Building an innovation culture and capabilities

Within the NHS and wider care sector, we are facing significant challenges in fully engaging our patients, staff, partners and public in driving the transformation and adoption of innovation essential for the long-term sustainability of services.

Innovation may involve new models of care, new products and services, new technologies, different teams working together in new ways and improved processes – all of which can lead to reduced inequalities, improved value and better experience of care. Yet, innovation is about more than simply coming up with a great idea.

Spreading and scaling innovation needs to be seen as a priority for systems as we try to maximise the value of interventions and ensure they reach those who need them most. To do this successfully, capability is needed to understand and respond to the changing environment, to pursue new opportunities, to leverage the knowledge and skills of staff and partners, and to deliver services in a more accessible and personalised manner. Supported by a culture that allows room for intuition and positive disruption.

Our partnership programme helps organisations to build, own and deliver successful innovation and advance population and value impact strategies, cultures and interventions.

We work with you to develop an understanding of your vision and collaborate with your teams to make this part of your organisation’s DNA. We provide you with the skills and resources you need to scale and spread your plan for transformation and improvement, realising intended value and benefits.

Our innovation programme has five stages:

Stage 1: Exploration

• Initial engagement session to determine objectives and desired outcomes
• Development of timescales
• Collation of key information to tailor your needs assessment.

Stage 2: Readiness assessment

• Key information, including interviews from key personnel, is assessed against our ISO 56001 aligned innovation blueprint
• Comprehensive and systematic assessment of your organisation's capability, culture, processes and resources to support transformation and innovation
• Where relevant, this includes an assessment of your current capacity for external innovation.

Stage 3: Identify drivers and opportunities

• Full day workshop to test and refine the initial assessment findings, identify your strategic goals and key drivers for innovation, and prioritise initiatives by effectiveness and impact
• The workshop will also introduce our innovation portfolio management tools to support the scale and spread of innovation
• Support to identify opportunities to strengthen infrastructure and areas for action.

Stage 4: Validation

• Initial innovation readiness level is shared with the organisation
• Supply detailed assessment and accompanying action plan for discussion.

Stage 5: Award

• Final report and readiness level is awarded
• Supply implementation roadmap, innovation framework and tools to successfully manage your innovation portfolio.

This programme provides a practical approach to innovation for teams and organisations with busy workloads and limited capacity who need to quickly and effectively assess existing culture and capability, identify opportunities and implement an action plan, with supporting tools and resources.

The programme is complemented by several optional innovation boosters including:

• Hackathons – event design and facilitation to stimulate fresh ideas or work through specific challenge areas including identification of external speakers
• Strategy creation – discovery and engagement to co-develop an innovation strategy aligned to corporate objectives
• Setting up an innovation function – including standard operating procedures (SOPs), structures (JDs) and governance processes (ToR)
• Impact measurement – setting up reporting processes and conducting innovation evaluation (both qualitative and quantitative)
• CPD accredited e-learning modules – innovation is more than just new ideas. This course will introduce you to the essential requirements for developing innovation within your organisation
• Knowledge management – approaches to sharing knowledge throughout your organisation that will capture and catapult innovation.

Innovation is critical in addressing the interconnected challenges facing health and social care, and the wider public sector. We can support you in exploring these challenges – from improving access to services to promoting workforce and community collaboration to reducing our environmental impact – and generating innovative solutions.