Stephen Leonard on research and development
From Operating with Confidence Twenty years at Integra LifeSciences · · Princeton Engineering Lectures
“Many companies like our own are built on the failures of others. If you add up the sunk cost inside of Integra, even when I got there, over half a billion dollars had been spent on research and development and most of those companies were bankrupt.”
On , Stephen Leonard, Corporate Vice President of Global Operations & Supply Chain at INTEGRA LIFESCIENCES HOLDNGS, spoke about research and development during Operating with Confidence Twenty years at Integra LifeSciences on Princeton Engineering Lectures.
About Stephen Leonard
Stephen Leonard, Corporate Vice President of Global Operations & Supply Chain at Integra Lifesciences, has discussed the company's growth strategy and financial management. In a 2014 talk, he described how Integra combined acquisition-based growth with its core collagen technology, noting that "the combination of my background as a financier putting companies together from an acquisition perspective with the technological capabilities that Integra had was what enabled us to grow in the last 10 years." He stated that the company raised close to $800 million through various financial instruments, including banks, convertible bonds, debt, equity, and warrants, and emphasized the need for "creative financial engineering" alongside product development. Leonard also addressed product commercialization challenges. He said that Integra's artificial skin product was "extraordinary" clinically but "a disaster" commercially because the target market was initially wrong, and that the company later shifted focus to diabetic foot ulcers. He noted that when launching a dural patch product, the company changed its marketing strategy after learning that neurosurgeons valued the time savings of closing surgery 30 minutes faster over the regenerative benefits. Leonard added that Integra has few medical doctors on staff, instead partnering engineering teams with surgeons for product development.