What Healthcare Organizations Can Learn About Innovation from Startups, Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we touched on embracing failure, becoming more nimble and increasing transparency with customers throughout the product/service development process.  What other ideas can healthcare organizations borrow from today’s entrepreneurs to stay competitive and innovative?

One concept that builds on stronger connections with customers throughout the process is the “MVP”, which stands for Minimum Viable Product*.  Until the Lean Startup movement took hold, most organizations (healthcare and many other industries too) would develop products or services that were polished to perfection before they were released publicly – and any defects, bugs or imperfections were to be avoided at all costs.  The tradeoff of producing “perfection” is that not only does it take a long time (leaving an opening for competitors to beat you to the marketplace), it might not even be what customers want – and missteps like this, with so much time and money invested, can make it hard to bounce back.

Enter the Lean Startup movement – the new standard in the entrepreneurial world is to release your MVP upon the world as soon as possible and let your customers interact with it so they can help you to quickly learn what works and what doesn’t (not only to unearth bugs or other defects, but to help validate the concept itself and see how it is used by your target market).  The MVP method shortens time to market dramatically and also reveals whether or not you’re on to a hot idea.

Successful MVPs are the ideal, of course – but let’s suppose the concept flops.  In the old days, having a new offering fail could mean “game over” for a given healthcare organization’s product/service plans – in fact, I recall at least two occasions in my days as a digital marketer in a huge healthcare organization where the initiatives showed mere hints of possible failure based on a very small sample set, and the plug was pulled on them before the final data was in.  Clearly, there is something to be said for examining your organization’s appetite for risk, and for resolving to base decisions on solid data versus fear of failure.

By contrast, what do startups generally do when they learn that the market doesn’t want what they have to offer?  They pick themselves up by their bootstraps and they pivot – meaning, they turn on a dime and head in a new direction.  Pivoting requires that you look for the “gold nuggets of learning” among the ashes – that handful of features or ideas that the customers responded to favorably – and start building a new offering out of these elements.  Some famous pivots include Flikr, which started out as an online gaming company; PayPal, which was originally a “digital wallet for Palm Pilots”; and Twitter, which began as a podcasting platform.

So as a healthcare professional seeking to innovate within your organization, how will you apply these concepts to your product/service ideation and development going forward?  Our venerable industry faces a lot of hurdles and constraints, from healthcare reform to cybersecurity – but the rewards can be significant if you take some calculated risks, let go of some of the old, tired approaches and “think like a startup”.

*Source: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, 2011.

Hilary Weber, Founder & CEO, Opportu Startup Leadership. http://opportu.com/