It’s no surprise medical-device maker IlluminOss Medical Inc. will be featured in the first of what the Slater Technology Fund hopes will be a series of forums introducing investors to Rhode Island innovators.
The East Providence company recently attracted $28 million from investors after successful trials abroad for a bone-fracture-repair system. That funding is in addition to $22 million in venture capital previously raised by the five-year-old firm that employs 15.
The company, featured in a Page 1 story, is “making it happen” in a state routinely flogged in surveys and mired near the bottom of state rankings for an unfriendly business climate. It’s doing so by spending every available moment focusing on developing its product and finding financial backers, rather than complaining about how hard it is to run a business in the Ocean State. And that alone makes it an example worth featuring in the Slater forum.
While it certainly is true that Rhode Island should do more to ease regulatory and financial burdens on businesses, such issues are rarely what determine how a business fares.
Whether IlluminOss ultimately achieves market success will be determined, as for all businesses, by the quality of its product or service, not the state in which it does business. •
