In his 2009 best-selling book, “The Innovator’s Prescription,” Harvard University scholar Clayton Christensen explained why many companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Successful companies with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices, he said.
Life sciences companies were among those analyzed in the book — named one of the top 100 leadership and success books to read in a lifetime by Amazon’s editors — using Christensen’s disruptive innovation model and framework.
On Friday, Ann Christensen, president of the Christensen Institute will be a keynote speaker at the next event in the Indiana Life Sciences Collaboration Conference Series.
“Major changes are more likely to come from firms and organizations outside of its current, established players, perhaps at Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung. This conference will look at what’s ‘bubbling’ at these potential new additions to the industry mosaic,” said George Telthorst, director of the Center for the Business of LifeSciences.
The conference, “Potential Disruptive Innovators in Healthcare,” will take place from 9 a.m. until 3:15 p.m. at IUPUI’s Hine Hall, 875 W. North St., in Indianapolis. It is the second event in a year-long series organized by the center in the IU Kelley School of Business.
The Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to improving the world through disruptive innovation. It strives to offer a unique framework for understanding many of society’s most pressing issues around education, health care and economic prosperity. It has offices in Boston and Silicon Valley.
Ann Christensen oversees the institute’s rapidly growing research programs and works to strengthen its strategic partnerships. The daughter of Clayton Christensen, she previously worked at Huntsman Gay Global Capital, a private equity firm focused on middle-market companies, assessing potential investment targets across a variety of industries, and providing strategic and operational advice to portfolio companies.
She also worked at Deloitte Consulting, where she was instrumental in establishing the Growth & Innovation practice and led projects for clients in a number of industries, including pharmaceutical and biotech. She has been a strategic analyst for Elan Pharmaceuticals, an Irish biotechnology company.
The other keynote speaker will be Robert De Vol, director for Premier HealthcareSolutions’ Healthcare Innovators Collaborative, which supports a learning environment for a diverse group of manufacturers.
De Vol has spent more than 30 years in the healthcare manufacturing sector, mostly in a market development role to introduce a number of first-in-class vaccines and medications in the U.S. market. His work helped standardize evidence-based practices for management of large populations.
In 2009, he shifted to the corporate level and re-designed commercial operations in preparation for federal health care reform and served as a national account director from 2010 to 2012. He was responsible for the deployment of a new business model into the healthcare market. After working on a start-up, he joined Premier in 2013 to support its Healthcare Innovators Collaborative.
The conference’s registration fee is $175 and includes lunch. Students at accredited Indiana institutions of higher education may qualify for a discounted rate. Registration and additional information are available on the conference webpage or by contacting Kelli Conder at the Kelley School at 812-856-0915 or kconder@indiana.edu.
The third and final event in the 2017-18 Indiana Life Sciences Collaboration Conference Series will be “Big Data and the Convergence of IT and Biology,” on May 18 at Cook Research Inc. in West Lafayette, Indiana.