Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Political Economy, World, European, Globalization, Social Science, History & Theory, Public Policy, Economic Policy
ISBN: 9781137032232
Google: QDfpugAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Published: 2012-09-12T15:00:00+00:00

If Britain is to invent the companies of the future, we will need to be prepared to take more risks. Britain can learn from the entrepreneurial culture of Israel and Silicon Valley’s ability to embrace failure.

Giffords

On 8 January 2011, US Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head from point-blank range by gunman Jared Lee Loughner, in the car park of a Tucson supermarket. Eighteen others were also shot, six of whom died, in an act of appalling violence. Astonishingly, Giffords survived her wounds, in part due to the heroic actions of her staffer Daniel Hernández Jr and emergency services personnel. But there was also another factor that may well have provided medical responders with the crucial edge, one that originated 7,500 miles away in Lod, Israel.

Bernard Bar-Natan was serving as a military medic, in 1980s Israel.

He discovered in the course of his training that the bandages issued to combat haemorrhaging were based on a 1942 design. He was appalled to think that technology in this most vital area did not seem to have advanced for 40 years.

Weapons had advanced since World War II, medicine had advanced since the 1930s; it seemed to me that the personal field dressing and the treatment for haemorrhage control should also advance.1

Bar-Natan came up with a bandage with an inbuilt bar to apply direct pressure – the key to staunching blood flow from a wound. His idea had two main goals: stopping the bleeding without inadvertently effecting a tourniquet, and making a bandage that could be used on all parts of the body – cutting down the amount of equipment needed to be carried.

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I ‘worked’ on the ideas on and off for a couple of years, sometimes not touching it for months, but it wouldn’t leave me. I made a few rough prototypes by myself and with the assistance of a local tailor for the sewing part. I began to show the concept to other medics in my unit, and to doctors in the military; no-one said stop.2

Bar-Natan persevered, and took advantage of a technology incubator programme. Once he had successfully been granted a patent, he managed to obtain further investment, established First Care Products and then began factory production of his ‘Emergency Bandage’. He did not successfully make a sale until 19983 when Belgian and French forces used his bandage in Bosnia.

I established the company in 1995, our first sales were to French and Belgian NATO forces in Bosnia in 1998. We gave away many bandages to the USA, and European countries, Israel for their evaluation and to create the awareness; small quantities were sold. We started with the special forces and medical corps. When the US went to Afghanistan and Iraq the first times, the bandage went with them in small quantities, but enough to make an impression. In November 2003 they were designated ‘Standard’ by the US

Army, and larger size orders began at the end of 2004, in 2006 for the IDF, and September 2007 for the British Army.4

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