When facing challenges, collaboration and experience can be super powers

In just 11 days, “Avengers Endgame” earned more than $2 billion at box offices worldwide. Some may argue that once adjusted for inflation, the film’s box-office record is less impressive, but that’s another discussion. This discussion is about how, by leveraging collaboration and experience to arrive at a creative solution, the “Avengers” made their debut in September 1963.* The story:

Fifty-six years ago, Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett co-created “Daredevil” for Marvel Comics. Due to a full-time day job and a drinking problem, Mr. Everett missed the deadline for “Daredevil #1.” To fill this void, Mr. Lee came up with the idea of a comic that brought together existing Marvel heroes. He and artist Jack Kirby brainstormed the first issue and, thus, the “Avengers” franchise was born. (See p.14 for another comic book reference, where one optometrist describes how his collection has differentiated his practice.)

This solution drew on Mr. Lee’s experience, market knowledge and ability to collaborate. Working alongside Mr. Kirby, Mr. Lee had already brought a superhero team to Marvel Comics — the “Fantastic Four,” a response to DC Comics’ “Justice League of America.”

WORKING TOGETHER

The themes of collaboration and leveraging experience align nicely with this month’s issue of Optometric Management. For example, our cover feature focuses on accounting solutions offered by optometric alliances (p.18). As the article demonstrates, alliance members often collaborate to create value and manage practice issues.

In “Myopia Lessons Learned” (p.34), Matt Oerding, co-founder and CEO of Treehouse Eyes, discusses his experiences working with co-founder Gary Gerber, O.D., to develop a dedicated myopia management business. One of their first steps was to assemble an advisory board to gain a wider understanding of the potential of myopia care.

This month’s other feature articles tap in to a wealth of experience, including Dr. Melissa Barnett’s discussion of technologies to evaluate scleral lenses (p.30) and Dr. Stephen M. Montaquila’s insights into increasing the value of chair time with contact lens patients (p.38).

As a final note, feel free to share with me (james.thomas@pentavisionmedia.com) how a collaboration has made improvements to your practice. We will share these in an upcoming issue of OM. OM

*Thanks to Senior Editor Jen Kirby for introducing me to this piece of Marvel lore.