Smith & Nephew plc
At Smith+Nephew, we design and make technology that takes the limits off living, and we help healthcare professionals achieve the same goal. Together we improve life, while also improving performance. Smith+Nephew exists to restore people’s bodies and their self-belief. A successful business needs to have a purpose-driven culture. Our culture pillars guide our behaviours and build a winning spirit. Today, more than 450,000 units have been sold all over the world.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations and our distributors
- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Occupational Health
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
Our culture pillars
Our culture pillars
A successful business needs to have a purpose-driven culture. Our culture pillars guide our behaviours and build a winning spirit.
Care
A culture of empathy and understanding for each other, our customers and patients.
Collaboration
A culture of teamwork based on mutual trust and respect.
Courage
A culture of continuous learning, innovation and accountability.
Our strategic imperatives
Five new strategic imperatives form our value creation plan for the medium term.
- Achieve the full potential of our portfolio
- Transform the business through enabling technologies
- Expand in high-growth segments
- Strengthen talent and capabilities
- Become the best owner
Our global franchise areas Orthopaedics
Orthopaedics includes an innovative range of Hip and Knee Implants used to replace diseased, damaged or worn joints, robotics-assisted enabling technologies that empower surgeons, and Trauma products used to stabilise severe fractures and correct bone deformities.
Sports Medicine & ENT
Our Sports Medicine and Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) businesses offer advanced products and instruments used to repair or remove soft tissue. They operate in growing markets where unmet clinical needs provide opportunities for procedural and technological innovation.
Advanced Wound Management
Our Advanced Wound Management portfolio provides a comprehensive set of products to meet broad and complex clinical needs, to help healthcare professionals get CLOSER TO ZERO human and economic consequences of wounds.
Our History
Smith+Nephew has a history dating back 160 years to the family enterprise of Thomas James Smith who opened a small pharmacy in Hull, England in 1856. On his death in 1896, his nephew Horatio Nelson Smith took over the management of the business.
A few days after the declaration of World War 1 in 1914, Horatio Nelson Smith (the nephew of the company founder T. J Smith) met with an envoy of the French President in London. The company was awarded a contract to supply £350,000 of surgical and field dressings, to be delivered in five months.
By the late 1990s, Smith+Nephew had expanded into being a diverse healthcare conglomerate with operations across the globe, including various medical devices, personal care products and traditional and pioneering woundcare treatments.
In 1998, Smith+Nephew announced a major restructuring to focus management attention and investment on three business units — wound management, endoscopy and orthopaedics — which offered high growth and margin opportunities.
Smith+Nephew was incorporated and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1937 and in 1999 the Group was also listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
In 2001, Smith+Nephew became a constituent member of the FTSE-100 index in the UK. This means that Smith+Nephew is included in the top 100 companies traded on the London Stock Exchange measured in terms of market capitalisation.
Today, Smith+Nephew is a public limited company incorporated and headquartered in the UK and doing business in many countries around the world.
Check out some more dates that has shaped our history of pioneering medical technology:
Vision and Values
Our purpose
Physical health is never just about our body. It’s our mind, feelings and ambitions. When something holds it back, it’s our whole life on hold.
We’re here to change that, to use technology to take the limits off living, and help other medical professionals do the same.
So that farmworkers, rugby players, grandmas and their grandkids stare down fear, see that anything’s possible, then go on stronger. Inspired by a simple promise. Two words that bring together all we do…
Life Unlimited.
Our culture pillars
A successful business needs to have a purpose-driven culture.
Care
A culture of empathy and understanding for each other, our customers and patients
- We step into our customers’ shoes, anticipate their needs and deliver the highest levels of innovation and service
- We strive to have the best understanding of the patients whom we ultimately serve, and we develop our products with them in mind
- Our passion for what we do drives us to continuously improve and expand the positive impact that we have on the world.
Collaboration
A culture of teamwork, based on mutual trust and respect.
- We are stronger, and achieve more, as a team. By joining forces we are both unstoppable and efficient
- Through transparent and respectful communication, we are motivated by a shared purpose and understand the impact of our individual contributions on our collective goals
- By encouraging different perspectives and leveraging our global experiences, we achieve the best outcomes.
Courage
A culture of continuous learning, innovation and accountability
- By staying curious, thinking big and having the humility to challenge our conventional ways of thinking, we push the boundaries of our industry
- Fostering an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude we look for solutions and achieve them through talent and force of will
- With a growth mindset, we have the capability and confidence to win, and we do so with integrity and the highest ethical standards.