Components of Innovation Ecosystem
Design Principles for an Innovation Ecosystem
We leveraged the existing design principles for building an effective innovation ecosystem within and outside of healthcare. These institutions include Proctor and Gamble’s “open innovation” model, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Bromford Labs, Kaiser Permanente, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Ascension Health, and Stanford Health Care. We adopted the following key components of an effective innovation challenge in the design of CVC Innovation Ecosystem:
1. Pace: A predictable rhythm for producing new knowledge
We will establish an innovation framework to move from creating and testing to scaling ideas.
We will utilize the 90-day sprints to execute the plan, do, study, act (PDSA) framework for each innovation project.
2. Staff with dedicated team:
The dedicated staff initially is comprised of a five-member team with dedicated effort ranging from 20%-100% dedicated to the innovation ecosystem.
Each innovation project will be staffed by a four-person teams: a “lead” who had primary responsibility for the 90-day project cycles; a program manager; and two members of the innovation core team as thought partners. External advisors, “helpers” or UM faculty members might contribute to an innovation project, but most projects will be resourced with the four-person team to avoid responsibility dilution.
3. Work out loud: Share your work and prototype for rapid feedback
We will use open source tools to allow sharing and exchange of ideas.
Innovation Mission Control: We will use open source software (ie Trello) to create a project outline and to do list that can be viewed by everyone. The monthly meetings between the core team and project team are open to everyone at UM who would like to attend (remotely).
We will disseminate the ideas and methods developed by the innovation academy through newsletters, publishing online and in peer-reviewed journal
4. Accountability:
Innovation core team will organize weekly team meetings with the project team to discuss the sticking points of each project and challenge each member to reach further.
The core team will meet every six to eight weeks to discuss the progress of each project with UM senior leaders and content area experts. The core team will seek independent and candor feedback on their progress, contacts for further exploration or testing, ideas for redirection if necessary, and links within the organization.
Each project will be evaluated based on a combination of the following form of accountability:
Results accountability: Did you deliver the predicted outcome? It is ideal for projects where there is a precedence and predictions are reliable.
Action accountability: Did you execute the plan well? Ideal when the predictions are less reliable.
Learning accountability: Did you follow a rigorous learning process? Ideal when predictions are less reliable.
We will also track the following innovation key performance indexes (KPI):
Reporting KPIs (innovation teams, ideas generated, experiments, assumptions tested and validated
Governance KPIs (how well in the innovation team is executing its objectives)
Global KPIs (help evaluate the overall performance of investment in the innovation program)
5. Education
Each project team will be assigned a tailored educational program designed to facilitate the success of the innovation project
6. Communicate organization-wide understanding of the innovation projects
Ensure that all innovation projects are aligned with the strategic goals of the institution.
Each innovation project has a standard charter, including the aim, rationale, background, and all intended deliverables for the innovation project. These charters will be posted electronically and accessible to all UM staff. This will help the operational engine adopt successful innovation projects.
The core team will facilitate the partnership between the project team and the operational team within our institution. This will help ensure the project success as well as organization wide adoption and implementation of successful projects.
7. Specific Plan and Budget for each project within the innovation portfolio
Each innovation project requires its own dedicated, separate, stand-alone plan.
The innovation team will manage a portfolio of innovation projects that are different stages of development.
8. Run a disciplined experiment
Each innovation project is evaluated rigorously using the scientific method.
We will create a hypothesis of record that can be tested for each innovation project. The hypothesis of record is composed of set of conjectures about cause and effect relationships between actions, outcomes, and subsequent outcomes.
If the predicted and actual trends are similar, the cause and effect relationship is validated. Otherwise the hypothesis of record is revised and upgraded.
Each innovation project is evaluated rigorously using the scientific method.