"No one in the medical device industry could solve this. The answer was never going to come from inside medicine. It came from a room with toy designers, psychologists, and technologists — asking a question the industry had never thought to ask."
A corporate growth rule. A stalled division. A device no consumer could use.
— The Challenge
Stop looking at medical devices. Look at who already solves this problem.
— What Made This Different
The parent company operated under a strict corporate portfolio rule: any division not growing at least 10% annually faced divestiture. The medical device division — a manufacturer of defibrillators — had stalled, and corporate strategy needed organic growth, not acquisitions, to avoid the division being sold off.
The broader medical device industry was moving toward consumerization and miniaturization. But defibrillators were emergency equipment, used by trained medical professionals in life-or-death situations. The industry consensus was that this category simply could not follow the consumerization trend — the device was too sophisticated, the stakes too high, the user too untrained.
The reframe Vaxa brought was to set aside the question of "how do we simplify our device" and ask a different one entirely: who, in any industry, already has expertise in taking sophisticated technology and making it usable by people with zero training — including children?
The answer pointed toward the toy industry — an industry built around taking advanced technology and making it intuitive, safe, and engaging for five and six year olds. That insight reframed the entire problem. The question for the panels became: how do you transform a device used by physicians in emergencies into something a complete layperson could pick up and use correctly under pressure?
— Related SERVICES
Thought leader panels deliberately built from outside the industry. How does the toy industry play to medical devices?
— WHAT vaxa DID
01
Growth Mandate Reframing
Reframed the growth challenge from "how do we improve our defibrillator" to "how do we create an entirely new category of device for an entirely new user" — shifting the strategic question from product improvement to category creation.
02
Cross-Industry Insight Sourcing
Identified the toy industry as the source of the critical insight — expertise in simplifying advanced technology for untrained users, including young children — a category of expertise the medical device industry had never considered relevant.
03
Thought Leader Panel Design
Designed and convened panels deliberately assembled from outside the medical device industry — toy industry representatives, entertainment companies, behavioral psychologists, alongside technology companies and demographic experts. The brief: how do you make an emergency medical device usable by anyone, with no training, under pressure.
04
Category Definition
Synthesized the panel insights into the definition of a new product category — a defibrillator simple enough for an untrained bystander to use correctly in an emergency, designed using principles borrowed from outside medicine entirely.
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— The OUTCOME
A new category. Now standard equipment everywhere you turn—gyms, airplanes, offices and even residential homes.
01
The AED category created
The automatic external defibrillator — a category that did not exist before this work, born from a reframe that looked outside the medical device industry entirely for the answer.
02
First widely-adopted AED brought to market
The division produced the first AED to achieve broad market adoption — proving the consumerization thesis the industry had believed was impossible for this category of device.
03
Adoption across every consumer environment
AEDs became standard equipment across gyms, airports, supermarkets, airplanes, and eventually homes — a category created from a strategic reframe now present in daily life across the world.
04
Growth mandate partly met through category creation
The division met its organic growth mandate not by improving its existing product, but by creating an entirely new product category — avoiding divestiture through the kind of growth that only category creation can produce.
CLIENT
Medical device division of a diversified technology company
OUTCOME
Category created — automatic external defibrillators
PRACTICE AREA
Growth Strategy · Venturing & Innovation
Selected Assignment
— Medical Devices · Consumer Health
A growth mandate.
And a device only use in emergency rooms.
A medical device division facing divestiture under a strict corporate growth threshold. The product was a defibrillator — sophisticated, professional-use, emergency equipment. The mandate was organic growth. We needed a path to get there.
The first widely-adopted AED — now standard equipment in gyms, airports, supermarkets, and homes.