eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

The objective of the thesis is to examine how disruptive front end innovations can steer the formulation of an early-stage vision for future healthcare. The thesis seeks to clarify why public healthcare resources need to be reorganized by discussing the challenges of current circumstances. The front end innovation process is assessed as an approach for healthcare reinvention. The goal of the empirical research is to discover future healthcare development ideas from expert interviews and to organize them according to the disruptive innovation elements.

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY:

The theoretical foundation of the thesis is largely based on disruptive innovation framework by Christensen et al. (2009) extended with the perspectives of Lagrew and Jenkins (2014a), and the New Concept Development Model by Koen et. al (2001). The literature review focuses on disruptive and front end innovation and the healthcare development directions. The empirical part of the thesis is conducted in collaboration with the City of Helsinki. As established organizations rarely are able to generate revolutionary ideas that disrupt their existing business logic (Johnson et al., 2008), the disruptive innovation concepts are discussed in interviews with nine specialists outside the organization representing various industries. Open and in vivo coding strategies are used to itemize and organize the interview data with a qualitative analysis software.

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS:

The Finnish healthcare is facing severe challenges that are forcing the public health organizations to reinvent themselves. The thesis states that public healthcare should pursue disruptive innovations in order to undergo this transformation successfully. Over 400 distinct codes were tagged to the nine expert interviews, and ideas related to e.g. disruptive technologies (150 codes), low-cost innovative business models (187), and value networks (60) were identified. Six high-level concepts summarize the most discussed themes: Self-service healthcare, Proactive healthcare, Customization of customer journeys, From integrated data to intelligent applications, Harmonization of back-office, and Public healthcare as an economy booster.