited a doctor recently, or works on developing new treatments, knows that the pace of change in healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry, is huge. New drugs, treatments and technologies come along rapidly, and you need to be active to keep up with the latest progress in the market.

What has evolved much more slowly, however, is the way in which these new treatments are developed and profited from. The pharmaceutical industry, having transformed itself technologically many times, is in a new phase of evolution...

Leadership seems to be in short supply these days. This dearth of leadership is present everywhere you look – from politics to banking, from agile tech firms driven by super-ego founders to immobile corporate behemoths trapped in Mayer’s pit. Leadership was recognised in ancient times as being of great importance, despite this we seem to have forgotten the lessons of the past.

Such forgetfulness is fuelled by some negative aspects of technology…