Fail Often To Succeed Sooner: Adventures in Innovation

A new mom lies in bed in the Postpartum unit as a Kaiser Permanente (KP) Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) wheels in a TV/video cart so mom can watch an educational video about circumcision before her baby's procedure. Just when the CNA plugs in the video, another staff member enters to complete the baby's hearing screening. The CNA abruptly turns off the video and wheels the cart out of the room. The screener asks, “Has your baby been fed in the past hour? We want him restful and quiet for the hearing screen.” “No,” the mother replies, “I didn't know that you were coming.” “I'm sorry,” the screener says, “that means I can't perform the test now. I'll have to come back.” She then leaves the room. The new mom missed the educational video and the baby missed his hearing screening; two clinicians wasted their time; and care and teaching for both mother and baby were delayed. Both caregivers will have to return unsure if the situation will repeat itself. Not a single company that delivered ice went into the refrigeration business, and ice delivery services no longer exist. This is one of many stories captured from across KP's hospitals in the past two years of innovation projects using the methodology from a design firm called IDEO. Hospital staff generated many innovative ideas to address like situations using IDEO methodology. Based on the hospital staff's ideas, a board and bedside guide was developed to help show a new mom her “Journey Home.” Surveys show that moms, family, and staff love it. It was also a real journey to create a final product, and it was done using IDEO's Innovation Methodology. To better understand it and the steps leading up to the Journey Home tools, let's start at the beginning … Consider this. When refrigerators were invented, the people who delivered ice thought that they could compete if they just offered more services, lowered prices, and became more efficient. Not a single company that delivered ice went into the refrigeration business, and ice delivery services no longer exist. Wrigley's chewing gum used to be the largest-selling gum in the nation. The company only made spearmint flavor. By the time Wrigley realized that new flavors were necessary to compete, they had lost their market lead and have never regained it. At one time, Swiss watches were the most common and highly prized watches in the world. The Swiss resisted the innovation of inexpensive, battery-powered watches because they thought that the market for the delicate, jeweled precision of the Swiss watch would not be affected by innovation. The Swiss lost the majority of their market to less expensive, though equally accurate, watches made throughout the world. It is in the nature of a competitive market to innovate. The question is, Who will innovate first and most effectively? The first innovator achieves much better market advantage than the followers. Do you know the name of the second person to fly across the Atlantic? Fuzzy slippers offer a sense of home in the hospital.