John Kenagy

John Kenagy, MD is a vascular surgeon and the principal creator of Adaptive Design(r). As Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School, Kenagy studied with Clayton Christensen to develop the notion of Disruptive technology--also known as Disruptive Innovation--in health care.

Early research culminated in a paper for the Harvard Business Review, entitled "Will Disruptive Innovations Cure Health Care?" In this paper Kenagy, Christensen and Richard Bohmer argue that the solution to health care problems lies in finding "disruptive," or low-end technologies and processes that meet patient needs in the lower tiers of the health care market.

Later, Kenagy was introduced to Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen, who were working on understanding the underlying principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Upon seeing their initial results, Kenagy recognized that Toyota's system of management was the key to "disrupting" traditional health care institutions.

After apprenticing himself to Toyota, Kenagy began customizing these frameworks to the circumstances of health care. The resulting methodology has come to be called "Adaptive Design," because the it focuses on cultivating adaptability in the organization and its processes.

References

*Christensen, Clayton M; Bohmer, Richard; Kenagy, John. "Will Disruptive Innovations Cure Health Care?" Harvard Business Review, September 2000.

*Kenagy, Sundahl, Udall. [http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/solutions/adaptivedesign.mspx "Delivering on the Promise: An Adaptive Approach to Information Technology in Healthcare"]

*Kenagy, Berwick, Shore. [http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/281/7/661 "Service Quality in Health Care."] (Abstract and link to full text.) "The Journal of the American Medical Association", 1999;281:661-665.

External links

*Kenagy's [http://www.kenagyassociates.com website]