Engagement, Shared Purpose, and building a Culture of Bottom-Up Innovation
I like Aliens. I love Extraterrestrials. Anything that is outside the norm and offers me a new way of thinking or a new way to process and understand information instead of the traditional methods. I love creativity and innovations that open up new avenues of economic growth and transform the image and culture of an industry. I strive to be a visionary that can produce showstopper ideas and create innovative new paths to change the status quo. Yes, it’s a long-term achievement that takes time, determination, and the ability to ride out the uncertainties and dodge the red tape you will face along the way.
Healthcare is an astonishingly fragmented industry. The healthcare system erects an array of barriers to all types of valuable innovation. Move too early, and the infrastructure needed to support the innovation may not yet be in place; wait too long, and the time to gain competitive advantage may have passed. And status quo organizations and some hospital leaders tend to view innovation as a direct threat to their power. Building a healthy, creative culture in healthcare matters to me. Developing and creating earlier than others, and transforming the organization to take advantage of it matters to me. Efforts in innovation need to increase to ensure that we remain leaders in our sectors. Creating opportunities for the people in our medtech ecosystem to think through our own environment and what we are trying to do and how to do it is important. I’ve created spaces in my work flow to concentrate, calculate actions, overcome system challenges, create new rules and create new ideas. In my creative time, I operate from a state of flow.
Why accept markets as they are when we can shape markets in our own vision. We live in an ideas economy, with possibilities limited only by our imagination. I believe many of the best healthcare startups and companies are guided by an inspiring purpose, adventurous programs that want to explore new possibilities. Leaders should be curious and connected, daring and ingenious, working from the future back, to develop more audacious and disruptive ideas, to creatively out-think the competition.
When is a good time to innovate? You never stop producing ideas! and operate from a state of flow! When a startup reaches the stage in which the business will expand and spread its roots into new markets and distribution channels; there is room to innovate. When you are ready to capitalize on the success of your business and capture a larger market share and find new revenue; here. Time to Innovate!
Sharing purpose means connecting with your users, shareholders, customers and stakeholders to bring the brand to life. Brands should be enriching and enabling, giving people the confidence, and helping them, to achieve more. A brand has the ability to reach into new spaces because they mean more to the ecosystem. Brands are in fact platforms that bring people together inside and out, engaging them in bigger ideas, collaborative and evolving over time. This is why I am a fan of brands that capture big ideas, pull ideas from the ecosystem and spotlight them front and center and provide a platforms for collaboration. Innovating with your community is key!
In business, innovation is about making the best ideas happen profitably. It uses creativity to look beyond products and devices, to rethink business models and customer experiences. Every aspect of business can be innovated, opened and collaborative, even it is simple and frugal. Innovation is driven by a human cause, to make a positive and profitable difference. Behind your company brand is a social and collaborative brand based on a shared cause and shared passion.
Value creation is about more than sales, it is about sustaining long-term profitable growth, which is good financially. Sustaining growth means being sustainable more broadly, through circular business models, and enabling customers and users to be better too! What systems does your organization or company have to sustainability drives growth? How can you innovate in this area with your customers?
Leaders amplify the potential of others. Brands amplify the potential of customers. Networks amplify the possibilities with partners. Extraterrestrials are typically the speedboats, agile and creative enough to seize the new opportunities of change. If you want to build a culture of bottom up innovation ditch the hasty quick to react habitual automated responses.
