There's no better place to be in the fall than New England, though I might be biased, and no season more capable of making you feel behind on everything. School's back, sports are back, and every organization I belong to is holding an event in October. It's a season that makes it easy to see why attention is so hard to get - which, as it happens, is the subject of this issue.
This quarter, we're turning our attention to a different kind of gap than the ones we've explored before. Not the gap between the lab and the clinic. Not the gap between an idea and a device. This one lives closer to home for most innovators: the gap between the quality of your innovation and your ability to inspire the belief that every stakeholder needs before they commit. We call it the Belief Gap.
At the center of our work is a keynote from Michael Fallone, President of Launch by Boyd, that names something innovators feel constantly but rarely have language for: why brilliant technology stalls in front of investors, KOLs, and decision makers even when the science is sound and the team is strong. Michael pulls together recent research from Miriam Schleifer McCormick at the University of Richmond, whose 2025 Oxford book Belief as Emotion is the intellectual backbone of the study, and Dr. Errol Norwitz of Babson College, whose insights on physician skepticism and structured uncertainty run through the work.
As always, if there's a topic you'd like us to explore, or an innovator you think we should interview, just reply to this email, and thanks for your attention.
Matthew Boyd
Chief Commercial Officer
Boyd Biomedical
The Belief Gap
Every day, exceptional biomedical innovators sit across from investors, KOLs, hospital systems, and strategic partners who have more innovation to evaluate than time to evaluate it. That imbalance shapes every decision those stakeholders make. It also shapes the fate of every founder trying to move them.
Working with biomedical innovators across stages of development, we've come to understand something that doesn't show up in a business plan: the innovations that break through aren't necessarily the ones with the strongest data. They're the ones that close the gap between the quality of their innovation and their ability to inspire belief — the emotional conviction that drives action — in every stakeholder who matters.
We call it the Belief Gap. In our report, we examine what it costs companies, why it exists, and what it takes to close it.
What We Discovered
Belief isn't a soft thing. It's the mechanism by which stakeholder decisions actually get made and the neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology behind that claim have real, uncomfortable implications for how biomedical innovators should be communicating. Belief is emotional before it's cognitive. Evidence informs belief but never replaces it. The teams who understand that build their communication architecture accordingly.
"People generally make decisions based on emotion rather than logic."
Dr. Errol Norwitz
Executive Director, Kerry Murphy Healey Center for Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Babson College
This report examines why extraordinary MedTech innovations stall at exactly the moment they should scale. It explores the research behind belief as emotion, the just might / just mighty dichotomy, and a framework for closing the gap.
We had the privilege of debuting the Belief Gap keynote to biomedical innovators and executives earlier this year. The response was consistent, nearly everyone could name the moment their belief gap opened. Most had never had a framework for what to do about it.
Michael is the President of Launch by Boyd. He's spent his career working with companies through commercialization, brand strategy, and the stakeholder communication challenges that determine whether an innovation actually reaches the people it's meant to help. The keynote is drawn from patterns he's watched play out across hundreds of conversations, and grounded in the recent published work of Miriam Schleifer McCormick, Antonio Damasio, Antoine Bechara, and Lisa Feldman Barrett.
The talk names something leaders feel constantly but rarely have language for: the disconnect between the quality of what they've built and their ability to move stakeholders to act on it. It offers a diagnosis (the just might / just mighty dichotomy at the center of the challenge), an honest look at why founders' greatest strengths often become communication liabilities, and a three-part framework for closing the gap.
Whether you're heading into a fundraise, a KOL push, or a hospital adoption cycle, the articles below build on the report to give you frameworks you can apply to specific stakeholder groups and moments in your commercialization path. Each draws on original expert interviews and primary research.
Three Disciplines, One Conclusion: Why Stakeholder Belief Is Always Emotional
How neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology reshape what biomedical innovators should be doing to move stakeholders — and why more evidence isn't the answer.
Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm framework, re-examined through the lens of the belief gap — and why belief remains a constant need long after early adopters have signed on.
A ten-minute diagnostic for biomedical innovators. Score your stakeholder communication across four dimensions and see where your belief gap is widest before your next fundraise, KOL push, or hospital adoption cycle.
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