The Innovator’s Prescription by Clay Christensen, an early review of this book

Why am I raving (not too much I hope) about the book, The Innovator’s Prescription by Clay Christensen and team?

Well two-fold, first I am a firm believer in innovation and entrepreneurial practices, so I researched deep when I did my subject matter for my MBA studies, That’s when I discovered the book by none other than by Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen best-selling book, The Innovator’s Dilemma  I researched well into this book then. Second, I knew about his new book, The Innovator’s Prescription, when I was getting used to the corporate world at Pantai Holdings, and its direct connections with Parkway Health, Singapore,that one day in the course of duty I read the MoH Singapore website which carried a press coverage of the Health Minister there and his references to this book.

I then quickly owned a copy, had read through many of its 426 pages, you need to be informed when you are talking to corporate bosses you know, and since then I shelved it for some time now, and now that I am busy with this blog and with time on my side lately, I am thumbing through it again.

So, what is so revolutionary in these 426 pages? what is so special about this book you may ask? “do I need to read the book too?”, you may ask yourself.

One thing is for sure, “the authors present many insightful ways to analyze and understand the dysfunction of the U.S. health care system,”, that is according to the influential Health Care Blog.

By reading this book, you can expect to know the following :

• the two major “enablers of disruptive opportunities” in health care :
  • technologies that will enable less skilled individuals to do tasks that previously required specialized expertise (like medical assistants taking on a bigger role), and
  • business models allowing care to move from centralized locations (hospitals and doctors offices) to distributed environments (home, work and community)
• explaining the critical role of standardized personal electronic health records
• introducing a new terminology that differentiates between intuitive medicine, empirical medicine, and precision medicine
• describing the three key elements for innovation: the technological enabler, business model innovation, and something called a “value network”
• explaining in detail the need for systemic integration in health care
• describing the type of medical practice required to diagnose and treat a range of chronic diseases

I am convinced that this book does a great job explaining what EXACTLY is wrong with the US healthcare system – in a pretty readable fashion, that is if you’re used to slogging through descriptive non-fiction. It also apparently offers very valuable insights about how to fix their system.

Nonetheless, I’m excited to start slogging through The Innovator’s Prescription once again, and tell you more after I am finished.

Meanwhile, you can browse a copy of the introductory chapter of the book here. It’s a great overview.

By Clayton Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman, M.D. Hwang
ISBN : 0071592083 / 9780071592086
Publisher : McGraw-Hill