What Innovation Isn’t!

In the NHS in England we have had several years worth of initiatives which are designed to encourage innovation. For a monolithic entity that spends £110 billion a year and has 1.3 million staff, the rhetoric around the NHS began before the global economic crash with some approaches which were aimed at encouraging modernisation and opening up the service to broader ideas. This was happening when the NHS was experiencing financial growth. The rhetoric and supporting initiatives continued when the economic climate radically changed.

Now the focus is on how innovation can contribute to solutions to the financial pressures in the healthcare system. As I have said in an earlier post on radical solutions, there is a desperate need to shift the paradigm so that our thinking is not stuck in the mind-set of a fixed history that spans some 65 years. This restricts our thinking.

Innovation and creative solutions can be encouraged in a space where there is freedom to do that. The most that a bureaucracy can hope for is to create the right culture for creativity, not impose it top down.

Let’s look at an analogy. If I want to encourage a child to paint, the best way to do so is to make sure that there are the materials for painting, the environment is right and that there is time to do it. Then, if I sit down and paint with the child they are likely to engage. If I stand over them, telling them to paint, that’s not going to create an environment for creative outputs.

Thus, it is about ensuring there are the resources, space and time to innovate. Then, rather than telling people to be innovative, it is better to be innovative and creative with – and see what happens.