Matthew Holt

Disruption breaking out over at Scott Shreeve’s place

Clayton Christensen's publisher is pressing me to read The Innovators Prescription and then interview him. Sadly I haven’t had the time to pay the book the attention it deserves. Messrs Kuraitis & Kibbe already did a review on THCB and probably said what I’d say, which was that like several other Harvard Business School profs, they got the problem right but the solution wrong. I’m on record from a couple of years back saying that Christensen’s guns are aimed in the wrong direction.

But to be fair my criticisms are pre-publication. Scott Shreeve has a great interview with Christensen’s co-author Jason Hwang (the late Jerome Grossman is also a co-author). and in this interview several of the incentive issues which concern those of us who understand how innovation gets stopped in health care, are addressed. Well worth reading.

Scott is more of a fan of the possibility of supply-side innovation in the absence of demand than I am, so caveat emptor. I’ll try to read the darn book and get Christensen or Hwang on THCB shortly.

And of course Peter Orszag who seems to be becoming the de facto health care czar policy maker seems very interested in getting CMS to change the way it pays for care. Which might make these “innovations” actually financially viable for those undertaking them.