Can Big Still Be Beautiful?

In an Era when “Conglomerate” has become a dirty word, Johnson & Johnson is making the case that heft and breadth can be virtues. Here’s how a 130-year-old heavyweight is learning to defy gravity.

- Erika Fry

The lobby of the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, New Jersey, had been transformed into a bazaar of medical-supply exotica. One booth showcased a large machine that sterilised surgical instruments in 24 minutes, a fraction of the normal time. Nearby was a slick little mealtime insulin dispenser and, not far away, an acne-treating light therapy mask that looked like a prop from the slasher flick Friday the 13th. But it was the manikin—or make that the ripped-open thoracic cavity of a manikin—that had the crowd most enthralled. One onlooker grabbed a surgical instrument, a cross between a laser gun and a cattle prod, and manoeuvred it deep into the innards of the dummy. When he was done he collected a sticker that he stuck with gleeful satisfaction on a bingo card.

Wall Street analysts get excited by the oddest things. Alex Gorsky was also keyed up, though seemingly not about the bingo cards. For the 56-year-old CEO of Johnson & Johnson, this drizzly morning in May—Analyst Day—offered a chance to put some show behind a tell he had been making for the previous four years, or since he had assumed the reins of the health care giant, which earned revenues of $70 billion (Rs 4.4 lakh crore) in 2015. The message: J&J isn’t just big, it’s broad—for good reason.

With 250 operating companies in virtually every country, J&J has under its 130-year old banner the world’s largest medical device business, an even bigger pharmaceutical business, and a consumer products division with a dozen mega brands, from Neutrogena to Tylenol. It makes everything from Band- Aids to Rogaine to contact lenses to tuberculosis medicines.