Ian Morrison

Ian Morrison has been studying the American healthcare system for more than four decades, and his conclusion is that it is always about to change more dramatically than most of its participants are prepared for. As a former President of the Institute for the Future and one of the world’s most respected healthcare futurists, Morrison has made a career of identifying the fault lines before they shift and helping organizations position themselves for what comes next.

New York Times Bestseller and Seven Languages
Morrison’s 1996 book The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change was a New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller published in seven languages. It introduced a generation of leaders to the idea that organizations need to build their next platform before the current one peaks — a framework that has aged remarkably well. He has since authored Leading Change in Healthcare and Healthcare in the New Millennium, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard Business Review, and Chief Executive.

Scottish Wit, Global Clients
Morrison combines rigorous research with an incisive Scottish wit that keeps demanding material engaging. He has worked with more than 100 Fortune 500 companies, addressed audiences from Fortune 100 boards to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, and received the American Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees Award for more than 20 years of service to the field.

Ian Morrison keynotes on the future of healthcare, strategy in rapidly changing industries, long-term forecasting, and the decisions leaders must make today to be positioned well in the decade ahead.

The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change

The thesis of Ian Morrison’s The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change is that most businesses in most industries are going along quite nicely on their first curve (their core business) where they make all their profit and revenue. Then along comes a second curve – a new business or completely new way of doing business – that threatens to replace the first curve. The second curve is driven by the confluence of three powerful driving forces: new technologies, such as the Internet; new consumers, who are smarter, more affluent, more skeptical and more demanding than the previous generation; and new markets, such as China, with its 1.2 billion consumers. The challenge is to gauge how fast the second curve will take over and develop strategy accordingly. All of the current profit is on the First Curve, all of the future growth is on the Second Curve. But there is a natural human tendency to overestimate the impact of phenomena in the short run, and underestimate it in the long run. The key is to understand and manage the velocity of change.

The Future of the Health Care Marketplace: Life in the Gap and Life in the Game

With the historic passage of health care reform legislation, the American healthcare system looks to the future. The full impact of the new legislation will not be felt until 2014 and beyond, but in the meantime, all health care stakeholders must deal with “Life in the Gap” before new provisions are implemented. At the same time, all health care stakeholders must prepare for the new emerging reality of health care reform and try to determine what “Life in the Game” will be like in a reformed system in 2014 and beyond. Organizations and individuals need to be flexible to adjust to additional modifications in the reform agenda, including the push for more widespread reimbursement reform, the growth in transparency and accountability and the relentless quest for value in healthcare. This presentation will focus on the political, economic and strategic context of change in healthcare, describe the possible scenarios we face and examine how the various actors are preparing for the future. It will identify the leadership challenges and opportunities that lie ahead and will provide strategic insights on how organizations and individuals can flourish in the future.