KBHC leaders review survey results over lunch and discuss potential themes
Creating the theme for the Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference (KBHC) is an exciting and creative process every year, and we’re delighted to share this year’s theme: “Pathways to Progress: Innovating in the Evolving Healthcare Landscape.” The conference will explore how businesses are innovating in today’s healthcare ecosystem, touching on topics ranging from increasing prevalence of risk-bearing specialty providers to the impact of anti-obesity medications. We aim to leave participants energized for the future, prepared to make a big impact, and connected to the healthcare community at Kellogg and the greater Chicago area.
Our journey to pinpoint this year’s theme started last spring with our 2nd year leadership team. Our first step was to collect ideas through an anonymous survey prior to meeting as a group, to ensure a diverse and unbiased foundation for our brainstorming session. Then, we summarized the team’s inputs into categories of themes for a live discussion of the direction we wanted to take the conference. We weighed factors such as market trends, attendee profiles, and our overarching mission of leaving attendees feeling energized, prepared, and connected. Striking the right balance between a broad and focused theme was essential to draw a dynamic audience.
The discussion itself was lively and included opportunities for people to share both what they liked and disliked about various themes and ideas. We agreed as a group that a key purpose of KBHC is to bring together thought leaders and give them a platform, so that conference attendees can learn from them and be better equipped to understand and navigate related challenges in their own professional spheres. We wanted to ensure that the learnings from the conference felt tangible and actionable for conference attendees, rather than rehashing old changes or historical perspectives. Additionally, rather than having an overly futuristic lens that wouldn’t be relevant for most people for another 10 to 20 years, we also focused on a theme and panel topics that could be useful and informative for healthcare leaders today.
Speakers Committee VP Bennett Levis (‘24) contributes to the KBHC brainstorming session
We as co-chairs took the feedback from the team in the visioning session and finalized the specific language of the theme offline, landing on “Pathways to Progress: Innovating in the Evolving Healthcare Landscape.” (Though we will note that one of our VPs, Liam O’Connell, had specifically submitted “Pathways to Progress” as potential theme verbiage in the initial survey!) After socializing the theme with the Healthcare at Kellogg (HCAK) faculty, we began working as a team to narrow down our panel topics, develop marketing materials, and more.
To summarize, here are a few of our key takeaways from selecting a theme:
Our aim with our theme is to shape a conference that will energize, prepare, and connect.
The theme aims to balance specificity with breadth to appeal to an audience from a diverse industry cross-section.
We avoided anchoring bias and encouraged creativity by having team members independently send in theme ideas.
Healthcare professionals are tired of talking – they want to see innovative progress and the pathways to achieving progress.
About the Authors
Jake Howell is a second-year MBA student at Kellogg School of Management. Prior to Kellogg, he worked as a consultant at Deloitte Healthcare Strategy in New York City. Within healthcare, he is most interested in primary care and value-based care, population health, and health equity. Besides KBHC, he is a Golub Capital Board Fellow and a VP in Brew ‘n Que.
Mara Walli is also a second-year MBA student at Kellogg School of Management. Prior to Kellogg, she worked in corporate finance in the biotech industry, first at Amgen then at Atara Biotherapeutics. Mara is passionate about innovations in biotech that improve patient outcomes, women’s health, and health equity. In her free time, she enjoys taking her dog for long walks along Lake Michigan.