5 What challenges does the move to becoming a ‘service provider’ pose for the company? The last four years have been characterized by many challenges, many opportunities grasped, many lessons learnt and many reasons to feel confident of our continued success.’ (Press release from Dresding Wilson, January 2004) In fact, the quote had been lifted directly from the opening address that Dr Laura Dresding had given to the Dresding Wilson senior management conference a month earlier. What had not made it into the press release was her following comments. ‘OK, so we have also made many mistakes. But that is part of growing up, and grown up is what we should start considering ourselves.

We need to get more professional in everything that we do. We have entered markets that either are, or will become, more and more competitive. This means that we will need to shift the way we do things. We have grown by “letting many flowers bloom”. That is fine when you are a small and ambitious player in an emerging market.

Now we must get more integrated in the way we move forward and we must focus ruthlessly on the needs of our customers. Whatever customers find important is what we should find important.’

Company history The company, originally called Dresding Medical, was founded in 1991 by Dr Laura Dresding, a clinician who had also acted as a clinical adviser to several medical equipment companies. It supplied cardiovascular and heart function monitoring devices, most of which it manufactured in a relatively small factory/laboratory in Bracknell in the south of England. Within three years it had dropped other manufacturers’ products to concentrate on sales of its own expanding product range.

Originally owning 100 per cent of the company, by 2004 Dr Dresding’s share had dropped to 60 per cent, the rest being owned by three venture capital companies.

One of the company’s earliest decisions was to remain highly vertically integrated.