Surgical Innovator

ABSTRACT

To be a surgical innovator is to be someone who has the capacity to modify established concepts in surgery. The surgeon innovator is able to change old ideas and ways of practicing the specialty. The life of the surgical innovator is in constant flux, always looking for avenues of improvement within the discipline. C. Walton Lillehei, Owen H. Wangensteen, William S. Halsted, and Alfred Blalock are a few of many good examples of American surgeon innovators whose contributions can help us to discern how they thought about innovation within the surgical sciences. Lillehei, Wangensteen, Halsted, and Blalock had several things in common, such as recognition of the idea, persistence in developing the strategy, commitment to the project, and final completion of a response to the problem or problems in question. These four innovators readily contemplated the essence of innovation but mostly dedicated themselves to search for the appropriate answers to serious and difficult clinical tasks.