Many successful orthopedics companies create moats to give themselves a temporary competitive advantage. These moats are thought of as "defense" like a moat around a castle, but moats can also be used for "offense".
"Moats can be both defensive and offensive weapons. In defense, they could be used to force the enemy to attack in a particular spot such as the castle's most heavily defended area. But a moat might also allow the castle holder to hold one part of the line with fewer men while allowing a sortie (made larger by less defenders needed) on the besieging forces. A great moat allowed flexibility in defense and offense. Great leaders recognized this." - George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax
Let's look at 10 moats available to orthopedic companies today. I have ranked them from strongest to weakest.
As usual, this is all just my opinion. Send comments to tiger@tigerbuford.com
Moat 1) Customer Access.
This is the biggest moat for the Big Orthos that is caused by large supplier hospital contracts and/or robot capital purchase contracts that control most of the access to the hospital or ASC. This moat blocks out many of the ortho chihuahuas.
Moat 2) Regul...
