Article Review
MANAGED CARE January 2009 ©MediMedia USA
Cover Story
Disruptive Innovations That Will Change Your Life in Health Care
The innovations that we list here are not unfamiliar, but don’t underestimate them. As they mature, they will have strong effects.
By Maureen Glabman
Contributing Editor
In 1995, Harvard business school professors Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower put “disruptive technologies” in the business lexicon by introducing the term in a seminal article in the school’s journal.
The phrase described what happened in 1960, for example, when an unknown company, Sony, began selling an affordable transistor television that eventually replaced RCA’s vacuum tube.
Soon it became apparent the transistor alone —the disruptive technology —did not tell the whole story. To achieve success, the technology had to be coupled with a whiz-bang business plan, giving birth to the encompassing term “disruptive innovations.” Sony, with its coveted transistor TV that many people could afford, and a plan to sell its TVs through Kmart, then a new retail chain, put both the more expensive RCA vacuum tube TVs, as well as the many mom-and-pop appliance stores that refused to sell
Sony sets, essentially out of business.
Christensen has since written or co-written seven books on disruptive innovations, using the term to suggest how to mend problems in the worlds of business and education. They illustrate how upstarts using new technology can change an industry to make our lives better.
But for the 56-year-old Salt Lake City-born economist, a Rhodes Scholar who served as a Mormon missionary, speaks fluent Korean, and became a Harvard PhD student at 40 with five children, his toughest challenge was to apply successful business concepts to solve the problem of vexing runaway health costs.
Better and cheaper
He teamed up with two prominent physicians and spent 10 years dissecting and pondering the issue.
The result is The Innovator’s Prescription
Cover Story
Disruptive Innovations That Will Change Your Life in Health Care
The innovations that we list here are not unfamiliar, but don’t underestimate them. As they mature, they will have strong effects.
By Maureen Glabman
Contributing Editor
In 1995, Harvard business school professors Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower put “disruptive technologies” in the business lexicon by introducing the term in a seminal article in the school’s journal.
The phrase described what happened in 1960, for example, when an unknown company, Sony, began selling an affordable transistor television that eventually replaced RCA’s vacuum tube.
Soon it became apparent the transistor alone —the disruptive technology —did not tell the whole story. To achieve success, the technology had to be coupled with a whiz-bang business plan, giving birth to the encompassing term “disruptive innovations.” Sony, with its coveted transistor TV that many people could afford, and a plan to sell its TVs through Kmart, then a new retail chain, put both the more expensive RCA vacuum tube TVs, as well as the many mom-and-pop appliance stores that refused to sell
Sony sets, essentially out of business.
Christensen has since written or co-written seven books on disruptive innovations, using the term to suggest how to mend problems in the worlds of business and education. They illustrate how upstarts using new technology can change an industry to make our lives better.
But for the 56-year-old Salt Lake City-born economist, a Rhodes Scholar who served as a Mormon missionary, speaks fluent Korean, and became a Harvard PhD student at 40 with five children, his toughest challenge was to apply successful business concepts to solve the problem of vexing runaway health costs.
Better and cheaper
He teamed up with two prominent physicians and spent 10 years dissecting and pondering the issue.
The result is The Innovator’s Prescription