In an ideal world a company would fully fund projects large and small, but I think priority will ultimately come down to a risk reward analysis, how much money a company is willing to put into a project versus how much money they expect to make off the project in the long run. In the original post I would assume that the hip and knee department was prioritized because those are more prevalent surgeries compared to the foot and ankle. Now I don’t have any industry experience with devices in a project based work structure, but I would like to add an experience from an undergrad parasitology class. We had a simulation assignment where we acted as the World Health Organization and our task was to cure, contain, treat, or eradicate Malaria in a third world country. There were two different scenarios, one had a budget and the other did not. We could choose to use drugs, pesticides, provide sleep netting, education, water treatment, etc. all of which had varying cost per unit per day. Of course in the scenario with unlimited funds we saw that Malaria was quickly eradicated, but with the other, more real life scenario, there were limitations on what could be done and for how long. Staying on budget while trying to eradicate a deadly disease forced us to choose cheaper options which really only acted as a bandaid to the larger problem. Just as a company will be limited based on the funds they have and the stakeholder’s interest.