CEO Today Europe Awards

www.ceotodaymagazine.com 44 CEO Today Europe Awards 2018 italy LORENZO PRADELLA CEO of GreenBone Ortho srl What led to the foundation of GreenBone Ortho? Is it what you envisioned? Creating a newcompany is challenging, but also very exciting. It is a personal investment in terms of commitment and responsibility. There is a sense of personal satisfaction to be derived from the social responsibility aspects, because GreenBone has the opportunity to benefit many patients with severe diseases and no real hope to lead a normal life again. Quite often, our patients have multiple surgeries, are in a lot of pain, take a long time to recover and, in many cases – there’s a low rate of success and no fully effective bone regeneration. At GreenBone, we have the possibility for the first time to positively impact all these aspects, improving the quality of patients’ life and reducing healthcare and social costs - all at the same time. GreenBone’s team of extraordinarily skilled people is fundamental to achieving such objectives in a timely manner. We wanted to combine a fantastic idea with effective execution of our development plan, suitable to translate our innovative product from bench to markets worldwide. And we’re still going – we have the extraordinary possibility to translate a vision into reality. I believe that it is important to follow a dream, but without losing contact with reality. At the end of the day, innovation only works if it can be translated into a feasible product that offers a benefit to the end users and has the potential to become commercially viable. How has your experience in R&D, Business Development and Venture Capital aided GreenBone in its development? I am a pharmacologist by training. I moved to the world of business in 1999, after 10 years in research and development. I really enjoy combining business and innovation. Translating an innovative concept into a commercially attractive product needs to be conceived and executed in a way that R&D, Business Development and Venture Capital are fruitfully integrated and interconnected at the right time. Every stage of development is different and comes with specific needs in terms of achievements, objectives, people and resources. To me, a global vision, business perspectives and execution are fundamental. They can be effectively achieved through building an enthusiastic team that has the right skills and attitudes to help maximize experience and expectations, including the mentality and skillset to overcome the issues that always arise during developing highly innovative products. What motivates you to achieve the best every day? I am a passionate enthusiast of innovation in any field of applications, not only healthcare. I believe that everyone has to do their best to help improve the world that live in. Inspiration and motivation may originate from religion, love for life and trust in human race. What I am inspired by are the life stories of people that have made or are still trying to make a change in the world. I have been lucky enough to know a number of incredible individuals in management, technical knowledge and spirituality. I enjoy conversations with them, as they inspireme to continue improving my learning curve. I love basketball and admire the players that are the heart of a successful team - not necessarily a top scorer, but the player that is there to motivate the team and hold it together. For a start-up like GreenBone, team motivation is fundamental. What challenges have you run into in Greenbone’s early development? How did you work past them? We made remarkable progress from the very beginning. One of our greatest achievements was to successfully complete the manufacturing scale-up of GreenBone graft production. We wanted to have a simple, robust and reproduciblemanufacturing process, suitable to produce bone graft of any size and shape at competitive costs. Starting from an early stage technology and using innovative chemistry was a nice challenge. We combined great people with expertise in process engineering and chemistry and they did a terrific job. We have now a pilot scaled-up production line suitable to produce GreenBone bone graft of different shapes and sizes. We take rattan wood, shape it accordingly with the bone we want to repair/regenerate and then transform it chemically (from brown to white) into the final product, without loosing the internal 3D porosity of wood (i.e. very similar to bone porosity). I believe this was one of the key aspects that convinced our shareholders to trust and invest in our company. What goals has Greenbone achieved so far? What are its goals moving forward? In addition to the successful scale-up of the manufacturing process, from the beginning of 2015, we have passed two main milestones: • Preclinical development, including design verification and validation in line with EU and US guidelines; • A load bearing large bone loss sheep study (Assaf-Harofeh Medical Center Israel and Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute Italy) showing safety and complete physiological healing and regeneration of the bone defect. Q Q Q Q Q