Oct. 12, 2012 - Thinking like a futurist in healthcare with Cecily Sommers

Thank you Life Science Alley and particularly Larry Kuusito for hosting a great program with futurist, strategist, consultant, think tank founder, and author Cecily Sommers.  I was excited to receive a complimentary signed copy of her book hot off the presses, "THINK LIKE A futurist" after attending the event, which I would recommend to all readers who love strategy and how to figure out how to be successful in the future.

Cecily opened with a future scenario where people could "print" out your choice of food for dinner with printers that bring together the right molecules - or you could "print out" a toy or whatever you'd like - with technology that is actually closer to reality than most of us would imagine.  A far cry from the scene in Steve Soderbergh's "King of the Hill" movie where Aaron is so hungry he tries to eat magazine cut-out food, complete with a paper ketchup blob...


To outline the main points of Cecily's book - it begins with two wonderful quotes:

"To my family for teaching me that an interesting life 

is what comes from having an interest in life."

"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. - Chinese proverb.

Thinking like a futurist is partly about seeing coming trends, but it also means transcending trends.  A mental model for making sense of the world.  Ask, "How does this work?"  Know, New, and Do are the three steps of foresight and innovation.


KNOW: THE FOUR FORCES OF CHANGE.  "The future is already here.  It's just not very evenly distributed."  William Gibson, science fiction writer.  Trends are the current expression of adjusting to forces of change.  Cecily's model outlines four forces of change, a scanning tool for trends information, which by studying closely, we can glean important wisdom about the way the future will evolve:

1. Resources - sum of human labor and earthly capitol available.
2. Technology - full range of human capabilies, for better or for worse
3. Demographics - the statistical makeup of the population
4. Governance - who are the tribes and what are the values espoused?  What is society?  What is it good for?

NEW - THE ZONE OF DISCOVERY.  "Imagination is more important that knowledge."  Alberg Einstein. Who are you and Where are you going.  Zone of Discovery / Go from Left (logical/analytical) to Right (association/intuition) to Left Brain to gain new INSIGHTS.  Right brain is an architecture that will lead you into problems to explain with the left. BIG IDEAS have an inherent ARCHITECTURE that may need to be discovered through insight, not analysis. Begin with BEST QUESTIONS, not best practices. "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity."  Carl Gustav Jung.  Innovation comes from seeing what the forces are and what to solve for.

DO - THE 5% RULE.  "Give us the tools, and we will finish the job."  Winston Churchill.

Regularly challenge and update our mental models of the world.  Spend 5% of your time thinking about the future to "make sure your busy-ness is related to creating a specific, strategic future that has been directed by Best Questions, articulated through left brain-right brain-left brain discoveries, and anchored in a Maximum Value Scenario."

So what did we learn and discover with respect to healthcare and medical devices?  Well, clearly, the forces of change are at work:

• Resources becoming more & more CONSTRAINED with reimbursement scenarios shifting  
• Technology increasing - and the TYPE of technology changing and healthcare enters the digital age (far behind the rest of the world!)
• Demographics - western populations AGING and developing nations EXPLODING with new middle classes demanding a higher quality of life
• Governance - this is the trickiest one for me to understand, but basically, the U.S. has been seeking the appropriate governmental role in healthcare.  It IS and it ISN'T a MORAL RIGHT; how should governmental policy be positioned for equity when it comes to services that enable life itself, in a resource-constrained world?  My sense is that the ACA seeks to provide the basis for MARKET SOLUTIONS in the long run, though people don't see it that way at present; regulating insurance provider rules and enabling exchanges to offer opportunities for people to all be insured is a mechanism such that we WILL be insured, which is the first step towards solving the problem.

The 3 interlocking systems of world, organization, and human behavior (how we're wired) are evolving in healthcare to try to produce different OUTCOMES.  No longer fee-for-service healthcare fixes, but a new organization that seeks to PREVENT illness and MINIMIZE fixes required.  The system must evolve slowly through ACO's and cost containment and rules of change, or the massive shift would break it open like an earthquake in the middle of the desert.

Personally, I see the transcendent trends which I believe describe the change in healthcare are CONSUMERISM and INDUSTRIALIZATION.  As the four forces come together, people expect more and are expected more from as CONSUMERS of healthcare, requiring much higher levels of customization and MUCH better service.  The system, in order to produce healthcare services in an efficient, market-driven way MUST also "industrialize" through a series of organizational seeking optimization at various steps in the healthcare revolution evolution, to offer volume, cost, and quality.  

It's the end of the "consumer protection" era in healthcare where the FDA and government try to REGULATE in quality, in my view; now, consumers / patients, you are on your own!  And we'll likely be all the better for it.  How about a scenario where we choose our life expectancy up front, and then the rules of life for our target life expectancy would follow? (i.e. you can/can't smoke, must exercise, skydiving, diet....)

MORE ON THESE THOUGHTS to come!