The medical device business isn’t as much fun as it used to be. Products are aging, and increasingly more difficult to differentiate. Market success has attracted more competitors. Regulatory requirements are increasing the costs and time to develop new products. Advertising and selling costs are also skyrocketing. And payers are demanding hard clinical and health economic data to justify product pricing.

Flattening growth curves and declining profitability are now the more typical result. The winners in this market storm are going to have to reinvent themselves to compete based on significantly stronger economic and clinical value (ECV) propositions. This will require developing strategic marketing capability that can identify and take advantage of such value-based opportunities.