The minimally invasive surgery market, and associated Danish ...

aquilo I www.aquilo.info
17
The minimally invasive surgery market,
and associated Danish opportunities
China” is attached with a certain association, the “made in Switzerland” automatically provokes the
exact opposite association in our minds. Though “made in Germany” also scores high on the quality
perception score it does not match that of the Swiss. Now, this is truly peculiar as we all know that
German build “stuff” embodies “best in class” quality and engineering precision second to none. In fact,
Swiss manufacturing DNA is based on German engineering. Hence, the “made in Switzerland” label is
certainly among one of the largest marketing victories carried out by a single nation (consisting of only
seven million people).
The interesting point is that nowadays an increasing number of Swiss made consumer goods are
produced in China, so the “made in Switzerland” would now at best relate to “designed by a Swiss
based company”. Obviously this is not as quality catchy as “made in Switzerland”. So, how do some
consumer goods companies get around this? They leave the little legally obliged label “made in China”,
however, they put the good old Swiss flag on the product – which is probably even stronger than the
“made in Switzerland” tag as the flag represents a visualization, a symbol of “made in Switzerland”.
How does this little consumer anecdote relate to our business-to-business reality of MIS devices? Well,
one can indeed be a European based MIS “copy & paste” device company and outsource device
production to China – one must, however, assure to use the “flag” appropriately in the marketing of the
company and the company's product line.
Should one decide to go down this path it is important to recall that there are also low cost production
countries inside the EU. Admittedly China is still outperforming low cost European countries by a factor
of about 1:5-8. However, this does not include the “cultural” challenges of outsourcing production to
China, increased transportation cost etc.
The authors of this brief strongly believes in this strategy and have little doubt that a decade from now
we will see quite a few “opoly” & “profit-buster” MIS companies thriving, creating employment and
becoming an integral and respected part of the industry. The question that remains is who in Denmark
will have the guts to go down this path? If Danish device companies can muster the courage to follow
through on this strategy, we could see some relative quick wins and fast growing companies to the
benefit of Denmark, healthcare systems, patients and eventually also to the benefit of the industry as
this will force the multinationals to reinvent themselves.
6.4 Emerging market strategy:
This strategy shares many traits with the “reverse engineering strategy”. One could argue that the two
strategies are indeed siblings - not twins, just siblings.
Whereas the “reverse engineering strategy” focuses on producing “copy & paste” versions of top of the
line MIS devices and market these at more reasonable prices than currently, the “emerging market
strategy” focuses on producing outright inexpensive devices.
The rationale supporting this strategy naturally has its offspring in the growth rates of countries like
Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Countries that on a GDP per capita basis might be considered
relatively under privileged when compared with the “Old World”, nevertheless, these countries and this
category of countries have undergone significant economic development over the past decade. This
development has also led to an increase in healthcare availability in these countries.
As it is common knowledge that several emerging markets have enjoyed impressive GDP growth rates
and are likely to continue to present GDP growth above the six percent mark in the coming years, we