Agility key to innovation, success during COVID-19 pandemic
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
One panelist cited agility as the reason for his company’s success through the COVID-19 pandemic and advised others to be nimble as well.
“Agility is key,” Brad Oliver, Lumenis vice president and regional president, Americas, said at Octane’s virtual MedTech Innovation Forum. “That’s a driving factor of our success during these times.”
When social distancing protocols initially shut down the trade shows that make up a significant portion of Lumenis’ business, the company initially pivoted to using a digital format, which Oliver said, “was successful to a point.”
In a second pivot, the company launched a series of mobile tradeshows staged in hotel parking lots.
“There’s an amount of digital that people can digest, but at a certain point they need that interaction,” Oliver said. “We need that to improve medicine through dialogue. This is where patient care improves, through discussions with manufacturers and through physicians, so by creating this kind of mobile, outdoor trade show booth, we found a way to facilitate those needs.”
The trade show, if unconventional, still had lights, cameras, television screens, digital interaction and even food trucks, Oliver said. Physicians, corporate partners and other attendees wore masks and remained 6 feet apart to mitigate risk for COVID-19 spread, according to Oliver.
“Right now, for all companies, the ability to pivot is what defines success and what we need to do during these times,” Oliver said.