Innovation Management and NHS Virtual Wards

• The objective is to transition from occasional, one-off successes to consistent success through a structured innovation process.

Learning Outcomes

• Comprehend the capabilities required for managing innovation effectively.
• Understand varied perspectives on the innovation process and their subsequent impacts.
• Familiarize with the Tidd and Bessant framework for overseeing innovation.
• Recognize the factors that exert influence on the innovation process.

NHS Virtual Wards

• NHS in Cornwall is trialing the treatment of patients on a Virtual Ward.
• Virtual Wards aim to free up hospital beds.
• This concept emerged to combat pandemic.
• This idea is expanding to become a big part of how the NHS should look in the future.

Developing Innovation Management Capabilities

• Companies exist on a continuum from unaware of change to highly aware with effective innovation systems.
• Awareness of the need for change and the ability to implement change are factors in developing innovation management capabilities.
• Companies can become stuck (competence traps) and stifle innovation, leading to organizational constraints (core rigidities).

A Typology of Firms Based on Innovation Capability

• Categorization of firms ranges from passive (unaware of change) to reactive, then to proactive and creative, based on their awareness of the need for change.
• The most proactive, creative firms are disruptive innovators, potentially surpassing existing products/services in the long run despite initial inferiority.

Capabilities Underpinning Innovation Management

• Resources in innovation can be tangible (machinery) or intangible (knowledge).
• Focus is capabilities - the utilization of these resources.
• Core capabilities in innovation:
• Search for opportunities
• Select what to do
• Implement it
• Capture the benefits
• There is an overarching learning capability that feeds back at each stage.

A Framework for Interpreting Dynamic Capabilities

• Dynamic capabilities framework involves sensing opportunities, learning, integrating knowledge, and coordinating resources for reconfiguring operational capabilities.
• Dynamic capabilities revamp existing operational capabilities with new knowledge.

Definition of Dynamic Capabilities

• Sensing Capability: The ability to spot, interpret, and pursue opportunities in the environment.
• Learning Capability: The ability to revamp existing operational capabilities with new knowledge.
• Integrating Capability: The ability to embed new knowledge into operational capabilities with shared understanding.
• Coordinating Capability: The ability to orchestrate and deploy tasks, resources, and activities in new operational capabilities.

Rothwell's Five Generations of Innovation Models

• Rothwell identified five generations of innovation models:
• Linear models (need pull, technology push).
• Coupling model (feedback loops).
• Parallel integration (upstream suppliers and downstream customers).
• Networking (collaboration in broader ecosystems).

Working in Networks by Running in Packs

• Firms advised by running in packs to build distinctive competencies by outsourcing the rest and becoming nodes in value chain networks.
• Focus on building competencies, outsourcing non-core functions, and becoming nodes in value chain networks.

Search

• Search challenges depending on company size.
• Pharmaceutical companies: database and patent searches.
• P&G: market research.
• Project-based organizations: surveying customer base and competitors.
• City councils: understanding local population needs.
• Tools: innovation jams, Innocentive, Agorize, and Biomimicry.

Selection

• Selection is about choosing an innovation concept or idea.
• Tools for selection:
• Stage gate models: killing projects not going through the stages.
• Portfolio management tools: select projects with high returns and low failure.
• Voting contests: customer choice (Lego).

Implementing and Capturing

• Implementing the project:
• Acquire resources and then executing the project
• To consider when implementing the project:
• Solo vs collaboration
• Risk averse or risk takers
• Testing the innovation
• Marketing strategy
• Capturing value: In-licensing, out-licensing, revealing, knowledge hoarding.
• Learning from failure.

Learning

• Learning refers back to each stage of the 4 broad stages in managing innovation.
• Asks "Do we have a clear innovation Strategy?" and "Do we have an innovative organization?"

Key points

• The process model of innovation is a helpful framework but we need to keep reminding ourselves that it is only a model; the reality is much less clear-cut.
• Sector varies on the car-manufacturing sector, assignement. WHICH SECTOR ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? ARE THERE HIGH FIXED COSTS (E.G., MACHINERY, R&D, ETC.)??
• Size: small vs large firms. ARE YOU WRITING ABOUT A SMALL OR LARGE FIRM IN YOUR CHOSEN SECTOR? CAN A SMALL FIRM AFFORD RPA?
• Regulate mature industries. Regulation: sectors heavily regulated and assign HOW MUCH REGULATION EXISTS IN YOUR CHOSEN SECTOR (SOCIAL STANDARDS/EXTERNAL CONSTRAINTS).