The In Vitro Possible
What does a MacArthur Genius, the iPhone, and Picasso have to do with helping millions achieve parenthood? Discover how "The Adjacent Possible"—a theory about breakthrough innovation—explains why IVF is poised for its iPhone moment.
Curious about how a MacArthur Genius, the iPhone, and Picasso inspired Conceivable on its mission to help millions of people achieve the dream of becoming parents?
The answer lies in The In Vitro Possible.
The Adjacent Possible
Forty-five years ago, Dr. Robert Edwards developed IVF—a Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough that has since brought nearly 10 million babies into the world. Yet despite this extraordinary achievement, IVF remains accessible to only 5% of people facing infertility globally. The science works. The scalability doesn't.
Until now.
To understand why now is the moment everything changes, we need to understand a concept called "The Adjacent Possible"—a theory developed by MacArthur Genius, medical doctor, and theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman. He defines it this way: "What is actual now enables what is next possible."
Historian Steven Johnson offers a more poetic translation: "At any moment, the world is capable of extraordinary change. But only certain changes."
Great Artists Steal
Steve Jobs famously said, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." (He stole that line from Picasso, naturally.)
Jobs didn't invent the cell phone, the touchscreen, GPS, or the MP3 player. But he had the vision to combine existing technologies into something that created extraordinary change: the iPhone. That synthesis democratized computing and put supercomputers in the hands of 85% of the global population.
This is The Adjacent Possible in action—recognizing when disparate innovations can be recombined to unlock what was previously impossible.
The IVF Lab's iPhone Moment
Walk into most IVF laboratories today and you'll see a process that hasn't fundamentally changed since the 1990s. Embryologists work manually with microscopes and pipettes, performing hundreds of delicate procedures by hand. It's artisanal medicine—extraordinary in its ability to create life, but extremely difficult to scale.
And scale is exactly what's needed. According to a 2023 paper in Fertility and Sterility authored by more than 25 leading clinicians, true global demand sits around 20 million IVF births annually—a staggering gap from today's half-million.
The conditions for breakthrough change have arrived. Just as Jobs "stole" from existing technologies, Conceivable has reimagined the IVF laboratory by combining innovations that were unimaginable even five years ago:
Machine vision from automotive safety now drives pipettes and ICSI needles with exact precision
Advanced microscopy from ophthalmology vastly improves oocyte selection
Technology from microscopic chip assembly enables unprecedented micro-pipette manipulation
Together, these form AURA—our end-to-end AI-powered automated IVF laboratory that performs over 200 critical IVF steps with reproducibility and precision that amplifies, rather than replaces, embryologist expertise.
From Concierge Medicine to Population Health
The implications extend far beyond efficiency. Human-guided automation means:
IVF that allows Conceivable partners to offer more affordable services
Expansion beyond infertility to serve families affected by recurrent miscarriage, genetic disease prevention, and LGBTQ+ family-building
Geographic accessibility for the 40% of Americans living in fertility deserts
This is how IVF transforms from expensive concierge medicine into population-scale healthcare—not through incremental improvement, but through systems-level reinvention.
The In Vitro Possible explores this transformation through the lens of breakthrough innovation theory. Watch as we trace the path from what IVF is today to what it's capable of becoming when the right technologies converge at the right moment.
As Stuart Kauffman reminds us: what is actual now enables what is next possible.
The conditions have arrived. We're already achieving pregnancies with automated systems. The In Vitro Possible isn't a future vision—it's happening now.
It was inevitable. It's the right thing to do. And it means we can do good and do well by guiding technology to meet demand and help build families everywhere.