After all, our tradition is built on our ability to leverage basic technology platforms to solve medical problems across all of our customer specialties. As a small company, this sharing came naturally as we worked together every day. As a larger company, collaboration still comes easily, but we actively support cross-pollination to maximize the value our technology brings to our markets worldwide. Product development teams around the world draw on these capabilities to address the needs of our global customers. For example, a catheter shaft developed in Minneapolis for a cardiology product might be used to provide the right torque for a urology product being designed to meet the specific needs of our Japanese customers.
Global coordination is the key.
BSC's technology organization has purposefully been built to maximize our ability to realize worldwide, cross-divisional leverage. In addition, our Corporate Technologies group maintains fundamental expertise in areas such as advanced materials, bioactive coatings, and extrusion process development which have applications to all divisions. We have established worldwide virtual teams in key technology areas such as rapid prototyping and metals technology which pull the right people together to assemble and quickly communicate technological advances. Finally, we access external sources of leverageable technology through BSC's New Business Development department. We are striving to create a seamless, global technical community whose knowledge and experience can be fully leveraged in response to our customer needs.