Redefining Device Innovation--An Interview with John Abele

Executive Summary

Over the past 25 years, few medical device companies have played as large a role in fostering medical device innovation as Boston Scientific. Indeed, through much of the 1980s, Boston Scientific created a new model for a medical device company as technology innovator--one that made the physician less a customer than an ally in the promotion and dissemination of new technology. The visionary behind this new model for device innovation: John Abele, director, founder and chairman at Boston Scientific, who has been a guiding light behind the company's extraordinary technology story--a story that continues today, not just in Boston's dramatic success in drug-eluting stents, but also in the diverse technology portfolio the company has assembled. In the following interview, Abele, whose training was neither in medicine nor engineering, talks about his early days in the medical device industry and the principles that guided him.