How Do We Design Truly Disruptive Innovations?

What will be the next disruptive innovations in health care?  This is a question I find fascinating to contemplate. Harvard professor Clayton Christensen broke new ground when he defined this concept, and in a recent (December, 2006) Harvard Business Review article, he refined it to apply to the social and health care sectors.

What intrigues me about disruptive innovations is not the impact they have on markets, profits or industries, but how they literally can transform the lives of ordinary people. A truly disruptive innovation makes it possible for ordinary people to have access to something they want, more easily, inexpensively and without having to rely on experts to the extent they did previously.

As a doctor, I witnessed first-hand how the home glucose monitor changed the lives of tens of thousands of diabetics. It wasn’t that long ago when patients had to get dressed and drive to a hospital, where a health care professional would draw their blood, process it and them give them the result hours later. Today, these same people can get a reading of their own blood glucose in seconds, without having to leave home or even change out of their pj’s.  If you’re a diabetic and are juggling family, school or job demands, that convenience factor can make a huge difference.  That said, if you don’t care about getting your blood glucose measured without muss or fuss, then the home glucose monitor won’t be a disruptive innovation. In other words, innovators have to understand what people really want – what will really make a difference to them as they manage their health in the context of their everyday lives – in order to create disruptive innovations.

So I ask myself (and you)—when it comes to health, or innovations related to health, what do people want?

In her January 1st posting, Susan Promislo wrote about the potential for the next generation of video and computer games to teach kids how to learn and enjoy lifelong sports like golf and tennis, and increase their physical activity without leaving home.  Such games fit in to the flow of many children’s lives; they represent an activity kids like to do, and they and their peers typically regard games as “cool.”  Chances are it never registers that video games could be good for them (because if we’ve come to expect anything from decades of tobacco prevention research, it’s that kids get turned off, or consciously rebel, once they learn that something is “good for them”).

For kids who live in unsafe neighborhoods and don’t have access to tennis courts, ball fields or coaches, these games have the potential to become a disruptive innovation that puts them on the road to better health. But will they? As an optimist, and the head of the largest philanthropy dedicated to health and health care I want to believe that everyone wants ways to get and stay active, but somehow I don’t think that is enough to make these new games disruptive. As a physician, a parent and a person, I believe these games could be a healthy disruptive innovation if designers can get a really accurate read on what people, especially kids, want from video and computer games and incorporate those desired features when it comes to health.

So what do people want from innovations like games related to health? Thoughts?

Comments

[Ben Sawyer]

Many thoughts come to mind but to start I would say a couple things that come from technology sectors. First as we see personified by Steve Jobs, Apple's innovations and master game designer Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo the best innovations often come from those who personally take into account what they observe and think people may want first. This often flies in the face of what we think user-centric design is or what good research is but truthfully some of our really best disruptive successes in technology are born from ultra-talented designers who are given the ability to ignore the market as it exists now or even as CW forsees the market's near term future.

I'm also reminded by a recent quote from 30 Rock the TV show on NBC where Alec Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy says “Research doesn’t lie,” (regarding focus groups) “It lets us know what we’re thinking.”

You can't have disruption when too many people are already thinking about it. There was also a recent article in some magazine I read that further focused on the fact that when it comes to technology that most common consumers have no idea what they really want or need.

When the VCR first came out only 6% of people surveyed said they would ever need one.

There are many other things to talk about regarding this idea but to start I thought I'd simply skew us toward seeing disruption as not the wisdom of crowds but of very unique individuals who work away from the crowd...

[Peter J Dunbar]

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey comments remind me of the old saw a psycholgist friend to mine used to say.

"I give 'em what they want and slip 'em what they need".

Might I suggest the Wii does just that.

As the CoPI of a research project I fet it was my duty to fully understand the technology we are using in our study. I therefore took the Wii home for a few days. Now I practise with the training and games every day. Having read this blog (at Steve Downs suggestion) and learned about the (now famous http://wiinintendo.net/2007/01/15/wii-sports-experiment-results/
) wii sports experiment I am loath to return it to our research investigator.

As a 52yo male physician (BMI 29) I think i can justify my need for a Wii need on grounds of health and welfare.
Having tried personal trainers and gym subscriptions neither seem to be sufficiently motivational, but I really think I could play with video games in my living room for quite a while.

Best of all I am not likely to get bored, because, there will be an endless selection of new games (Red Steel anyone?); the device will eventually allow on-line gaming and of course Nintendo will not be able to completely patent protect their sensor technology so we should see imitators (XBox 360?) trying to eat Nintendos market share.

Fully interactive and fun video games may be disruptive in a good way.

[Gail Casper]

We were delighted to see Risa’s post on disruptive innovations as well as this question posed so boldly. At Project HealthDesign, we believe that they want resources that enable them to manage their health information and their health – they want tools that will help them to achieve better health care and better health. The Project HealthDesign staff and grantees have just completed the first design workshop under the more-than-able leadership of the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health. A good bit of time was devoted to discussion of the question – just what do the intended PHR users want? Clinicians, design experts and technicians shared the same space to make decisions about ways to elicit needs, wants and preferences of the intended users and about how to include the users in throughout the design process. Soon you will be seeing some results and resources generated from those discussions on the Project HealthDesign website (www.projecthealthdesign.org). We hope that you “stay tuned”!