I gave a speech at HIMSS last week, the largest healthcare event in America and my topic was “Disruptive Innovation and the Consumerization of Healthcare”. As I think more about it, there is a really good lesson learned from Kodak for brands in the healthcare industry.

Moore’s Law is a predictable law that has accurately forecasted the performance and cost improvements of microprocessors for over 40 years. Evolutionary improvement is a totally linear concept.

Innovation is NOT evolution!

Yet innovation never occurs in such a predictable linear way. After I left Apple in 1993 I was asked by the new CEO at Kodak to advise on the future of digital imaging. My advice at the time was pretty simple. “Kodak should focus on picture making, not just picture taking”.  As a $20 billion market cap company, I said why not try to acquire Adobe the creator of Photoshop which was trading at about $1.2 billion?

The executives at Kodak, were top of their class chemical engineers. They saw the growing importance of digital imaging, but in their linear analysis of the digital threat, they concluded it was decades away from becoming mainstream so they doubled down on vertical integration into film processing while setting up a small ancillary digital imaging group to develop and sell digital cameras.

By the early 2000s, digital camera picture quality was getting very good, broadband Internet was coming on strong, and inexpensive photo quality printer meant there was now a high quality end-to-end system for digital photography. Kodak however, was still focused on marketing its single use film camera, which continued to sell well.

In 2007, everything changed almost overnight and Kodak was completely caught unprepared. Apple and Google introduced smart phones that could take high quality photos and send them wirelessly over the now widely available 3G Network.

Meanwhile, Facebook almost overnight became a social media sensation with most of its content made up of personal photos sent from smart phones. Many people abandoned their single use film cameras and stopped printing photos as publishing photos to Facebook took off. A perfect storm decimated Kodak in less than 2 years. Last year, Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

Disruption is non-linear.

I believe the consumerization of healthcare holds really big opportunities for breathtaking innovation. It also holds perils for healthcare brands who fail to adapt and prepare for non-linear disruption.

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Increased dominance of chronic illness. Emerging issues in medical ethics. Increased consumerism. Artificial intelligence in medical diagnosis. Increased access to clinical knowledge. Self-diagnosis, self-monitoring and self-medication. Electronic medical records. Telemedicine. Medical tourism. Third party payer mix. Shifting power between physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies. The increasing unaffordability of health care. Health care reform. Value-based health care. Hot spotting. Cost accountability. Bundled payments. Point-of-care medical payments. Children’s Health Insurance Program. State insurance exchanges. Medical malpractice and tort reform. Robotics in health care. Remote monitoring. Gene therapy. Replacement organs. Designer antibodies. Genomics and the prediction of disease. Proactive disease prevention. Health promotion. Personalized medicine. Integrated and Eastern medicine. Wellness centers. Federally qualified health centers. Medical offices in chain drug stores. Retail medical clinics. Concierge medicine. Ambulatory surgery centers. Specialized hospitals. Increasing role of physician assistants and nurse practitioners. The fate of traditional hospitals. Are we in the business of medical care or health care?

With all of this in flux, one has to step back and ask, what is our brand? What does it stand for? What business are we in? Are we serving the right customer? Are we meeting the needs of the end consumer? Have we even identified our primary customers with forethought and wisdom? What products and services will the brand umbrella five years from now? What value is our brand delivering in the industry’s value chain? Are we delivering at least a good value for the price paid? Which of our brands do consumers recognize and what do those brands mean to them? Does our brand have a unique value proposition? What is our brand’s promise and are we consistently delivering on that promise? What story does our brand tell? Is it compelling, differentiated and believable?

In the rapidly changing health care environment, it is important to reinvent and strengthen the brand through the following strategic thinking process:

• Brand equity measurement / brand research
• Revisiting mission, vision and values
• Revisiting the brand position (target customer definition and brand essence, promise, archetype and personality)
• Identifying the products and services that the brand will umbrella
• Revisiting the brand storytelling strategy

From these, you can create new value and advantage that can manifest in brand identity, advertising, internal communication and other marketing communication. You can also rally and align your health care colleagues in support of the brand.  And, you can redesign your customer touch points to become more consumer-centric and to better deliver on the brand promise.

There will be winners and losers in the health care revolution. The winners will be be stronger then ever and represent greater value. The losers will simply go away or become a shell of their former self. Where is the strategic direction of your brand taking you?

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Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers