Swiss implant to North America in 1985, there became an increased awareness, and implants became more acceptable. The oral surgeon with whom I worked, Dr Norman J. Shepherd, was a Professor of Oral Surgery at Tufts University in Boston. In those days, Tufts Uni- versity used a German implant, which was Axel Kirsch’s IMZ implant. Thus, we began using it, and before long, we were the largest user of the IMZ implant in the United States. As a result, we placed some 2,500 implants in our little practice between the late 1980s and 1992. In 1992, I started to question the efficacy of screws, “I have only had two intentions throughout my entire professional career: to treat my patients and to support my family.” IME abutments, and all of their intra-mobile elements. Dealing with loose and broken screws and IMEs was madness. If you have one or two patients with a bro- ken screw, you simply change the screw. That’s not a big deal. When you have 2,500 of these cases, how- ever, you realise that screws are inefficient and foolish. Screws were always a frustrating problem. It became such an issue that a patient once said to Dr Shepherd, “Hey, Shep, I got this figured out: you come in here and drop a few holes in the bone and then you leave Morgan with a broom for the next six months cleaning up after you.” That was not far from the truth. The problems with screws just didn’t go away. Dr Shepherd went back to Tufts and told Dr Robert Chapman, who was Profes- sor and Chair of the Department of Prosthodontics and Operative Dentistry, that I wanted to quit doing implants. He was concerned since he was personally doing very well placing our implants. Fortunately, Dr Chapman introduced us to the then Stryker implant, which had been developed by Thomas Driskell. Initially, I did not understand how an implant could function without a screw, but after only a couple of cases, I was amazed by its simplicity and ease of use. However, it took a few years before I truly realised and appreciated the many financial benefits and unmatched clinical capabilities it provided for me and, more impor- tantly, for my patients. The history of this implant design is quite interesting: Stryker had seen the sales of its drill units increasing and wondered why. When they learned that implants were becoming popular, they charged their engineers to iden- interview | tify the best-engineered implant. Curiously, the engineers from both Stryker and another orthopaedic company, Zimmer, both identified Driskell’s implant as having the best design. Although Driskell initially resisted the sale of his implant to Stryker, his financial backers prevailed, and Stryker purchased the Driskell implant. Unfortunately, Stryker did not realise that, unlike the products they sold to purchasing agents at hospitals, implants entailed sell- ing to thousands of individual dentists, who run small businesses. They initially thought it would be like their other products: the company would approach a surgeon, who would choose the device and then the company would discuss the terms with the hospital’s purchas- ing agent. Since dental implants did not fit into Stryker’s marketing model of going to purchasing agents, they decided to sell their best-engineered implant. One night prior to any public announcement that Stryker had decided to sell their implant, we had dinner with Stryker’s product manager in Cambridge, Massachu- setts. Afterwards, I said to Dr Shepherd that some- thing has to be wrong, because the product manager was not forthright, as we thought he should have been. The next morning, I told a patient, who was the CEO of a large public company, about our meeting the night before and he advised me to call Stryker’s Chairman. I called Stryker and asked for John Brown. He didn’t call back, but Ronald A. Elenbaas, who was President of six of Stryker’s companies at that time, did. He said, “I don’t know how you knew that we had issues with our implant business, since there are only three people in the company that knew of our concerns and, for some reason, you figured it out.” At a subsequent meeting, he suggested that we buy their implant. And that’s exactly what we did. Fools rush in where wise men don’t. At the time, their implant was only sold in the US. Today, Bicon is sold in 92 countries. Our largest market outside the 2 2019 35