And, we do put this up with great pride and hopefully it speaks to our passion for growth. When we put on
Stryker jerseys, name tags, write with Stryker pens, whatever you want to do and call it, guess what? Were signing up for growth. Its in our DNA. It is the lifeline of our organization. And, when we scale businesses and when we acquire
organizations, we like to pour water on them like plants and watch them grow. Thats how we try to do it each and every year and its worked pretty well. We now look back and were very grateful for the opportunity weve had to
continue to build growth into our organization, deliver some outstanding results, but take the money we make from that and reinvest it into more innovation, to solve more problems, to take care of more customers and their patients.
So, 39 years of sales growth is in a very elite class. Theres not many organizations out there. So humbly, we like to say, that were on the
world-class sphere here when we think about our performance and we expect that in the future. So no slowing down as we look around the corner.
So, this
is our corporation strategy all in one slide, and Im going to work from the bottom up. You can see quality first. Its absolutely essential in everything we do and how we work and how we think and we how we answer the phones and how we
interact and how we design and how we test and we develop, so on and so forth. Its all about the quality and if you dont have that, you dont have an organization. That couples with the other foundation there: people, the talent,
everything in this room.
Yes, we have amazing technologies we have robots, we have planning software, et cetera, et cetera behind all that
are people. People that design, people that build, people that service, people that sell, people that support, people that test and we want to make sure we always have the best talent. Theyre engaged, theyre aligned and theyre
recognized along that journey and we continue to develop them.
We know that when we acquire companies, one of the most important things we look at are
the people, the people, people, people and how they act. That culture aspect. So thats foundational in all we do at Stryker. And, then you can see these verticals: customer focus, you heard Tim talk about innovation, I gave you a few examples.
We are continuing to accelerate our thought process around the world. How do we serve more of our customers and our employees and their families all over the world in our globalization efforts? And guess what? In todays reality in
healthcare and the pressures and the consolidation, you have to attack cost. How do we continue to look at making sure were driving more efficient business and optimized businesses? And, were doing that through things like ERPs.
So, a little fun fact, I dont know what the count is right now and depending on closing of future acquisitions, how many itll be, but ERP systems,
so big operating systems that run businesses, Stryker has over 40. 40! A few of you are laughing because you dont have that many. Thats a lot! Ideally, you want like one, and then when we acquire something, maybe two for awhile. Forty,
thats inefficient. So, for us to drive more optimization efficiency, thats a great example of what a cross-transformation looks like. So, we have partnered with SAP, were through oh, $4 billion of the company or so is flowing
through SAP right now in their latest and greatest single instance, if you get into the techie stuff. And guess what? Its tough. Its really tough. But, thats part of the journey that I think all organizations have to confront as
they think about growth and scale. So, were pretty bullish about our strategy and like our odds in the future.
So, this one, we love showing our
commitment to external innovation as I call it, which is M&A. Again, we say this with some humility, but you can see the performance here all the way out to... Weve even now started to show this externally that we have Wright Medical on
there. Now, you can see in the Wright box it says, pending, so thats a distinction that weve just signed a definitive agreement and still have to work through all the customary conditions to close. However, we have a history
of doing this and each one you get a little better. Each one you learn something, each one you figure out how you can optimize it in the next time, but this is part of our strategy.
We love organizations, we love decentralization. We love figuring out how to continue to grow and expand in the various categories that we exist. Sometimes,
we go out and we enter a new category. Take ENT, for example: We bought a company in Minneapolis named, Entellus. It was a smaller organization. We had a little tiny ENT portfolio and we said, Man, what a great disease state, lets
acquire that. And, guess what? Its a stand-alone business. Were pouring water on it, its growing and we continue to do that over and over.