Three questions in our luggage.
How thin? How precise? And how do you prove it? These questions accompany every enquiry from medical technology that reaches us. In Shanghai we wanted to hear them from the perspective of the people who build products from it.
Fewer stops, longer conversations.
Sebastian arrived with a list of stands. On the second day he put it aside. The halls offered more than we could take in over three days. So he traded completeness for depth: fewer stops, and conversations in which both sides stop presenting and start thinking out loud. We are carrying some of them forward now.
Familiar faces, one recurring sentence.
Sebastian knew a surprising number of the people he spoke to from fairs in the US and in Europe. From them came a similar sentence again and again: anyone who wants to work in this market needs someone on the ground who knows how things actually run there. We are taking that away as an assignment.
What stays with us.
A recalibrated sense of what counts as big, what counts as fast and how far along others already are. A notebook we are now working through. And confirmation that our finest stainless steel wire is in demand where medical technology is made.