“You just heard from our first keynote speaker that one-third of people today have some kind of brain disease. You have someone standing here before you who had the worst type of brain disease one can have. In 2012, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour, with cancer.

So on April 19, 2012, I had surgery, and the doctor who operated on me had been my student in 1996. He had retired, but he flew from San Francisco to be at the operating table. Now, I’ve recovered from the surgery, but I'm facing all the side effects.

Healthcare is good. It treats you for one thing, but there are lots of side effects or other complications that can happen. For two years, I was on strong medication – I used to take 36 tablets one day and 38 the other day. And once I stopped all the medication the side effects of all this accumulation came, and I started having problems with my hip.

So I went to see my surgeon and I said, "Doctor, earlier I had trouble with my head office. Now, I have trouble with my back office." And he said, "Back offices are easy to fix." These are mechanical problems. So I had my right hip replaced with titanium, and two months ago, my left knee. Next I will do my left hip, and then my right knee. So this is modern technology and modern healthcare.

I have gone through the worst, but I have seen the best treatment. And I really believe, and that's [the focus of my talk today], that business schools can play a very important role in healthcare leadership. [When I speak of] leadership, I include three things: the role of technology, the role of innovation, and the role of entrepreneurship.

While I was recovering from brain surgery, I kept thinking about how businesses have evolved over the years. So I will share with you my perspective on a particular time period, the focus of business, who the key players were, and the impact we have seen. After these general comments, then I will [speak specifically about] healthcare.

Up to the 19^th century, the business model was one that I would describe as a kind of acquisition or colonialism.

The players in those days were countries, and the metric of measurement was strength: how many countries you had under your belt. At that time, the UK seemed to be one of the biggest global powers. The same thing happened with France and many other countries.

But then if you look at this period of 19^th and 20^th century, with the emergence of the US in the period from 1872 to 1876, the needle shifted from colonialism to a business of free markets or capitalism. The players were no longer countries, but corporations.

And the metric that was used was the share price; success was measured with how companies were doing – profit.

Today, the real strength lies in human capital.

There are all these young players, whether it is Airbnb or Uber, and in the last 40 to 50 years, rather than teaching cases on corporations, there is more interest among the kids at business schools in how we create courses on entrepreneurship.

Very soon many business schools will start offering a Masters in Entrepreneurship as opposed to Masters in Business Administration, because students are not interested in big businesses. [They are interested in] starting their own business – how we write business plans, how we go to different countries and start looking at what we can do there. Today the players are no longer corporations. Today, the players are citizens.

But there is one big thing that I see among the young generation. They are not just interested in success and profits; they also want to make a big difference. Bill Gates created a successful platform. But where is he spending most [of his] time? In global health, creating a lot of opportunities for people all over the world. Mark Zuckerberg has said he's going to donate [most] of his wealth to make the world a better and healthier place to live.

Healthcare is a very important sector that is going to touch all of us – healthcare combined with digital technology; but there is no substitute for the human touch. We can be very good on the technology side but when a doctor comes to your hospital bed and just touches you, it makes you feel very good. So I don't think there will be a substitute for the human touch.

But where the technology is helping is in the whole area of diagnosis. Medical technology is very advanced.

Today, we live in a world that has a nanosecond culture. We have to be proactive. We cannot afford to be reactive; everyone is looking for new opportunities. So as part of entrepreneurship, you have to keep your antenna on and look for opportunities that you can convert into a real business model.

We see hyper-competition in all areas, but it is competition combined with technological convergence.

There are three very important business opportunities that I want to share with all of you in this room.

The first is: if the human population is ageing, there will be a growth industry for consumer wellness. And wellness has two parts, healthcare and wealth-care. One very popular course in business schools today is private wealth management. If you used to teach MBA in finance, now that particular finance is [focused] on private wealth management.

Since people are going to live longer, retired life will be as [long] as working life. Lots of senior executives are coming to business schools for short-term programmes about how to manage this sort of thing.

The second area that will be very important is the hospitality side. How will people spend their time? We just started a programme at CEIBS called HEMBA, which is Hospitality Executive MBA programme. And in terms of creating programmes, medical tourism is becoming a very important part of many industries.

And the third [business opportunity] would be on consumer engagement – how you keep people engaged. And that's where [you see] digital media entertainment – the Apples of the world, the Amazons and Googles of the world. Because this is also, to me, healthcare; keeping people engaged...

One way to deal with depression is [by using] technology, which can help people create a sense of community. If you don't have friends, your cell phone can be your best friend in there.  But no matter how much technology and healthcare you can bring, there is no substitute to having a human friend. People are the real source of differentiation and value creation.

You can have all the technology helping you, but business is about people.

This is the right forum, the right arena where we should think about how we can create new healthcare related businesses; and not only creation but also managing and serving humankind.

I look forward to many more such interactions with all of you over the years to come. Thank you.”