In their book, Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast: A Blueprint for Transformation from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, the authors provide a healthcare-specific definition for transformative innovation:
Transformative innovation is an evolutionary form of innovation built on an undivided focus on the customer and customer experience. It uses design discipline and scientific methods to integrate and deploy new and existing technologies to improve experiences and efficiencies, and it is often associated with discovering and turning negative experiences into positive ones.
Transformation innovation is innovation that has an impact on the customer irrespective of scale. A transformational innovation substantially changes an experience. It does not matter if the substantial change affects a person, a group or people, or a whole organization. It is transformational irrespective of scale. We use this definition to guide every decision we make in the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation. We constantly ask: Will our actions have the potential to profoundly impact the experience and delivery of health and health care?
A few points.
First, it is INCREDIBLY long. While it is possible to parse it down to its’ essence after reading the definition several times, I’m curious how they clearly communicate the concept to internal stakeholders with such a verbose definition.
Second, while I’m a big fan of having a strong focus on the customer and customer experience in health care, I’m becoming increasingly concerned that such a singular focus is negatively impacting the health care provider experience. I’ll be posting more on this topic in the near future.
Finally, with all that being said, I really did enjoy the book and believe it imparts important information that other health care systems can implement. I hope health care executives will read the book and see the benefits of starting their own innovation centers.
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