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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Our country has access to flat-out the best
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technologies in health care.
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There's no other system you'd rather be in than the US health
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care system.
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That said, it's an expensive system.
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And as a result, it is even more incumbent on the US health care
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system to find ways to reduce costs
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without unduly harming quality.
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My work heavily draws upon the idea
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that our health care system needs a very, very large dose
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of organizational innovation.
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A lot of my research looks at the importance of familiarity
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amongst members of surgical teams.
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You would be amazed, in looking at a typical hospital
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in the United States, as to how infrequently surgical teams
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remain fully composed from day to day.
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So research is absolutely central to the work
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of the school, because when people come here,
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they come not just to hear what was true 20 years ago.
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They want to find out how is the world changing.
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What are the ideas that are going
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to influence the world that I'm going to inhabit as a business
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leader?
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And it's that restlessness about thinking hard about where
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business should be going that is the heart
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of what the research is that we do here at Harvard Business
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School.
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HBS is a fantastic environment for researchers and educators
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who are really interested in marrying insights
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from the real world to academic research.
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So it's very unique in that regard.
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You can really contact people out in the field
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and learn about their ideas and then
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bring them out into your classroom
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and into your research.
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Well, HBS is unique among business schools
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in terms of the way its faculty is organized.
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While we do have units in finance and accounting,
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and strategy and organizational behavior,
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we also have areas that really bridge
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across different disciplines.
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I think at HBS, our going-in approach
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is that most of these problems are really complex.
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And the way to really unpack them
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is to begin to approach them with multiple lenses
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from the get-go.
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I do a lot of research on competition and consolidation.
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One US industry that has consolidated a great deal
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is kidney dialysis.
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The question that I'm seeking to answer
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is how consolidation of that business
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has impacted the quality that patients are receiving
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in terms of their dialysis, as well as in terms
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of their ultimate outcomes.
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The article that we wrote for the Harvard Business Review
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dealt with what are called enterprise IT systems.
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So the point of our article is they're not just simply
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opportunities to reduce costs.
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But they're actually about improving care delivery
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and patient safety.
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When I teach at HBS about US health care strategy,
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students come up to me after and start talking
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about their ideas for change.
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And a number of them go on to join entrepreneurial ventures
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and start forming them.
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And that's a very exciting approach
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to handling problems of the health care industry.
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The real work lies in influencing the practitioners
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who they're talking about, who they're trying to study,
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who they're trying to influence.
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And having a commitment to taking their work
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beyond a conversation with each other into the real world
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and having an influence in the world
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is one of the important values we
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hope to have every one of our scholars bring to the world.
