The Einstellung Effect in Life Sciences Innovation: is Precedence Preventing Progress?
- Daniel Yuan
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Termed in 1942, the Einstellung effect describes a cognitive phenomenon where experience limits creative problem-solving (1). While this bias exists in every innovative field, it is particularly pervasive in life sciences—an industry where validation, alignment, and precedent reduce risk, ease regulatory paths, and attract capital. Yet in the life sciences, where each decision shapes the future of patient care, the Einstellung effect can stall progress and mute the potential of transformative outcomes.
This piece examines how life science companies can recognize and counteract the Einstellung effect to ensure that bold science reaches the patients who need it most.
How Does the Einstellung Effect Shape Innovation in the Life Sciences?
In drug development, approval of first-in-class therapy often catalyzes broad stakeholder interest in the newly validated therapeutic target. Consider the case of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs): after ipilimumab’s 2011 approval transformed oncology, enthusiasm for the mechanism surged (2,3). By 2022, the Cancer Research Institute reported more than 5,600 active ICI clinical trials worldwide (4).
Other therapeutic areas show the same pattern. Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have attracted countless follow-on programs, while U.S. spending on GLP-1 use in obesity rose over 500% between 2018 and 2023 (5,6). These examples illustrate the gravitational pull of validated success.
The same bias extends beyond R&D. Investors consistently reward familiarity and “expertise” by valuing companies led by serial or high-profile founders two to three times higher than those led by first-time trailblazers (7).
Why it Occurs
The Einstellung effect arises from a common desire to de-risk decisions. In biopharma—where R&D costs can exceed $4 billion per approval (9)—validation is insurance. Following proven targets or leadership profiles offers tangible advantages:
·Established clinical pathways and patient populations: Developers can replicate known trial designs, endpoints, and established patient needs, reducing operational uncertainty and lowering costs.
Smoother regulatory interactions: Agencies tend to favor mechanisms and modalities with precedence, making the approval process more predictable due to the availability of longer-duration safety and efficacy data.
Investor reassurance: Capital flows more easily to programs with established markets, validated biology, or founders with experience in scaling programs. In fact, research from Harvard Business School has shown that serial entrepreneurs can be up to 55% more successful in running a venture-backed startup than their first-timer counterparts (7,8).
Risk insulation for platform technologies: Companies often test their platforms on validated targets first to demonstrate functionality before pursuing uncharted biology.
The trade-off is subtle but real. While optimizing for familiarity provides a stable, derisked path to success, this mindset leads the industry to unconsciously filter out the very ideas that could redefine the market.
The Downsides: When Precedence Becomes Constraint
The clearest symptom of this bias is herding, the phenomenon of clinical
pipelines clustering around a narrow set of targets or mechanisms (10). In oncology, the number of assets per target has increased more than fivefold as programs coalesce around ICIs and ADCs. No direct correlation between target herding and clinical success has been shown, but the concentration of talent, capital, and visibility around a few validated mechanisms leaves other promising areas underfunded.
A historical cautionary tale lies in Alzheimer’s research. For decades, faith in the amyloid-beta hypothesis dominated funding decisions. A single 2006 Nature paper shaped billions of dollars of investment, diverting attention from alternative pathways. When that hypothesis faltered, it left a trail of failed trials, diminished public trust, and lasting skepticism toward neurological innovation (11).
This same pattern applies to the sentiment towards leadership. Investments are often grandfathered toward “safe hands”—executives from large pharma or founders with prior exits—raising barriers for emerging founders with unconventional ideas and prioritizing an ecosystem where compelling science slips through the cracks and repetition is favored over reinvention. While data on serial versus first-time founder success supports investor caution (7), the question remains: in an industry shaped by the Einstellung effect, is the success of serial entrepreneurship an illustrative example of the validity—or simply a consequence—of investor bias?
Overcoming the Einstellung Effect
Escaping the pull of precedent requires deliberate effort. Companies positioned around truly novel mechanisms or targets must not only prove their science but also design commercial strategies that make innovation credible. Several principles can help:
Choose the Right Tool, Not Every Tool: Discovery platforms, computational modeling, and AI are advancing rapidly. The challenge is not adopting every innovation, but understanding which technologies deliver differentiated value. Tools and approaches that once worked may no longer confer advantage, and new tools too often become distractions. Winning companies conduct targeted evaluations and integrate technologies with discipline and purpose.
Adapt Commercial Strategy to Market Reality: Sometimes the big idea is right—and sometimes it isn’t. The difference lies in knowing when to push forward and when to pivot. As deal momentum returns, the most resilient companies are those that connect science to relevant commercial knowledge (Jeremy’s article). Whether it is guiding assets through early indication prioritization and valuation modeling or establishing launch plans through structured market and competitive assessment, adaptability remains the truest measure of readiness.
Quantify Value: In uncertain markets, clarity is currency and novel science wins when supported with proven economics. When teams ground strategy in transparent forecasts and flexible valuation frameworks, they not only build investor confidence but also create internal alignment around what success truly looks like.
Build Understanding, Tailor Communication: Breakthrough science demands precision. Teams must close knowledge gaps early—characterizing disease heterogeneity, evaluating patient populations, anticipating regulatory hurdles—and translate complex insights into tailored messages that resonate with researchers, regulators, and investors. Clear communication protects focus and accelerates momentum.
Together, these practices help companies demonstrate that new does not mean naïve, and that bold ideas can be both credible and commercially sound.
The View from the Crow’s Nest
Following validated targets to incrementally improve safety or efficacy isn’t inherently wrong, it’s how steady progress is made. Small steps, however, did not get humanity to the moon.
The Einstellung effect often rewards repetition over reinvention. Yet with disciplined strategy, rigorous evidence generation, and thoughtful communication, companies can ensure that innovation—not inertia—guides the future of healthcare. In a field where familiarity feels safe, the future belongs to those who continue to challenge the reflex to repeat.
If you are interested in learning more, get in touch at strategy@spinnakerLS.com.
Spinnaker offers true partnership and comprehensive guidance to help leaders navigate the complexities of the Life Sciences industry and chart a path to success. From early-stage market assessment through commercial execution and ongoing lifecycle management, we deliver tailored solutions to ensure optimized practicable results.
Sources
Einstellung: Knowledge of the Phenomenon Facilitates Problem Solving, Rice University, https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/papers/knowledge_of.pdf
FDA Approval Corporate News, 2011, Bristol Myers Squibb, https://news.bms.com/news/details/2011/FDA-Approves-YERVOY-ipilimumab-for-the-Treatment-of-Patients-with-Newly-Diagnosed-or-Previously-Treated-Unresectable-or-Metastatic-Melanoma-the-Deadliest-Form-of-Skin-Cancer/default.aspx
2025 CRI Cancer Immunotherapy Insights + Impact, 2025, Cancer Research Institute, https://www.cancerresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-CRI-Insights-Impact.pdf
Immune checkpoint proteins: Signaling mechanisms and molecular interactions in cancer immunotherapy, Seminars in Cancer Biology, 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1044579X22000700
Antibody drug conjugate: the “biological missile” for targeted cancer therapy, 2022, Nature Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapies, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-00947-7
Spending on GLP-1s has grown dramatically. Here are the details, 2025, American Medical Association, https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/behavioral-health/spending-glp-1s-has-grown-dramatically-here-are-details
Why serial founders still have a fundraising edge over first-timers, 2025, PitchBook, https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/why-serial-founders-still-have-a-fundraising-edge-over-first-timers#:~:text=And%20as%20startups%20grow%20and,those%20founded%20by%20first%2Dtimers.
The Success of Persistent Entrepreneurs, 2009, Harvard Business School, https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/the-success-of-persistent-entrepreneurs
Costs of Drug Development and Research and Development Intesnity in the US, 2008-2018, 2024, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2820562
Herding in the Drug Development Pipeline, 2023, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-023-00063-3
How Research Misconduct Harms Patients and Science, 2025, Association of Health Care Journalist, https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2025/02/how-research-misconduct-harms-patients-and-science/#:~:text=Fraud%2C%20manipulation%20and%20research%20misconduct,the%20National%20Institutes%20of%20Health.
