Freakin Robots or Not

A hospital bought a $1.5 million robot to close a recruiting deal.

No ROI analysis. No platform comparison. No volume modeling. A surgeon they wanted asked about their robotics footprint during his site visit. There was a pause. Someone said "we're exploring options." And that was the decision.

What happened next looked like textbook execution. The new surgeon was charismatic and generous. He pulled colleagues into cases, walked them through the console, made early wins visible. Within months, all the surgeons were using the robot. Volumes followed. Patients started asking for it. Marketing ran with it.

From the outside, it looked like design.

From the inside, it felt like blind luck that hadn't yet been audited. Nobody had ever gone back to trace the actual decision. Who said yes, on what day, with what information, against what alternatives. Nobody had agreed on how to define success before they started measuring it.

The CEO could mention "our robotics program" at board meetings and community events. The dashboards showed more cases. The board nodded approvingly and moved on.

Maybe the robot was the right call. Maybe the market was already moving that way and the timing happened to work.

What I know for certain: you can't replicate luck. You can replicate a process.

What does your technology evaluation process actually look like before the ribbon-cutting?