Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health Systems

ID 552 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This course examines innovation and entrepreneurship in health systems from a global and systems perspective. It is designed for graduate students who want to start, build, and scale ventures that solve unmet problems and create value in health systems. Former students of the course have participated in and won major competitions, incubators, and accelerators, including the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge, Health Systems Innovation Lab Hackathon, MIT Solve, MIT Hacking Medicine Grand Hack, TNT, and MassChallenge, with many ventures advancing beyond the courses, securing funding and pursuing venture exits.
 
The course uses a structured 10-step analytic framework to design, introduce, and scale ventures in health systems. The central premise of the framework is that while many venture ideas appear attractive, only some are viable for development and scale. Venture viability is shaped by powerful health system factors and an ever-changing context, including differences across countries in governance, financing, resource management, healthcare delivery, adoption systems, institutional arrangements, and broader political, economic, and social conditions.
 
The 10-step framework is applied throughout the course to help students move from an early idea to a clearly defined problem, a designed solution, and a venture concept that can be taken forward. The course is highly practical in orientation and includes leading experts who are current and former entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, innovators in large technology corporations, and VC funders. These faculty and guest contributors bring direct experience in venture design, financing, implementation, and scale.
 
The course uses teaching cases as a core element of its pedagogy. Through exposure to real ventures, practical tools, and comparative cases, students examine how innovations emerge, why they succeed or fail, and what is required to move from idea to implementation and scale in health systems. The course is also linked to the broader innovation pathway being developed across the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Dental Medicine, including co-organized seminars that deepen exposure, strengthen community-building, and connect students to the wider Harvard innovation ecosystem.
 
By the end of the course, students will have developed a venture concept, pitch deck, executive summary, and venture plan. Students can use these course outputs to secure funding and apply to competitions, incubators, and accelerators within the Harvard-MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond.