The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) was founded in 1933 as the preeminent provider of musculoskeletal education to orthopaedic surgeons and others in the world. Its continuing medical education activities include a world-renowned Annual Meeting, multiple continuing medical education (CME) courses held around the country and at the Orthopaedic Learning Center (OLC), and various medical and scientific publications and electronic media materials.
Delta Think partnered with AAOS on a number of projects over the last several years focused on strategic development. In a large-scale effort to understand needs and spur new product development based on the real challenges of their community, AAOS brought in Delta Think to design and execute an ethnographic research project. The project was designed to assess the behaviors, challenges, and gaps in the orthopaedic market generally and within the user experience of the AAOS members specifically. Delta Think worked with the team to uncover underlying professional challenges faced by the community through on-site, in context observation of the day-to-day use of professional products and content by members and prospective members. Armed with the results of this intensive market research project, we then worked with the team over numerous sessions to brainstorm, diagram, visualize, and document a centralized strategy that would confirm their position as the primary resource in orthopaedists.
Recently, with education front and center, AAOS reached out to Delta Think again to help them envision and deliver a “go-to-market” strategy for a set of new educational materials delivered via their state-of-the-art technology platform. The question they had was “how can we ensure the product will be successfully received in the marketplace?” Delta Think worked with the team to understand and the challenges involved in uptake, adoption, and implementation and address them in a strategic manner. In order to do this, Delta Think employed various market research methods, including a landscape assessment of competing programs, a detailed survey, in-depth interviews, and customer profiling, and brought all these findings together to help AAOS build a comprehensive strategy based on deep customer insight.
“The AAOS routinely turns to the professionals at Delta Think when we need deep-insights into our customer needs, to shape and validate our strategic initiatives.” commented Anna Salt Troise, Chief Commercial Officer, American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “Their team approaches each engagement with enthusiasm and a love for data gathering, sharing ah-ha’s in real-time. They help to create an exciting collaboration that reinvigorates staff. As part of our informed decision-making process, Delta Think team members routinely uncover details that would have been missed in surveys alone – we continue to come back to them, year after year.”