An Era of Disruptive Innovation and Opportunity

Abstract

Thank you for your contribution of leadership to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) as committed participants in our policy development and democratic governance processes. Over the past year we have seen substantive and important issues take shape in the form of proposed policy. The work has come from standing committees, Councils, the Board and individual members. We have debated them via Webinars and here in person at this meeting. You have engaged in thoughtful policy formation and this work will advance academic pharmacy in countless ways. I promised the members of the Bylaws and Policy Development Committee that I would take just a few minutes this morning to reflect on the nature of this work. With the final report and recommendations of the Committee before you, you might say to yourself, Well, they certainly have muted the controversy for today's House session. And if you have not been actively engaged in the process of considering policy over the last several months and here at the meeting, you might leave Kissimmee thinking Is that all there is? Why bother?! Brian Crabtree served as an AACP delegate to the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) House in New Orleans in March. As he left the final, debate-filled and somewhat exhausting final session of their House, he said to me, Well, that certainly was interesting, and SO different from the AACP House. Different in this case is not necessarily better; it's just different. As the Committee worked in Executive Session yesterday after the best-attended Open Hearing in perhaps 20 years, they worked hard to distinguish statements of educational policy from recommendations for action. They also studied hard and considered the input that suggested that some statements were not ready for action and needed more thoughtful clarification. That is their charge and their work will facilitate the final conduct of House business this morning. Just 2 final thoughts about the work of the House, past and present, before I continue with my other remarks; this meeting of the House marks the 20th anniversary of the historic and hard-to-achieve decision by the AACP House that the entry-level preparation for pharmacists should be the doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree. That meeting took place in Washington, DC, where it must have felt over 100 degrees, like it is there today! This also makes me wonder whether any issue other than degrees, dues, and dollars can incite the interest and engagement of our members! Perhaps some of the work stimulated by President Bootman's charges to the 2012-2013 committees will test this proposition! It is a privilege to have this 11th opportunity to take a few minutes to report to you from the perspective of the chief staff officer of your Association and to reflect on AACP in these times of disruptive innovation and opportunity. That is the theme I am using to frame these remarks. President Crabtree and I had the enormous good fortune to begin calendar year 2012 in what might have been a Harvard School of Business intensive weekend graduate seminar on the topic of disruptive innovation. While we were actually on the island of St. John with leaders and staff colleagues from 10 other national pharmacy and pharmaceutical industry associations, our professor was none other than Clayton Christensen. Many of you may have heard this Harvard Business School professor's keynote presentation on disruptive innovation in healthcare at the APhA meeting in Seattle in March 2011. Among other titles, Professor Christensen has written the Innovator's Prescription: Disruptive Innovation in Health Care and Disrupting Class, which applies the theory of disruptive innovation to education. We provided a copy of Disrupting Class to the deans attending last February's Deans Retreat in San Diego. If you are keeping score, the good professor suggests clearly and passionately that both healthcare and education at all levels are poised for significant disruption. …