The Product Adoption Lie: Why Great MedTech Fails to Scale
From Med Tech Gurus by Tom Hickey
May 13, 2026 · 44 min
About this episode
This episode discusses why many MedTech products fail to scale despite their technological success, emphasizing the importance of engineered adoption and market behavior change.
Why do so many breakthrough MedTech products fail — even when the technology works? In this episode of Med Tech Gurus, we're joined by Holley Miller, Founder and President of Grey Matter Marketing and one of the most direct, no-nonsense voices in healthcare commercialization today. With nearly three decades in life sciences — from the early days of surgical robotics to advising CEOs, boards, and investors — Holley has helped create more than $4.5 billion in enterprise value by doing one thing differently: designing adoption before launch. Holley is the architect of what she calls the Product Adoption Lie — the dangerous belief that better products automatically win. In this conversation, she explains why most launches fail not because the product is weak, but because the market was never taught to change its beliefs or behavior. We explore why adoption must be engineered, how category design replaces traditional go-to-market playbooks, and why alignment across clinical, regulatory, and commercial teams is essential to changing the standard of care. If you're a founder, executive, or investor trying to scale innovation — not just launch a product — this episode delivers a hard…
People in this episode
Host: Tom Hickey
Guest: Holley Miller
Topics covered
- MedTech
- product adoption
- healthcare commercialization
- market behavior
- innovation scaling
- category design
Keywords
- MedTech
- product adoption
- healthcare
- innovation
- market strategy
- commercialization
- surgical robotics
- enterprise value
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Grey Matter Marketing
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