Autore: Prem Sagar Menghwar
Abstract:In April 2021, Edward Robb, an entrepreneur, who has been running the family business for the past twenty years, looked back at the last decade’s performance of their companies Applied Medical Coatings and Robb Surgical. Applied Medical Coatings was born as a spinoff company from Metal Cladding in 2003. However, Metal Cladding was established in 1943 by Edward Hupt Robb’ great uncle of Edward Robb. In the last 75 years, Metal Cladding has been an industry leader in providing applied coating technologies that enhance products’ performance while increasing market sustainability at the optimum cost. Metal Cladding has mainly provided products and services to United States Federal Agencies and Armed Service Branches for nearly six decades. In comparison, Applied Medical Coatings (AMC) was established to provide services to the medical industry. The core capability of AMC is that it has the potential to design and develop multiple coating solutions according to the needs of its customers. The company values and uses feedback from its two main stakeholders- corporations and healthcare surgeons- to develop, design, and refine the products. Using a multiple-step iterative process, the company collaborates with stakeholders on developing a range of products manufactured in the USA. However, deliver at the same or lower price developed outside the USA, where production costs are much lower. To achieve this goal, the company collaborates, putting its core knowledge at risk. Each time it collaborates with partners, the company faces the classical paradox of open innovation – how to protect its knowledge while benefiting from external knowledge. So far, it has managed to preserve its internal knowledge and capabilities while collaborating with external stakeholders. However, a new partner has brought colossal business but has asked for complete information about the product development process. It has demanded that it inspects each step in order to ensure that the products meet the criteria. Edward doesn’t want to lose this big customer; however, he can’t also take the risk of sharing the core knowledge. Second, in 2013, another company, Rob surgical, was established as a spinoff company of applied medical coatings. This company works in collaboration with doctors and people who work at universities and has an idea about developing a new product. This company manufactures new medical devices and sells them directly in the market. This collaboration brings other communication challenges because doctors and engineers speak different languages. Besides this, the Covid-19 crisis has disrupted supply chain issues due to the lockdown and closing of elective hospital units. These challenges are critical and pose a risk to the sustainability of the companies; hence, Edward is thinking of approaching his father and engineering team, who has vast experience, and trying to find a way to address these issues to ensure the survival of his family business.
