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Accelerating R&D Execution within a Class III Cardiac Implantables Business | VP R&D
THE CHALLENGE
Our client was a large medical device company with a robust cardiac implantables business. This particular unit had pioneered a novel, life-saving therapy for patients suffering from a particular cardiovascular disease. While the business continued to do well in the near-term, it hadn’t launched any meaningful innovation in nearly a decade, and you could see the cliff getting closer. If they kept on with the current path, their best-case scenario would be eventual market saturation and plateauing revenue growth. The more likely situation, however, was competition would enter the market and start taking share, decelerating revenue growth and impact margins. They needed a new VP R&D, capable of transforming the team and delivering more regular innovation to market.
THE SOLUTION
Miramar was brought in to quickly identify candidates who met the following criteria:
1. Track-record of accelerating time-to-market within the Medical Device industry
2. Not a task master but a builder of empowered and motivated, high-performing teams
3. Technical leadership breadth spanning electro-mechanical device engineering, connected device architecture, cloud-native software development, and more.
Not to mention, they also needed to relocate to a high cost of living part of the country and preferably had experience in end-to-end Class III medical device product development.
We ran our battle-tested playbook of mapping the market for the most relevant talent, combining tailored messaging with persistent outreach, and creating a custom interview to assess candidates against our key criteria. Specific methods we used included:
- Building a list of companies known for having fixed a stalled innovation delivery engine
- Correlating the technical disciplines within this team to other segments of the MedTech industry
- Rather than hiding from the hard parts of the role, highlighting them in our messaging to attract transformational leaders
- Blending multiple interview techniques for the most comprehensive assessment (i.e. behavioral, situational, and values-based)
THE RESULT
Miramar ultimately delivered a shortlist of four highly qualified candidates within three weeks, and the search was concluded in under 75 days. Our client was able to plug in this new leader with minimal downtime, having already moved on from the previous VP R&D. While the selected candidate did not bring experience in cardiac implantables, they did possess extraordinary technical breadth as a leader and came with a clear track-record of innovation delivery.
The impact
Since joining the company, the new VP R&D has rebuilt their leadership team and already begun making a major impact on NPD execution. Last year, the team delivered a major software release, and this year, they are on track to complete two new product launches and two FDA PMA submissions.
