Three years ago, Ted Davis was doing what any good business development officer at a US-based ortho company should do. His employer, Wright Medical Group NV, was trying to sell hip and knee implants in China. “We were growing at a pretty decent rate,” Davis recalls, but the company wanted to amp things up. So he was taking meetings, not really looking for partners but just trying better to understand the lay of the land. In his search, several signs kept pointing to MicroPort Scientific Corp., which had no real experience in orthopedics sales. “Several bankers told me, ‘Look, you need to meet with these guys,’” he recalls. “‘They are very dedicated to trying to develop a hip and knee strategy within China.’”
Boy, were they right. Three years after Davis had the meeting, he’s the CEO of MicroPort Orthopedics Inc., a new...