Jim Corbett Wants to Keep You Out of Surgery

Ev3 is different than other medical device companies, Jim Corbett will tell you. Corbett is the Plymouth-based company’s CEO and president, and before he took that job in 2004, he held other posts at ev3 and at device companies including the former Twin Cities–based Scimed Life Systems. (He ran the international division under Scimed cofounder and CEO Dale Spencer, who started ev3 six years ago.) So Corbett knows whereof he speaks in comparing ev3 with other device makers.

What does he mean by different? A typical medical device company starts with this proposition, Corbett says: “Let’s create this device, and then we can go sell it.” Spencer turned that on its head. The pitch he made to Corbett and veterans of other local med-tech firms: “Why don’t we go and create an endovascular company?” one that would specialize in devices used to clear and repair blood vessels. Missing was the important detail of exactly what those devices would be.

It made for some odd conversations, Corbett recalls: “I remember being over there and Dale at the time said—this was before I had committed to join the company; I was doing a project for Warburg Pincus, who was our big investor—he said, ‘Will you take a few months and go over and set up our European operation for us?’ I said ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, set up everything: distribution center, offices, hiring people.’ I said, ‘You know we don’t have any products, right?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’”

"If you look at the two areas we finally settled on, peripheral vascular disease and neurovascular disease, they were so under-innovated, it wasn't like you had to change the world."

The whole situation was “on the edge of ludicrous,” Corbett says, laughing about his recruiting adventures in Europe. “People look at you and you say, ‘Now, here’s the thing: We’re going to create this company, it’s going to do this thing, and here’s how we’re going to go about it, and we need really great people. And the products? Well they’re going to look something like this. But do we have any? No, not right now. But we will. And what I want you to do is quit your really good job and take this risky one, and everything will be fine.’’

He must be very persuasive. Ev3 started out with a sales force of 25 people in Europe. (The total sales force has since grown to approximately 200 people, about 75 of those in Europe and 80 in the United States.) In short order, they’ve been given a portfolio of more than 100 products to sell: devices that remove blood clots, clear blockages, repair weakened vessel walls, or prop arteries open, and others that help guide those therapeutic tools to where they’re needed—catheters and guidewires. Year-end results for 2005 are yet to be announced as this story goes to press, but in January, the company reported net sales for the year of $133.7 million.