Innokas Medical, acting today as an independent subsidiary of Serres Group, has renewed its strategy during the spring and summer. With the new strategy Innokas aims to achieve the company’s new vision, to take the changes of the operative environment into account and to identify the development needs of the organization. Innokas’ new strategy is based on the co-creation mindset, which highlights the value add strategic partnerships.
“Our new vision is to be the preferred medtech long-term co-creation partner in 2020. We will develop our way of operation and processes, invest in developing the team spirit and medical know-how of our employees and strengthen our customer-oriented operation even further. Our aim is to be able to offer the best possible place to work and the best customer experience in the future”, tells Innokas Medical’s CEO Jouni Toijala.
To achieve the new vision and targeted goals, the renewal process of the company’s strategy was started by identifying the changes of the operative environment and by analyzing the effects of internal and external drivers. Toijala sees that there’s one common trend that all companies should prepare to: everything is getting much more complicated.
“We see the health technology is facing the same changes, which have already challenged other industrial sectors: everything is getting much more complicated. The complexity is caused by digitalization; the technologies are developed even more rapidly, the impact of software is growing and wireless as well as mobility features are increasing. In addition, the user experience and safety issues are even more crucial nowadays”, Toijala particularizes, and continues:
“This all creates a whole new kind of challenges for medical device developers, as companies need to know and, in particular, need to master a significant number of different kind of technologies and platforms already on a very early phase of the product lifecycle. Thus, creating new, competitive products and services at a fast rate is becoming increasingly challenging – and in addition, when we add the burdensome and complicated regulation governing health technology, one has a very complex equation to solve.”
In practice, we’re speaking of an equation that cannot be overlooked: the changes force also health technology companies to change their mindsets and ways of working in order to run along with the global competition.
“In much more complex industry, an equipment manufacturer may not be able to recruit the right expertise at the right time, despite the fact that it intends to keep all the knowhow in house. As a result, such a company may not remain competitive. Thus, instead of standalone contract manufacturing or design services, the partnerships that emphasize co-creation over the entire product lifecycle will become more significant drivers for competitiveness”, Toijala estimates.
Co-creation as competitive advantage
Innokas’ new strategy is based on the co-creation mindset highlighting strategic partnerships. It’s an organizational model, which brings together all the participants from end-users to experts for the development of new products or services. The end result is a better outcome than in the traditional organization, as the co-creation model emphasizes cooperation and the company selects the partners it needs in order to ensure the needed expertise is available.
“In co-creation, all parties have a competitive edge and are able to add more value compared to the previous business models. Innokas has already changed its processes to fit this new organizational culture, and will develop its activities further in the future also. The former traditional contract manufacturer and designer in which way Innokas maybe was positioned earlier, seeks and offers now strategic partnerships”, Toijala tells.
He sees Innokas has a strong position in the future healthcare technology field, where strategic partnerships play a significant role in bringing new medical products to the market in agile way.
“Our long-term and purposeful operation within medical devices is something our competitors don’t have; our comprehensive service solution covers the agile path from idea to high-quality design and product development, regulatory approvals and cost-efficient manufacturing of medical devices. The concept is superior to companies that need long-term co-creation partnerships for the product's whole lifecycle”, Toijala says.
Returning back to continuation of the growth
By renewing the strategy, Innokas intent is to return back to the continuation of the growth path: the aim is to increase Innokas’ turnover to 40 million euros by 2020. The first steps towards this were taken already during the last fiscal year when Innokas succeeded in increasing its annual revenue and returning the EBIDTA back to the profitable level.
“Our last fiscal year ended on 31st May this year, and we succeeded to increase our turnover. Our annual revenue was almost 22M€, which indicates about 8 % growth form the last year. In addition, we succeeded to bring our EBIDTA back at the profitable level after many years”, Toijala tells.
He strongly believes that by focusing on the implementation of the long-term co-creation strategy and on the continuous development of Innokas operations will help the company to achieve its goals.
“In addition to moving strongly towards the co-creation mindset, we will invest in developing our organization, processes and medical knowhow already in the near future”, Toijala tells and continues:
“The healthcare technology is growing steadily, and it has a deeper purpose and effect on all the mankind: our mission is to improve people´s lives by crafting healthtech ideas to reality. Every day when we come to work, we can feel that we’re doing really important and meaningful work. This is something that motivates us towards our goals in 2020, every day.”
