by Miroslav Končar, Director, Healthcare and Education Industry, Oracle ECEMEA

If somebody would have asked you a decade ago, could you imagine the world where the largest taxi company would own no vehicles (Uber); where the largest accommodation provider would own no real-estate (AirBnB); or where the most valuable retailer would own no inventory (Alibaba), what would your answer be? And today, if somebody would ask you, could you imagine a world where the largest healthcare provider would own no hospitals, and the largest education provider would own no schools? How hard would that be, seeing for example an amazing job that patientslikeme.com has done for 300.000+ people? Or analyzing e.g. what the LinkedIn’s acquisition of Lynda.com can do for our professional development?

The world has changed. Technologies such as cloud, social and mobile are enabling far more personalized and customer centric solutions that people in areas such as healthcare and education are desperately waiting for. The factory based model which we are seeing across these verticals today, founded on best practices and one size fits all thinking, in many ways doesn’t meet our individual needs, and as such allows for amazing opportunities for disruptive innovation. However, this transformation does not come easily, as many forces such as regulation, reimbursements, even the cultural inhibitors (“this is how we have done it for centuries” type of thinking) will sit as the roadblock. So the question is, are we as the society ready for the disruptive revolution?