The cycle of innovation: No need to recreate the wheel

Innovation is a buzzword that everyone is using today. Many hospitals are creating their own innovation institutes, private companies are spinning off innovation departments, we have innovation hubs, innovation accelerators, and many other groups that help with innovation. The common goal of these organizations and departments is to take new ideas, make sure they work, and implement them.The problem is that most of them are using different frameworks, metrics and processes, even though they are all trying to achieve the same thing: the increased successful adoption of new innovation. We continue to recreate the wheel unnecessarily because we lack oversight of the innovative process.According to a survey by the Conference Board of Canada, more than half of the 450 companies responded that they have no formal innovation process. How is that possible if innovation is such an important component to an organization’s, and our country’s, success? And we wonder why Canadian companies lag behind other countries in developing and implementing innovation. The good news is this problem is not exclusive to healthcare.Creating a process to manage innovation is not that difficult. Frankly, most organizations are probably already doing it in an informal way, but there’s no doubt they are missing some important components by not managing it formally. The diagram is my cycle of innovation that organizations can use as a guide to manage the innovative process.Within this cycle of innovation, there are some questions organizations should be asking:• Where are the innovative ideas coming from? Where should they come from? How many ideas should be coming in?• How do we evaluate the ideas to ensure we move forward with the right ones? What criteria should we use? How do we effectively partner with other organizations to test the idea?• How do we know if an idea was successful or not? How do we measure progress?• What plan do we need to execute in order to turn the idea into something commercially viable or something that improves the performance of our organization?• How do we integrate the new ways of operating across the entire organization?In a complex and inter-connected world, organizations can’t afford to miss any opportunity. Managing innovation according to the process above may just give healthcare companies the performance boost they need to improve.Andrew Miller is a leading expert in operational excellence, who helps his clients maximize profitability and performance by integrating strategies around driving innovation and collaboration, improving customer on boarding and retention, aligning strategy and execution, hiring and retaining top people, and optimizing speed.

The cycle of innovation: No need to recreate the wheel

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Andrew Miller