Over time, the graveyard of failed orthopedic companies that has become more crowded.
People don't like to talk about the scale and breadth of these failures, but its real.
The graveyard isn’t filled with companies with "bad" products. On the contrary, it’s the final resting place of for better products - biomechanically superior implants, revolutionary biomaterials, and elegant surgical instruments that performed flawlessly in the lab.
These companies didn’t fail because the engineering was off. They failed because the business model was broken. Sadly, billions of dollars of well-meaning investments were raised to push forward these innovative new products.
Orthopedics specifically has a blindspot of chasing the "better mousetrap." We assume that if we shave 0.5mm off a profile or increase a pull-out strength by 10% or create an MIS version of a product, the market will beat a path to our door.
But the cold reality of the modern ortho market is that the business model is the product.
Let me explain better with an analogy below.
The Hamburger Analogy
Ask yourself: Can you make a better hamburger than McDonald’s?
Of course you can. You can probably do it on your backyard grill ...
