The co-founders of Innosight Institute, Michael B. Horn and Dr. Jason Hwang, joined Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen after graduating from Harvard Business School in June of 2006 to co-author two books, one on U.S. K-12 public education and the other on U.S. health care, respectively. After working on the books for nearly a year, the three recognized that the books would be the first foray into an ongoing conversation. The books would, of course, not contain all the answers to these big multi-pronged problems by any means. They knew that having a vehicle to conduct ongoing research and from which to promote their findings would be important.

As a result, in May of 2007, the three founded Innosight Institute to house their ongoing work on both education and health care — and to continue the development and promotion of these ideas.

A year later, Christensen and Horn along with Curtis Johnson published the first of the books, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, and in January of 2009, Christensen and Hwang along with Dr. Jerome Grossman published The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care. The books apply Professor Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation to education and healthcare, respectively, to suggest ways to make fundamental improvement in both fields.

Originally based in Watertown, Mass., in February of 2009, Innosight Institute relocated its primary operations to the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The education and health-care teams continue to make inroads among policymakers and other influential stakeholders, and also are continuing their research to further improve and expand their understandings as represented in those first books.

At this time, Innosight Institute maintains just two practices, but plans in the future to conduct research into several other social sector problems.

Our Mission: Learn about our unique mission statement in the world of not-for-profit think tanks.

Disruptive Innovation: What exactly is disruptive innovation?

Research: We are conducting ongoing research in the form of case studies to better describe the details of the various phenomenon in education and health care to continue to improve our proposed solutions.

Spreading Our Vision: We publish widely and speak around the world about our research and recommendations.

Workshops: Workshops allow us to work with an individual organization to establish a common language and baseline understanding of our principles, tools, and techniques as well as implications for what this might mean for the particular organization.

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