By their very nature, one award-winning investor event should have little in common with another. What they should be is unique and memorable – and few could be as memorable as the one held by Medtronic, winner of the best investor event gong at the virtual IR Magazine Awards – US 2020.
The firm had been working on a new robot surgery system in a bid to enter a market that Ryan Weispfenning, vice president and head of IR, tells IR Magazine was essentially a monopoly before Medtronic got involved.
Until it was unveiled, he says there had been a lot of stealth and secrecy around the robot, which only added to the anticipation on the Street. As a result, ‘this was probably the most-anticipated event in the medical technology space in 2019,’ he explains.
With all that pressure, what did Weispfenning and his team do? They had the robot perform live surgery on a cadaver.
The complicated nature of the event meant there were only a handful of places in the world it could happen, he explains, so the firm took investors to Hartford, Connecticut, with some viewing the surgery in person (pre Covid-19, of course) while others logged in to a live stream to see the robot in action.
Watch the video below. You can jump to 5.50 to go straight to Weispfenning discussing how the company pulled it off.
Click here to watch all the winners’ videos from the virtual IR Magazine Awards – US 2020
