John, welcome.
Just tell me what factors are driving M&A activity at the moment?
Yeah, there's a couple factors that are really influencing the
M&A landscape and really shaping the competitive
environment there.
And they're kind of moving in conflict.
The first is really refocusing on the core and companies trying
to get their competitive advantage harmonized and really
focus their investments in core areas that can deliver returns
where they have advantage.
The counterpoint to that is access to customers remains a
big factor and smaller companies are looking for those
partnerships to really get that access at the customer level and
the executive level at the providers to help them drive the
adoption of their products.
So you have them kind of moving in conflict between
simplification as well as driving scale as well.
What roles does M&A have to play in driving innovation in healthcare?
Yeah, it is a big factor for innovation.
As we look at the changing regulatory landscape, the
challenges around innovation, the lengthening timelines to
innovate, companies like Baxter and others in the space really
need to look for external partnerships, be it
acquisitions, licensing or distribution partnerships to
really fuel that innovation pipeline and continue the
cadence of new product launches and continually bring new
products to markets to help our customers solve their challenges
in delivering healthcare.
How is your organization fostering an environment or innovation?
What practices are working best for you?
Yeah.
One of the things that we've done and I think it's a fairly
common practice is really having dedicated funding where we
really kind of create an environment to compete for new
products that are more early stage ideation and really
separate that funding from the day-to-day running the business
innovation to create that environment of new ideas,
innovation and a culture of trying new things and being OK
with failure because not everything we invest in is going
to be successful.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.