John Singer

John Singer
John leads Blue Spoon Consulting, the pioneer of ‘Big Design’ for outcomes-based healthcare. ‘Big Design’ braids system thinking and design thinking into a new methodology for disruption and business advantage in healthcare + life sciences. John brings more than 25 years experience in business strategy, marketing, innovation consulting, policy and communications, technology sales, brand management and industry thought leadership across all dimensions of the global health sector, including pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology, payer and provider clients. He specializes in re-configuring markets and helping clients navigate the transition space to compete on health system value. John has published new business thinking …
John leads Blue Spoon Consulting, the pioneer of ‘Big Design’ for outcomes-based healthcare. ‘Big Design’ braids system thinking and design thinking into a new methodology for disruption and business advantage in healthcare + life sciences.

John brings more than 25 years experience in business strategy, marketing, innovation consulting, policy and communications, technology sales, brand management and industry thought leadership across all dimensions of the global health sector, including pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology, payer and provider clients. He specializes in re-configuring markets and helping clients navigate the transition space to compete on health system value.

John has published new business thinking and ideas in some of the most influential media in the world, including MIT Sloan Management Review, the Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Business Strategy, and the Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management. His insights and thought leadership on the future of strategy and competition was used by the U.S. Army War College to position innovation initiatives and capability development for its Third Offset Strategy, a new doctrine by the Department of Defense to achieve broad-based innovation across the spectrum of concepts, research and development, leadership education and business practices.

John is also a guest lecturer on strategic transformation and health system strategy at leading professional organizations and business schools, including ISPOR, the Population Health Colloquium, the California Association of Physician Groups, Cambridge University, ESCP Europe, the RAND Corporation, New York University Stern School of Business, and McGill University.

In his most recent role as Chief Strategy Officer, Healthcare for Cognizant Technology Solutions (NYSE: CTSH), John led industry strategy, mergers and acquisitions, market development, strategic sales and executive engagement for new value propositions and emerging technologies across Cognizant’s $3 billion healthcare portfolio. Before joining Cognizant, John was the Global Head of Health Market Strategy, Innovation and Technology for Wipro (NYSE: WIT), a leading technology services company. Prior to Wipro, he led the U.S. Healthcare Practice at RAPP, a marketing service within Omnicom Group that helped clients deal with the emergence of a digital sixth sense. While at RAPP, John led digital strategy and consumer experience design for the launch of Harvoni, Gilead Sciences’ cure for Hepatitis C and one of the biggest-selling drugs in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. He also directed the development of patient engagement as a strategic pillar for JNJ Diabetes Solutions, and was part of the launch team for Lipitor.
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Articles: John Singer

Why Pharma Needs to Think Like Tarantino

Global / Drawing inspiration from Quentin Tarantino’s directorial breakthrough in the early 1990s, Blue Spoon Consulting’s John Singer explores the pharma sector’s urgent need for a strategic overhaul to ensure success and sustain growth amidst looming patent expirations.   Lex is the flagship investment column of the Financial Times. Its commentaries, currently written by a team of eleven…

Improving the EBITDA of a $4.3 Trillion Investment in Healthcare

Global / Blue Spoon Consulting’s John G. Singer takes aim at the recent anti-Big Pharma rhetoric around the drug pricing crisis in the US, instead calling for a more holistic view of the situation, acknowledging the role being played by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). More importantly, Singer sees a new approach to market objectives as the only…

Note to Biogen: Your Marketing is Showing

USA / In his latest PharmaBoardroom piece, John Singer looks at Biogen’s marketing campaign for its new Alzheimer’s drug, extending and linking the controversy to the grander strategic themes reshaping the ‘drug market’ as a whole, including the impact of the internet on cognitive change, the unmet need for a different premise for “strategy” itself, and the call…

If the “Primary Endpoint” in an Alzheimer’s Study is Outcomes, Think Biogen + Spotify

USA / Taking the example of music’s effect on Alzheimer’s disease patients, John G Singer makes the case for a more holistic approach to healthcare; focusing less on the transformative potential of individual drugs and more on value as a stream of benefits delivered through a living system.   Singer/songwriter Glen Campbell, best known for songs like…

The End of “Digital” as a Story of Value

USA / John G. Singer examines why technological solutions are not a quick fix to overcoming the COVID-19 crisis and how a systems shift is crucial to securing better health outcomes in the long-term.   Strategic failure begins when you turn things over to technologists.   “My 18-year-old daughter, Caroline, responded quickly when I told her that…

“Medication Adherence” is a Lunatic Endeavour

Opinion / John G. Singer outlines why a focus on patients’ adherence to their medication is not necessarily useful in working to improve health outcomes and why innovation is more sorely needed in markets and strategies, not technologies and analytics.   “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which opened yesterday at the Cinema 2, is a marvelously…

“Drug” Companies are Missing Their Moment to Write a New Narrative

Opinion / John G. Singer examines how the ongoing coronavirus pandemic may create a new dichotomy for global healthcare – and why pharma companies still wedded to the market models of the past risk getting left behind.   “Drug” companies have a unique opportunity to invent a different market for themselves. It begins by telling a new…

When Linear Hope Fails, The Exponential Scramble Begins

Opinion / Blue Spoon Consulting’s John G. Singer* provides a thought-provoking outline of how the global health economy needs to evolve a new ‘systems framework’ to deal with the complexity and interconnectedness of healthcare today.   We need to unleash a new set of capabilities designed by a different level of thinking Nature was once a “separate…

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