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Dr. Michael Meneghini
Everything amazing was once thought impossible.
They told me building a vertically integrated,
physician-owned orthopedic practice was impossible.
They were right. It had never been done at scale.
But “never been done” is not the same as impossible.
Most people confuse the two.
When we built the Indiana Orthopedic Institute,
the critics were loud. The system was built against it.
The incentives were misaligned.
The conventional wisdom said:
work for a hospital, collect your paycheck,
and stop asking difficult questions.
I had been an engineer before I was a surgeon.
Engineers don’t accept “it can’t be done.”
They ask why not, and then they get to work.
So we built it anyway. A surgeon-led,
patient-centered ASC model that put clinical
decisions back in physician hands, stripped
out administrative bloat, and proved the
economics could work.
Not because someone handed us a roadmap.
Because we refused to believe the map ended
where everyone else stopped drawing.
Here’s what I’ve learned about doing the impossible:
The people who say it can’t be done are usually
protecting something. Their comfort.
Their position. Their assumption that the
current system is the best we can do.
Vision is not arrogance. Believing in something
no one else can see yet is not delusion.
It’s the prerequisite for every
breakthrough in history.
The resistance is a signal, not a verdict.
When the pushback gets loudest, you
are usually closest to something real.
You don’t need everyone to believe in you.
You need one or two people who refuse to
let you quit, and the internal conviction to
keep going when even they have doubts.
The impossible has a pattern. Every great
institution, every disruptive model, every
surgical innovation that is now standard of care…
was once called reckless.
Harvard research found that successful entrepreneurs
had a 34% chance of succeeding in their next
venture, compared to just 22% for first-timers.
Experience and conviction compound.
Doubt does not.
Everything amazing was once thought impossible.
The question is whether you are willing to look
foolish long enough to prove them wrong.
What is the “impossible” thing you’ve
been told to stop chasing?
PS. I write a publication about disrupting
the norm in medical research, orthopedic
surgery and entrepreneurship.
Join me here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gTFaKaTt
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📽️ Video Credit: South China Morning Post
