Filling the Product Pipeline

Originally Published MX May/June 2002

BUSINESS PLANNING & TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

Filling the Product Pipeline

Six industry leaders reveal their strategies for product development in a suboptimal economy.

Moderated by Steve Halasey

Company leaders work hard to create award-winning products such as those described in the previous pages, but keeping the pipeline filled with products to be launched in the future can be even more daunting. To find out how companies manage this task, MX interviewed six industry executives with experience in developing complex product lines. Excerpts from the interviews appear here; the complete text is also available.

MX: What conditions in the general economy are helping or hindering companies that are developing new medical products right now?

Sidebar:
Roundtable Participants Norbert G. Riedel, PhD: Key conditions include the aging population, an increase in the affordability of healthcare, and innovation that makes possible truly differentiated products and thus improved quality of life. These are all positive forces for industry as a whole.

Stephen N. Oesterle, MD: Companies like Medtronic are buffered from economic turns in the wrong