In the world of orthopedic innovation, success stories like Danek, Kyphon, and Mako often take center stage in our collective memory.
These company triumphs shine brightly, but beneath them lies a shadow of thousands of startup failures, their lessons often forgotten.
Anyone remember... Amedica, LinkSpine, Carevature, Intellirod, Bio2Tech, Titan Medical, Conformis, Wishbone Medical, ReJoint Orthopedics, TranS1, etc ?
Why don't we remember the failures?
Well, we all carry a "Survivorship Bias".
In a nutshell...
• We "see" startups that encountered challenges that were survivable.
• We "don't see" startups that encountered challenges that were not survivable.
Below is a deeper dive, followed by a classic example of survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias, a cognitive bias that skews our perception by focusing on the survivors and successes while sidelining the failures, can deceive us all when evaluating the true landscape of orthopedic company success.
To unravel the impact of survivorship bias on our understanding of the orthopedic industry, let's explore the following key insights:
A Partial Picture of Success: The orthopedic startups that have successfully navigated the marke...
