Course Requirements

Students prepare a business plan, which uses the framework of this course, for an organization that innovates health care delivery, technology, insurance, and consumer- facing options.

Career Focus

For students interested in careers in creating, managing, consulting, and investing in entrepreneurial health care firms.

Educational Objectives

Innovating in Health Care (IHC) enables students to create successful entrepreneurial health care ventures that respond to the massive opportunities created by the escalating cost and uneven quality and access of health care systems globally.

Innovating in Health Care (IHC) enables students to:

• Identify the one primary purpose of the innovation – technology-commercializing, consumer-facing, or cost-controlling.
• Learn the differing organizational, financing, accountability, technology, and consumer characteristics of virtually every major kind of health care organization.
• Understand how to align the innovation with the Six Factors that critically influence this kind of innovation – structure (the status quo), financing (who pays for what and why), technology, consumers, accountability, and public policy.
• Create business models that respond appropriately to any Six Factors misalignments and that feature the strategy, financing, management, and organizational structure appropriate for that kind of innovation.
• Learn the key factors in the four stages of growth of innovative health care ventures: evaluation of initial idea; starting up; scaling up; and exiting.

The field-based cases in Innovating in Health Care cover every part of the health care sector, including bricks and mortar primary care centers, insurance, bricks and mortar and virtual health care services, AI, digital health, medical devices, biopharma, diagnostics, payment and delivery intermediaries, telemedicine, DTC and PBM pharmaceutical delivery, and SaMD. The course has a global focus with case studies set in Africa, Germany, India, and the U.S. Its cases discuss startups, firms that are scaling up, established firms that are recreating themselves, and firms that are contemplating exits.

The CEO of the firm described in the case study typically attends the session.

Content and Organization

The course is organized into four modules, taught through field-based cases and summary notes by Prof. Herzlinger.

• In the first module, Innovating in Health Care, discusses the opportunities and risks for health care innovations and introduces students to the analytic framework of the Six Factors that critically shape innovative health care ventures and their impact on business models for three different kinds of health care innovations: consumer-focused, technology-commercializing, and cost controllers. Students present their ideas for innovative health care business models for feedback from their classmates.
• The second module discusses case studies of health care startups. A lecture on payment elucidates the process of coverage, coding, and payment in the U.S. and the varieties of cost effectiveness analyses used in many other developed countries.
• The third module contains cases of innovative healthcare firms that are scaling up in medical technology, health insurance and delivery, digital health, and associated intermediaries.
• The fourth module contains cases of firms contemplating various forms of exit. Students present their business plans for feedback.

Prof. Herzlinger has founded a number of successful, entrepreneurial health care firms that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives; served on the Boards of directors of many large, public health care firms; written a number of best-selling books on health care entrepreneurialism and the health care plan of a U.S. presidential candidate; and often testified in the U.S. Congress.

Business Plan Requirements

Students prepare a business plan, which employs the IHC Framework, to create an entrepreneurial opportunity in health care.

Some ideas for projects are posted on the course platform, but you can devise your own project, as well, after Prof. Herzlinger approves it. Students frequently form teams with fellow MBAs and cross registrants, some of which remain as ongoing businesses (for example, the Marvin case study).

You will prepare a 5-minute presentation of your business plan idea for a health care innovation, its alignment with the Six Factors, and the resulting business model. I will randomly select people to present this in class. Those selected will email your presentation materials the day before your presentation.

Your business plan should cover the following topics:

• The type of opportunity
• Six factors alignment
• The business model
• Next steps

Grading

Students are reminded of the Attendance Policy.

Class participation will account for a significant percentage of the grade, and the business plan will account for the remainder.

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