I’m seriously asking. Or everybody basically gave up on this company, so it’s only about stock and upper mgmt pay? Letting so many talented and experienced people go all the time, together with all other cost cutting measures, in exchange for the short-term appearance of health/stock value, truly leads to the only possible conclusion, and that’s this company is dying. Bummer is that it doesn’t have to be that way.
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True innovation is unpredictable, and it can take time and committment to bring to frution. Geoff has chased out anyone who was associated with the historical success stories of innovation and what remain are people who won't spend if they aren't guaranteed a return in no more than 3 years. In fact there's a whole cult of mid level finance blockers who love to quiz engineers "why should I invest in your project when I could get ROI this year by putting that money into the field? Like they're qualified to make those decisions.
True innovation is subversive, and that is not what we do at Medtronic. Within our corporate financial framework, it's "too expensive and high risk". Finance is looking for 4 year paybacks or better on R&D projects, which means we only work on incremental improvements on acquisitions until there are no incremental improvements left that provide return, then we milk it as long as possible then divest it when it becomes too dilutive to margin (mature market). We hold R&D to about 7-8% of revenue, but only a small portion of that actually gets spent on true R&D as large parts of the budget are siphoned off by regions expenses, clinical trials, infrastructure and and some sustaining work. In the end, it's barely enough to do the low to medium value incremental programs and create the illusion that we are doing early development work (I say illusion because none of the many efforts on paper are staffed or funded to be successful, but the ppts look great).
They don't even please shareholders smh. The fcking stock price keeps tanking
It takes consistent leadership with a vision based on a true mission to drive innovation. It takes deep medical device experience to truly be able to form a vision of where you want to be (as in every industry, I suspect). Based on my senior/middle management experience at Medtronic, you have sr. leadership with essentially no medical device experience, or sr. leaders with med device experience but arrogant, toxic and no vision, and you have leadership changing all the time, because good people dont want to work for toxic leaders with no vision. This all leads to what we have today, a terrible situation. BTW, all these leaders make great "inspirational" LinkdIn posts - I just hope they would spend a little less time on LI and more time with customers and engineers.
Our executive leaders don't care about true innovation anymore. Their only goal is to hit profit goals to please the shareholders.
There are many reasons but the main one is the leadership team at c-suite; it flows from there.
They don't understand engineering, what it takes & how long it takes they're bean counters.
Current leadership does not understand risk, and they are not able to think beyond the next fiscal year. They are expense managers, not growth drivers. Innovation requires intuition, judgement, and patience, all things they lack. Most of the real innovators that made Medtronic great have left and are now working, at high levels, in other companies who have not forgotten how to address unmet needs and delight customers.
- Medtech is a fully-developed industry with heavy regulations, dominated by a few big players. Innovation doesn't need to happen to protect market share - just buy them out if they look promising and leave the R&D risk to the small guys. Robotics is a case in point - only 3 worthy competitors (Intuitive/MDT/JnJ) - because nobody else has enough capital to play in this space. How much innovation can we expect?
- Innovation brings change and uncertainty - internal and external. Bulk of the people here are in their 30s-40s with families and content to settle in their comfort zones. An innovation in development, process, or otherwise... runs a very high risk of getting roadblocked/non-adopted. I consider this to be a consequence of medtech's traditional high profit margins, leading to complacency.
GLP is definitely shaking things up and forcing the industry to think. Hopefully for the better, but expect short-term bloodbath.
This company has so many divisions with each division having layers of terrible managers, directors, VPs, SVPs and C-Suite. This company will continue to fester for a long time.
It is culture. A great culture takes time and effort to create but can be destroyed with much less effort and in a shorter time. This happens to many companies when they grow large. The company is now in the rent seeking phase and feeding on all the past successes. This process will continue to push down moral and chip away at the culture as efforts are made to maintain this façade. The rent seekers at the top are just trying to continue the grift a bit longer while attempting to look altruistic an magnanimous. The ones at the top play the game while ones at the bottom become more demoralized and bide their time as they watch the game being played. What does it take to change? What does it take to become innovative again? Someone to sneak past the gate keeping rent seekers all the way to the top and then purge the rent seekers and begin the long process of healing the culture. I believe Geoff is not this person.
Neutron Geoff just following the playbook. It’s significantly cheaper to allow a startup to take the risk and do the innovation and then purchase them once they’ve matured the technology. Now, Neutron Geoff and his Mentor Neutron Omar have a history of cr-ppy acquisitions, but what should we expect when the in-house technology groups are as wildly incompetent as they are. The brain-drain out of the research has been wild and those left are yes men who serve to let the business folks know how smart the business folks are.
The research in this company seems to roll out a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner when they discover how to wipe their own rear ends, I wouldn’t expect this group to do anything revolutionary in terms of technology.
Innovation takes time and money. Medtronic's shareholders want profit NOW! That is why you are seeing RIFs and budget cuts in order to make our stocks look better.
True innovation doesn't exist at Medtronic anymore. Our leaders like GM are only here to extract as much money from this company as they can and then bail.
Goff Murta is more concerned with keeping his job and salary for as long as possible, and the same is true for the board, or he would have been ousted already. And then below them, the C-Suite realises the company is doomed precisely because of that, and similarly, they're in it to milk it for themselves as long as they possibly can. The best way for all of them to do this is not the long, hard road of innovation, but most certainly keeping shareholders at bay by continuing to pay unjustified levels of dividends. The easiest way to achieve this is to cut costs. Innovation takes time that these people aren't willing to argue or wait for, because it would put their own situations at stake.
TL;DR: They're in it for themselves and protecting their own interests is more important than the short-to-mid term sacrifice of innovating, possibly not paying dividends, and possibly missing out on their bonuses for a couple of years.