Bausch + Lomb turns its focus to physicians and their patients

The CEO and president of B+L’s global surgical business explains why he thinks the company is in a good position in the market.

Robert E. Grant

Robert E. Grant assumed the posts of CEO and president of Bausch + Lomb’s global surgical business in August 2011. Ocular Surgery News recently sat down with Mr. Grant to discuss changes in the ophthalmic industry and his vision for the company.

OSN: Tell us a little bit about why you wanted to come to Bausch + Lomb in terms of being able to change the industry.

Mr. Grant: I think there is an opportunity to change the paradigm of how we deal with patients. I think as patient experiences and outcomes improve, patients are willing to value those experiences and outcomes and pay out of pocket for them. Our health care system going forward is going to be a significant burden not only to society, but also to ophthalmology. As we face the question of the sustainable growth rate reduction yet again, there are many physicians who are going to say, “How do we create a better outcome, and how do we create a better experience for our patients such that they’re going to help us not be dependent on the current health care system that many of us are very concerned about?”

I think Bausch + Lomb is in a very good position, not only to be able to partner with physicians in their practices to bring them highly innovative products, but also to partner with the entire industry to grow the whole market and build awareness around what is available in the premium segment of all of the areas that could be affected.

OSN: You have had the opportunity since August to develop a vision for the company. Why do you think Warburg Pincus wanted to seek you out for this kind of game changer?

Mr. Grant: Actually, this is not a vision that I started thinking about in August. This is a vision I have been thinking about for about 10 years. When I was previously at Coherent Medical, we worked on a number of things that would have been related to, at some future point, a lot of the things that we are talking about today. But Bausch + Lomb is in a much better platform and the technologies have advanced to a point where this is now becoming more possible. The advent of the premium IOL segment has been extremely helpful, and the Crystalens product line becoming more known at the consumer level and patient level has also made this possible.

I think Warburg Pincus was probably interested because it saw an industry that was being dominated by two players, Alcon and Abbott Medical Optics. Both companies, when they go through integrations with larger parent companies, inevitably will end up in a situation in which small, incremental changes basically become the norm within the industry rather than breakout innovation. That always leaves the company that is able to get closer to the customer and focus everyone in the company externally on that customer, the physician in this case, to meet and exceed their needs. Once we do that, then we will be able to consistently come to the market with products that are going to be breakout innovations and game changers. So whenever there is this market dynamic, such as with Novartis acquiring Alcon and Abbott Laboratories acquiring Advanced Medical Optics, you have a situation in which it leaves room for another player to become the intensely customer-focused company. That is what we intend to do.

OSN: You are running the surgical division, but you have talked about the vision for Bausch + Lomb at a higher level. How have you seen the consumer, pharmacy and surgery divisions working more closely together?

Mr. Grant: I believe that Bausch + Lomb is in a unique position as an overall corporation in that we are the only company that I know of that is able to be there for our patients from the day they are born, with erythromycin that is wiped on their eyes, all the way to older age, with cataract surgery. Effectively, we are working with patients through their entire life cycle. It just so happens that in our surgical segment we tend to be more focused on patients toward the end of their life. But with our contact lens business, as well as our pharmaceutical products, we are dealing with patients at much earlier stages in their life, and our surgical business basically rounds it out toward the latter years of one’s life.

The company is working together as a singularly focused company and corporate platform focused on eye health. That puts us in a unique position to help grow the markets. When companies are acquired by larger companies, they will inevitably have some compromise. That is just the nature of the beast. You will have some advantages and you will have some compromises, and the compromise usually comes around focus. What we are trying to do is go in the opposite direction and be the only company focused on eye health, wholly and singularly, with a global platform as one company, one culture and one vision. And it just so happens that we are the company that can provide a relationship with patients from the day they are born all the way through the latest years of their life.

OSN: Along that line, as a company, you made a comment earlier saying think big but act small. Can you expand on that?

Mr. Grant: As companies get bigger, I believe they go from opportunities, successes, entrepreneurship, customer focus and external orientation to more internal orientation. It happens because you have increasing degrees of oversight put in place by the boards of directors, appropriately, so that you can manage risks and mistakes. Inevitably, that shift, in time, starts to rob innovation out of the organization. As companies get bigger, while they may get better at execution and incremental improvements, they will not get better at breakout change and more paradigm shifts.

Apple is an example of this. In 1997, the year Steve Jobs came into the industry, which was a business-to-business dominated industry, Dell, Compaq and other computer companies were fighting for market share. What Jobs said, which was absolutely brilliant, was, “I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to go toe to toe with these other players. In 2002, we’re going to do music.” Nobody understood that the platform for the iPod was actually a precursor platform to changing the entire industry for personal computing. The iPod had one killer application with music, and it beget the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch beget the iPhone. The iPhone got everybody used to a certain platform and how we work on it. We get over the fact that we do not have a keyboard anymore, and all of a sudden, now everybody is using the iPad. And the business-to-business relationship becomes less important because the consumer is walking to work with his own iPad that he personally owns and says, “Just give me the number so that I can access the company’s corporate computer system.”

That is disruptive change in the industry, and that is what I am talking about. As industries, and to a certain extent it is happening in ophthalmology, we are only getting to small, incremental changes. All the disruptive changes that we are getting in the industry are coming from venture capital startups.

Think big, act small. Companies that are going to be successful at reinventing themselves are going to focus on the customer, and they are going to be able to have a big vision for that customer, meeting and exceeding their demands and anticipating what they are going to need. But they are going to act like a small organization, and they are not going to punish mistakes so much that they squeeze and kill risk and innovation within that company.

We look very much forward to working with the ophthalmic community, being not the biggest company in the industry but by being the best company, and the best for us is defined as the company that our customer wants to work with.

• Robert E. Grant can be reached at Bausch + Lomb, 30 Enterprise, Suite 450, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656; 949-916-9352; fax: 949-716-8362.