Chapter 4: Evaluating Environmental Opportunities

An emerging industry, as illustrated by Barney, is a "newly created or newly-recreated" industry created by the advancements in technology or the evolution in customer needs and behaviors (Barney, 2011). 

In the last post, we discussed the environmental threats facing Medtronic. Here, let us briefly discuss how they maintain their market leadership.

Medtronic is a OEM in the medical device industry, with products ranging from trocars to regeneration matrices. The healthcare sectors serviced span from neurological to orthopaedic. Somewhat recently, Medtronic has taken a vested interest in the emerging market of MedTech. As a leader in the medical device industry, with a sizable market capitalization, it is paramount Medtronic not lose its focus on differentiation. As an emerging market, MedTech is an area that allows medical device organizations to really outline the future growth in not just product realization but also commercialization. To take initial steps, Medtronic created a new internal infrastructure 6 years ago that would allow further customer interaction and greater facilitation of data. Continued focus on health systems and the emerging MedTech market showed Medtronic delve into key acquisitions to become a more robust player in the market. 

With the fast-paced nature of healthcare and ever-evolving needs, Medtronic pulled one over on its competitors by actively engaging the end users, aka the patients. This collaborative platform garnered an increase in customer satisfaction, well-intentioned and low-cost marketing, and most of all, better utilization of the emerging MedTech sector to create more patient-centric developments.

In their latest attempts to remain atop the market, while creating further avenues of customer-focused product lines, Medtronic acquired Nutrino, in late 2018. This acquisition will allow Medtronic to use the predictive algorithms to better support physicians in their fight against diabetes. In search of continued differentiation, Medtronic hit the jackpot with respect to physician interest and widespread public applicability.

Sources:

1. Barney, J.B. (2011). Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage, 4th ed. Prentice Hall: Pearson.