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Oakes, Lyman: Is This the Model for Building European Device Companies?

Despite outstanding clinical science, Europe has historically lagged behind the US, if not in medical device innovation, at least in device company creation. A vicious cycle of few start-ups, reluctant VCs, and a poor pool of experienced managers has kept company creation from exploding. But now former merchant bankers turned serial entrepreneurs, Herb Oakes and Dick Lyman, believe they have a better formula for starting device companies in Europe.

Successful device-company creation works in a kind of virtuous circle: physicians or engineers with promising ideas find venture backers who believe in those ideas and fund the launch of a company to bring the innovation to market and who, in turn, after a certain period of time, find seasoned executives to grow the company and realize the potential of the idea.

But that virtuous circle can turn vicious if any of those pieces are missing: if physicians are reluctant to commercialize their ideas, venture sources don't crop up; conversely, if venture...

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