Ian Morrison, PhD

An internationally known author, consultant, and futurist, Ian Morrison, PhD, specializes in long-term forecasting and planning with particular emphasis on healthcare and the changing business environment. He combines research and consulting skills with an incisive Scottish wit to help public and private organizations plan their longer-term future.

Dr. Morrison is a founding partner in Strategic Health Perspectives, a forecasting service for clients in the healthcare industry, along with joint venture partners Harris Interactive and the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. He is President Emeritus of the Institute for the Future and Chair of IFTF's Health Advisory Panel. From 1996-1999, Dr. Morrison was retained by Accenture as Chairman of the Health Futures Forum; in that capacity he chaired a number of Health Futures Forums in Asia, Australasia, and North America.

The author of Healthcare in the New Millennium: Vision, Values and Leadership, Morrison is also the author of The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change, a bestseller on both The New York Times and Business Week Bestseller. He has co-authored several books and chapters including Future Tense: The Business Realities of the Next Ten Years and Looking Ahead at American Health Care. He also has co-authored numerous journal articles for publications such as Chief Executive, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Across the Board, The British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs. Dr. Morrison is also a frequent commentator on the future for television, radio and the print media.

Dr. Morrison has written, lectured, and consulted on a wide variety of forecasting, strategy, and healthcare topics for government, industry, and a variety of nonprofit organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has spoken to a range of audiences from the boards of Fortune 100 companies to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Dr. Morrison has also worked with more than 100 Fortune 500 companies in healthcare, manufacturing, information technology, and financial services. Recent client sponsors include XL Capital, Pfizer and Kaiser Permanente.

Before coming to IFTF in 1985, Dr. Morrison spent seven years in British Columbia, Canada, in a variety of research, teaching, and consulting positions. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in urban studies from the University of British Columbia; an M.A. in geography from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Spherion Corporation (a NYSE company); an immediate past director of the Health Research and Education Trust, the research and education arm of the American Hospital Association; a director of the Center for Health Design; and a director of the California Health Care Foundation. Dr. Morrison also serves as a member of the Stakeholders Advisory Committee of the Program for Health Systems Improvement at Harvard University.

The Future of the Healthcare Marketplace
Globally, healthcare is in a state of flux. In the U.S., the inexorable rise of managed care is faltering somewhat as it comes under increasing scrutiny by the media, the consumer, and the regulators, and as margins in the business start to erode. Large-scale vertical integration in healthcare has not taken place; rather we have seen massive horizontal consolidation of health plans, hospital systems, and physician groups. The industry is looking for a new direction and a new vision. This presentation will focus on the political, economic, and strategic context of change in healthcare and examine how the various actors are preparing for the future. It will examine where we have been, where we are, and where we are headed. In particular, it will explore the tensions between the market and the civil society.

The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change
The gist of Morrison's book, The Second Curve: Managing the Velocity of Change, is that most businesses in most industries are surviving on their first curve, or their core business where they make all their profit and revenue. When a second curve, a new business or completely new way of doing business, comes along, it threatens to replace the first curve. The second curve is driven by the confluence of three powerful driving forces: new technologies, new consumers, and new markets. The challenge is to gauge how fast the second curve will take over and develop strategy accordingly.