HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy for Healthcare

by Harvard Business Review, Michael E. Porter, Jim Collins

Prepare for an uncertain future with a solid vision and innovative practices.

Is your healthcare organization spending too much time on strategy--with too little to show for it?

If you read nothing else on strategy, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones for healthcare professionals to help you catalyze your organization’s strategy development and execution.

Leading strategy experts, such as Michael E. Porter, Jim Collins, W. Chan Kim, and Renee Mauborgne, provide the insights and advice you need

Understand how the rules of corporate competition translate to the healthcare sectorCraft a vision for an uncertain futureSegment your market to better serve diverse patient populationsAchieve the best health outcomes--at the lowest costLearn what disruptive innovation means for healthcareUse the Balanced Scorecard to measure your progressThis collection of articles includes "What Is Strategy?" by Michael E. Porter; "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," by Michael E. Porter; "Health Care Needs Real Competition," by Leemore S. Dafny and Thomas H. Lee; "Building Your Company's Vision," by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras; "Reinventing Your Business Model," by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann; "Will Disruptive Innovations Cure Health Care?" by Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Bohmer, and John Kenagy; "Blue Ocean Strategy," by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne; "Rediscovering Market Segmentation," by Daniel Yankelovich and David Meer; "The Office of Strategy Management," by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton; and "The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care," by Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee.

Genres: Health Care, Nonfiction, Business

396 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 7, 2011

Reviews

[Michael McCormick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super valuable collection of articles on the specifics of what having a strategy means, especially deciding what not to do, to a capstone article by Professors Porter and Lee on "The Strategy that Will Fix Healthcare," which includes an invaluable chart emphasizing even what patients can do themselves to effect change in this industry in the 21st Century. I loved all the articles. Reading this book introduced me to things I had heard about, such as a balanced scorecard and an Office of Strategy Management, but did not know the specifics of, to concepts like Blue Ocean Strategy that I remember reading about in HBR and enjoyed reading about again as a refresher. Thank you Harvard Business School Press for this collection of articles and for all the other volumes you publish.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the series of “greatest hits” collection that HBR puts out, I suspect to make some progress in getting these assigned as texts for classes and executive education/training courses. Porter is one of the reigning gurus, of course, but his recent work on health care strategy with Lee and Elizabeth Teisberg are worth paying attention to and have attracted much attention. This collection has some nice piece mixed in with some chestnuts and even some chestnut wannabes. The nice feature of these sorts of articles is that the overall punchline is fairly clear, with supporting nooks and crannies well laid out. Depending on one’s taste, the weakness of these pieces is similar to the strength - so if you do not like HRB pieces, you likely will not like a collection of them. It is possible to track down versions of these health care pieces in medical journals like JAMA and NEJM. There they are rigorously edited and pared down to the critical points.

Anyway, if you are interested in health care, this is a worthwhile collection. I am waiting to see their collection of COVI:D-19 materials. HBS has done much work and it is worth reading.

[Usama Albastaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think there is a better book in healthcare strategy then that, it takes you through basic concepts, major innovations achieved in major centers around the world, sustainability plans and even how to benchmark with other industries.

[Spencer Brauchla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This complication of articles provides quality insights to why our healthcare industry is such a complicated and messy maze. I found the recommendations for navigating the healthcare maze helpful for developing my business model and strategy.

[Cindy Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy for Healthcare is a compilation of articles published between 2000 and 2009 about business strategies. Although I enjoyed my time with this book and found out interesting articles, it did not exceed my expectations and raised many doubts, such as the truthfulness of the articles due to outdated information. I was also surprised that only two articles specifically focused on healthcare, while the rest seemed to be generic business articles.

On the other hand, **HBR's 10 Must Reads** discusses business concepts that always interest me, such as competitive forces, company vision, purpose, business models, and market segmentation.

[James Roberts]

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