Kari Krogstad, President and CEO of Medistim, had every intention of pursuing a career in research after finishing her Master of Science in Molecular Biology at the University of Oslo. “I intended to move on to take a PhD degree, but after the Master of Science was finished, I was a bit fed up with the lab work and all that goes with it,” she explains. Instead, she took a job in marketing with Nycomed, which was a global market leader in X-ray, MRI and ultrasound contrast media, and never looked back.
Working for a big, globally successful company was a whole new world for Kari, having previously been immersed in academic life. She says it was exciting to learn about the dynamics of the company “with all the different functions and capable people working there.” She was so taken with it that she went on to do a business degree at IHM Business School in Sweden. Kari worked as the international product manager at Nycomed for a number of years, before moving on to Dynal Biotech, and then Invitrogen after that company acquired Dynal. “I had a multitude of roles in Dynal until I took the role as CEO after the company was acquired by the US biotech firm Invitrogen in 2005. Those were fantastic years because I was working with technologies and science that were directly related to my own thesis from university,” she enthuses. But after four years of commuting between Oslo and the company’s corporate headquarters in California, Kari had had enough of the extensive travel.
When she moved on to her current role as President and CEO of Medistim in 2009, Kari saw the potential to improve the company’s commercial operations. The Norwegian medical technology company produces ultrasound equipment that combines Transit Time Flow Measurement (TTFM) and ultrasound imaging to guide surgeons during procedures such as coronary bypass surgery. It had recognised the need to work closely with customers — the surgeons using the devices — and therefore built strong positions in markets including the Nordic countries, Central Europe and Japan.
The product was clearly attractive and marketable. However, the company was technology oriented rather than market oriented, with no real marketing vision. Kari used her years of experience in sales, marketing and business leadership to institute a marketing team, as well as a medical department. She saw the need for a clinical team to collaborate with the sales team to help hospitals go through the change process that is required to establish surgical guidance and quality assessment enabled by Medistim technology. For many hospitals, this change represents a paradigm shift. “The sales process is consultative in nature and requires a significant amount of face time with the customers, so our sales, marketing and clinical teams’ competencies are really critical for our success,” says Kari. “By listening to our customers and learning what they are facing in their practices, new ideas for improvements are captured. The close relationships we build with the users of our products help us identify with the surgeons and their challenges, but also the patients and what they are going through.”
“There wasn’t really a market for the product at the time we got started, so we developed this market ourselves from the beginning. We built our business from scratch and made it into a global leader due to our focused approach. It’s a really interesting and inspiring success story.” – Kari Krogstad
She credits those close relationships to the company’s strong market position, but says they wouldn’t be possible without the passionate team. “We have had very little turnover of our staff, so we have been able to build really unique competence. The high degree of loyalty from the staff over the years has enabled us to really stay on course and focus on the goals and the strategic directions that we have chosen.”
Working closely with her team, whom she describes as “smart and enthusiastic”, is the best part of Kari’s job. She enjoys the close relationships she has developed both internally and externally with customers, partners and suppliers. She says, “As a leader, I know that I don’t have all the answers, and success totally relies on my ability to listen to other people, to engage other people, to trust other people, so working together as a team is absolutely crucial. There is no better feeling than winning together as a team, and that’s probably what I love most about the job.”
Now, with a great team, strong partnerships, and an effective product, Kari says the aim is to “conquer the world and achieve high market penetration in every market globally.” In Japan, 80 per cent of coronary bypass surgeries are supported by Medistim’s technologies, and the company wants to emulate that success worldwide.
Kari admits that it’s challenging to get cardiac and vascular surgeons to change their practices. The company works hard to convince surgeons that applying Medistim’s blood-flow measurement and ultrasound imaging surgical guidance technologies during operations will lead to better outcomes for patients. “In many ways, we are missionaries, and our success relies on how well we are able to argue for and demonstrate the clinical benefits of our technology. But after many years in the market, we have built up strong clinical support for our claims, and the technologies have been endorsed by guidelines for best clinical practice in many countries. We are happy to be making great progress in the United States right now, which is the largest market for our product.”
The company has come a long way since it was founded in 1984. Kari says that medicine is a great example of an industry where a small technology company can grow hugely successful by targeting a specific need in the market. “There wasn’t really a market for the product at the time we got started, so we developed this market ourselves from the beginning. We built our business from scratch and made it into a global leader due to our focused approach. It’s a really interesting and inspiring success story.”
