The ability of technology to "disrupt" long-established business practices--dramatically changing the landscape of industries by increasing access, cutting costs, and revolutionizing delivery--has been a subject discussed for decades and is the topic of Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen’s iconic volumes, The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution. Yet, as Christensen has observed, these radical, innovation-driven transformations have been largely absent in the education and health industries--perhaps the two most important arenas of everyday life. 

In two new books, Disrupting Class and The Innovator's Prescription, Christensen and coauthors address how new technology might upend familiar institutions and fundamentally alter the way schooling and health care are delivered. Participating in the discussion with Christensen will be coauthors Michael B. Horn and Jason Hwang of Innosight Institute; education expert Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute; and Mark McClellan, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration who is now director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution.