Innovation tips

In order to innovate you and the organisation must first be willing to fail.

If you are 100% certain of that the change you want to make will succeed, you probably should have done it three years ago. Innovation is about having the courage to try something new. 80% of all innovations fail. But the learning gained from these efforts are not wasted. They will inspire you to try again and increase your chances of success the next time.

Fear of change can be reduced by knowledge. It is therefore important to create a solid pitch for your project. This will reduce the fear that managers might feel for new ideas and innovations.

If you want to increase the probability of success you should create a structured pitch of the idea that you want to implement.

This pitch should include:

•a description of the problem and how big the problem is

•who benefits from the innovation (patients, staff etc.) and why is that important

•a description of what the gains and potential costs of the innovation are

•identify the stakeholders

Sometimes innovation can be implementation.

If you have a problem it is very probable that someone else have had the same problem and has tried solutions.

Do not underestimate the value of researching what others have done to solve the same problem.

The solution can rarely be used by copy/paste but needs adaptation to your organization.

The benefit of being excellent in implementation is that it is much faster than innovation and you benefit from the mistakes of others.

Implementation still needs a structured pitch and stakeholder management in order to succeed.

Always give credit to the organisation/individual whose idea you have "stolen"/adapted.

Many projects fail because of insufficient management of different stakeholders

To do: identify who the stakeholders are. Who do we have to talk to continuously in order to secure support for the innovation? Do involve the IT-organization early in the process.

Many projects are planned to death.

If you spend to much time planning a project, chances are that the idea will be obsolete by the time it goes live. And when a project starts you will find that many assumptions have to be changed

Instead plan about 70 %. Get a pilot going as soon as you feel confident. Let the staff that actually will do the work design the last 30% by continuous improvement.

Embrace learning by doing.

Make sure that the project still delivers on the set goals.