Ian Morrison

Ian Morrison is an internationally known author, consultant, and futurist specializing in long-term forecasting and planning with particular emphasis on health care and the changing business environment. He combines research and consulting skills with an incisive Scottish wit to help public and private organizations plan their longer-term future.

Morrison has written, lectured, and consulted on a wide variety of forecasting, strategy, and health care topics for government, industry, and a variety of nonprofit organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has spoken to a range of audiences from the boards of Fortune 100 companies to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Morrison has worked with more than 100 Fortune 500 companies in health care, manufacturing, information technology, and financial services. Recent client sponsors include GE, Kaiser Permanente, and the Mayo Clinic. He is a frequent commentator on the future for television, radio, and the print media.

Morrison is the author of "Leading Change in Health Care: Building a Viable System for Today and Tomorrow" (AHA Press/Health Forum, 2011), and "Healthcare in the New Millennium: Vision, Values and Leadership" (Jossey-Bass, 2002). His previous book, "The Second Curve – Managing The Velocity of Change" (Ballantine, 1996), was a New York Times Business Bestseller and Businessweek Bestseller and was published in seven languages. Morrison has co-authored several books and chapters, including "Future Tense: The Business Realities of the Next Ten Years" (William Morrow, 1994) and "Looking Ahead at American Health Care" (McGraw-Hill, 1988). He also has co-authored numerous journal articles for publications such as Chief Executive, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Across the Board, The British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs.

Morrison is a past President of the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Morrison is a founding partner in Strategic Health Perspectives, a joint venture between Harris Interactive and the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management. Morrison serves as a Senior Advisor to Leavitt Partners and to HIP.

From 1996-1999, Morrison was retained by Accenture as Chairman of the Health Futures Forum, in that capacity he chaired a number of Health Futures Forums in Asia, Australasia, and North America.

Before coming to IFTF in 1985, Morrison spent seven years in British Columbia, Canada, in a variety of research, teaching, and consulting positions. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in urban studies from the University of British Columbia; an M.A. in geography from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of SFN Group (an NYSE company); a past director of the Health Research and Education Trust (HRET), the research and education arm of the American Hospital Association; a past director of the Center for Health Design; and a past director and chair of the California Health Care Foundation. He is a board member of the Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Los Angeles. Morrison currently serves on the Founder’s Council of United States of Care a new non-partisan non-profit movement to achieve long-lasting solutions that make health care better for everyone. Morrison also served as a member of the Stakeholders Advisory Committee of the Program for Health Systems Improvement at Harvard University.

In 2018, Morrison received the American Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees Award, for his more than 20 years of service to the AHA and the healthcare field.

Morrison is a proud member of GlobalScot, a network of Scottish expatriates convened by the new Scottish Executive to help promote Scotland’s economic development interests internationally. True to his Scottish roots, Morrison is an avid, though average, golfer.