Page 110 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Emerging Models of Corporate Entrepreneurship 97

surgery for hip replacements. He presented the idea and
explored it informally with Zimmer manager Kevin Gregg.
While the product implications and business model for this
approach were unclear, Mears received R&D funding to con-
tinue his exploratory work. By 2001, the procedure was ready
for clinical trials. Mears and Gregg got the go-ahead to proceed
from top management (including CEO Ray Elliott) and, more
important, the go-ahead to develop the business approach to
leverage this emerging new capability. Somehow, the improve-
ment in surgical procedure—if significant—had to be turned
into a competitive advantage for Zimmer.
The clinical trials revealed that the minimally invasive pro-
cedure could greatly improve patient outcomes, but there were
many subtleties. To persuade surgeons to learn the procedure
and begin to apply it preferentially—and therefore drive sales
of implants and surgical tools—Zimmer conceived an innova-
tive training program in order to accelerate learning. Surgeons
who participated in training were required to share patient
demographics, operative details, and complications for each of
the first 10 procedures they performed after training, enabling
new students to learn from their predecessors. In order to make
the improvements in surgical performance ongoing, Zimmer
established the Zimmer Institute in March 2003. The Zimmer
Institute not only incorporated substantive training in mini-
mally invasive procedures but, according to a 2005 Zimmer
press release, also incorporated innovations in the training
process itself, such as interactive online learning and virtual
reality, as well as new educational techniques to address dif-
ferent learning styles and preferences. By 2006, more than 6000
surgeons had been trained there in a dozen different types of
minimally invasive surgical procedures.
Not only has the Zimmer Institute developed a large coterie
of surgeons who are trained in and comfortable with using