When you’ve got the right strategy, see it all the way through

Today Abbott completed its acquisition of St. Jude Medical, an established innovator and leader in cardiac care. This is the next step in a long-term strategy we’ve pursued for almost 20 years, and largely fulfills our original vision of building a premier business in heart health.

Over the subsequent years, we acquired a series of small- to mid-sized companies that helped us learn the vascular stent business. This experience positioned us to make a game-changing move when we acquired Guidant’s stent business in 2006, which would ultimately make us the leading maker of bare-metal stents, then drug-coated stents and, now, of bioresorbable stents.

While Guidant made us a leader in an important segment of the market, the addition of St. Jude does so across virtually the entire spectrum of heart-care specialties, giving us number-one or number-two positions in eight different therapeutic areas.

By staying focused on a vision and strategy we set years ago, Abbott was able to build steadily but patiently, continually strengthening and expanding our position until we were ready to make critical moves when those opportunities arose. 

The goal of being a leader in cardio-care may have seemed an unrealistic one when we adopted it as a company with virtually no presence or experience in the field. But we knew that heart care was an essential place to be as a healthcare leader – both scientifically and commercially. The key, then, was to choose the right path. We picked ours very deliberately and judiciously, and it’s led to the position we envisioned at the start: the opportunity to lead in one of the most important areas of healthcare.

We had confidence in our vision and our strategy. We stuck to it. And we’ll continue to do so, building this business for continually greater achievement and contribution. When you know you’re headed in the right direction, keep going.

Originally published on Linkedin Pulse.