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Last week, I stumbled across something on Instagram that I found to be pretty darn compelling and cool: a Lexus Dually. Not an official concept car. Not a leaked prototype. But a fan-generated idea: a heavy duty Lexus pickup truck, complete with AI-rendered videos that looked like they came straight from an official campaign. Sleek, muscular, unapologetically bold.
And here’s the kicker: Lexus didn’t make it. Their fans did.
It wasn’t just a clever Photoshop moment -- it was a piece of participatory innovation. People who love the brand imagined a new product and, with AI tools, brought that imagination to life in vivid, cinematic detail. The audience didn’t wait for the company to innovate; they decided to innovate for it.
That kind of energy fascinates me.
Another example: LEGO. The company’s “Architecture” line -- those beautiful, minimalist sets that let you build skylines and landmarks -- didn’t come from the LEGO design team. It came from really passionate LEGO fans. People outside the company imagined something new and made it real. LEGO, to their credit, listened and turned that verve and nerdity into a business line.
And then there’s Nathan Sawaya, a former corporate lawyer turned full-time LEGO artist. He didn’t just play with bricks; he transformed them into gallery-worthy sculptures: large-scale human forms, expressions of emotion, art installations that travel the world.
I saw Sawaya’s The Art of the Brick exhibit when it was in Philadelphia a few years ago. And I remember standing there thinking: This is what happens when you give people the freedom to create...when you give them the tools, not the limits.
He took something mass-produced and transformed it into powerful artistic expression. He took a child's toy and turned it into an art form.
And of course, that got me thinking about our world: pharma, biotech, medtech.
We talk endlessly about patient centricity, about co-creation, about listening to the voice of the customer. But how often do we actually put creative tools into their hands? How often do we let patients, caregivers, clinicians -- the real “fans” of what we do -- actually build something new?
Not just answer a survey. Not just sit on an advisory board. But truly create -- the way a LEGO fan designs a new set, or a Lexus fan imagines a pickup truck that never existed before.
I’ve spent a lot of my career encouraging teams to look outside of our industry. Because if we only benchmark within pharma, our “innovation” ends up looking like a slightly different shade of the same color. The biggest breakthroughs often come from true cross-pollination -- from taking an idea that thrives somewhere else and transplanting it into our own soil.
And right now, what’s happening outside our industry is something truly wild: customers are becoming creators.
Think about what generative AI has unlocked. Fans can design cars. Hobbyists can visualize architecture. Consumers can dream entire brand worlds into existence with a few prompts.
The tools of creation have been democratized. So, what if we, as an industry, really invited our “fans” into that sandbox?
What if someone who’s living with a chronic condition could go beyond describing their ideal therapy experience… and actually show it to us? What if they could use a simple AI interface to visualize the packaging they wish existed, or the wearable they wish felt more natural, or the digital experience they wish guided them through treatment?
We spend millions trying to interpret what customers say. But what if they could simply create what they truly mean?
That’s not science fiction anymore. That’s something AI can do -- right now.
Now, I’m not suggesting we replace insight generation with crowdsourced product design. There are obviously regulatory, ethical, scientific and feasibility guardrails. But I am suggesting we broaden what “insight” even means.
Traditional marketing research has always been about extraction: we ask, they answer. Sure we can probe, but there are limits to the extent to which respondents can tell us what they know, think and feel. Then we translate those answers into strategy.
But the future -- especially with the rise of AI -- is collaborative insight. It’s about putting creative power into the hands of those who actually live the experience we’re trying to understand and improve.
Instead of “Tell us what you want,” we can say, “Show us what you’d create if you could.”
That shift changes everything. It makes research more participatory, more human, and --frankly -- more inspiring.
And it doesn’t just yield better concepts. It builds deeper relationships. It gives patients and practitioners a sense of ownership. Suddenly, they’re not passive data points. They’re co-engineers of the future of care.
Let’s imagine a scenario.
A pharma company launches an online “Co-Design Studio.” Patients and HCPs can log in, describe their challenges, and interact with an AI agent to visualize their ideal solutions -- whether that’s a new form factor, an easier-to-use device, a more intuitive digital interface.
Maybe someone designs a medication pen that looks more like a piece of personal tech than a medical instrument. Maybe a parent visualizes a “child-friendly” version of a treatment kit that reduces fear for pediatric patients.
Those images, those stories, those creative outputs -- they become the raw material for our innovation pipeline.
We could even take it a step further. The best ideas could become the basis for innovation challenges, hackathons, or design sprints involving patients and engineers side by side.
Suddenly, “patient engagement” is no longer a line item in a slide deck. It’s a living ecosystem of shared creativity.
Of course, to make this happen, something deeper has to change -- culturally.
Our industry is built on rigor, control, and safety (for good reason). But those strengths can also become barriers to openness. We often fear letting the outside world in, especially when it comes to early-stage ideas.
But maybe the next evolution of “compliance-friendly innovation” isn’t about risk elimination. It’s about risk translation: finding responsible ways to let outside creativity inform our inside science.
And maybe, just maybe, this kind of openness could help us elevate trust, too. Because when people feel like they’ve had a hand in shaping what’s next, skepticism gives way to shared purpose.
What I loved most about seeing Nathan Sawaya’s LEGO sculptures in Philadelphia wasn’t the scale or the craftsmanship. It was the spirit of it...the notion that anyone, with enough imagination and persistence, could transform something ordinary into something extraordinary.
That’s what we should aspire to as an industry.
We have some of the most brilliant scientists, engineers, and marketers in the world. But innovation doesn’t only happen in our labs. It can happen in someone’s living room, on their laptop, or in their imagination -- if we give them the right tools to build.
Maybe that’s our next big challenge: to start inviting them to be co-authors of the future.
Because if LEGO can turn fans into architects, and Lexus fans can design the cars of their dreams… surely, we in healthcare can find a way to let the people we serve help design the next chapter of care.
I, for one, would love to see what AI helps them create.
