Innovations + Developments in Healthcare and Financial Services: South Africa 2025
Course description
What do the first heart transplant, the development of consumer-directed health care plans, health savings accounts, critical illness insurance policies, needs-based life insurance, wellness incentive plans and the invention of the CAT Scan have in common? They are just a few of the inventions, or industry firsts, developed in the South African health care and financial services industries.
In this GIM course, we’ll explore the surprising and pioneering lessons from these and other inventions and industries in South Africa. Why surprising? Because so many health care innovations arise out of the USA and Europe and many people don’t expect to see such innovation from within Africa. We’ll explore the sophisticated private health insurance and wellness market and contrast it with the government hospital and care system, showing why South Africa, in so many ways, can be considered two countries in one land. We’ll examine the ideas of behavior-linked insurance, shared-value insurance models, the birth and evolution of the wellbeing industry and how it changed the game in wellness globally. From this, we’ll extract lessons with global application, and ideas for building innovative products that combine financial services, and health care around human behavior change solutions.
Students will leave this course with a deep understanding of South Africa, the lessons from the financial services and health care industry, and a new view on how to change human habits, at scale, in any context!
South Africa dismantled apartheid in 1994. Thirsty years later the country has gone through significant changes, including government and private sector corruption and significant talent emigration. This has led to many lost opportunities for economic empowerment.At the same time, South Africans are known for their resilience and a "we'll find a way" mindset. These have helped South Africa to innovate, and export those innovations, all while the political landscape has changed drastically. In the last few decades, South Africa has hosted the Soccer World Cup, been active in the global political arena, and become a sought-after tourist destination. In short, it's a very interesting time to visit South Africa as it enters yet another phase of change, with lessons gleaned from several large scale political and business transformations. This course will open your eyes to the innovations that can emerge from the “Global South” and from countries like South Africa historically considered to be marginal players on the world stage.
Faculty Bio
Andrew W Sykes holds over 25 years of leadership, organizational performance and business development experience. He has consulted to some of the world's largest companies, including Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, Shell Oil, McDonald's, Nokia, Abbvie, Merck, British Aerospace, Unilever, Blue Cross Blue Shield and many others.
Andrew's passion is professional speaking, education and activating high-impact habits. He speaks on the art of creating high-impact habits for revenue-responsible leaders and teams. He brings new and challenging perspectives to the topics he discusses, honed by his experience working around the world. He has lived or worked on six continents but calls Chicago home.
His education background is in actuarial science, he is a current behavioral researcher for BRATLAB and writer on the topic of high-impact habits. He founded and leads Habits at Work and the Behavioral Research Applied Technology Laboratory (BRATLAB). His current research interests and keynotes focus on trust in leadership, sales and business more generally. He is also a lead facilitator for Cerené, an experience company that helps people become unrecognizable to themselves in all the best ways!
His courses at Kellogg cover a wide variety of topics including Habits, Trust, Sales, Leadership and Entrepreneurship. He is the author of the book "The 11th Habit. Design your Company Culture to Foster the Habits of High Performance. He is an aspiring performance poet, and uses poetry as part of his teaching pedagogy and professional speaking and is currently completing his book of poetry: "Woooof".