KP Tacconi: How Cultural Curiosity Fuels Innovation

In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare environment, “innovation” is far more than a buzzword. At NYU Langone Health, innovation is a disciplined process—one powered by human-centered design, a culture of curiosity, and a relentless willingness to learn from both success and failure. In this exclusive interview, KP Tacconi, Senior Innovation Manager and leader of NYU’s Innovation Lab, reveals how a culture of inquiry, adaptability, and intellectual diversity can transform good intentions into scalable improvements for patients, clinicians, and the system at large.

Drawing from over a decade of experience spanning public relations, research, and product management, Tacconi’s journey demonstrates that sustainable innovation isn’t accidental. It’s cultivated by organizations that make space for creativity, prioritize deep stakeholder understanding, and view every misstep as a source of learning. This conversation offers not just a window into NYU’s innovation engine, but a blueprint for healthcare leaders, executives, and future changemakers on how cultural curiosity—both inside and outside the hospital—fuels real progress.

How Did KP Tacconi Find Their Way Into Innovation?

KP Tacconi’s path to innovation was anything but direct—and that’s part of what fuels their perspective today. When asked if they always expected to work in innovation, Tacconi responded, “No, I don’t think I expected to end up here. When I first started out, I thought I was going to work in public relations and then worked in research and kind of marketing strategy for a while. That was when I discovered this whole realm of human-centered design.”

That pivotal discovery led Tacconi to pursue a master’s in innovation management, marking a “massive pivot” in their career. “Now, in the past ten years, I’ve been focusing on innovation strategy and product management. And this role at NYU has really married the two in a nice way,” Tacconi reflected.

Key Takeaway: Careers in innovation often start with unexpected detours. Rather than a single, linear path, it’s a blend of disciplines and experiences—creative, analytical, strategic—that shapes the best innovators.

What is Human-Centered Design, and Why Does It Matter?

Asked what drew them to human-centered design, Tacconi explains: “It was really great at blending left and right brain thinking. So, really analytical, but then also really creative. I wanted a creative day job, and I also really like solving problems. So, it was great to take a really research-driven approach to understanding the context and the people involved in something you want to optimize, and then coming up with great design solutions that are super elegant and super relevant for those people.”

In practice, human-centered design at NYU means:

• Deeply understanding the lived experiences of clinicians, patients, and staff.
• Using qualitative research and empathy to surface pain points.
• Synthesizing insights to generate “elegant and relevant” solutions.

Why is this so important in healthcare innovation? Because, as Tacconi points out, “The academic side comes up with great ideas and publishes them, but there’s never any conversation with the medical side.” NYU’s innovation lab is built to bridge that gap, ensuring that breakthroughs translate into improved clinical experiences.

How Does NYU’s Innovation Lab Turn Ideas Into Real-World Change?

Explicit answer: NYU’s process begins with strategic alignment and evolves through disciplined, staged development—moving from raw ideas to tested, scalable solutions.

Tacconi details the process: “We’ve aligned ourselves really nicely with the digital strategy for our CIO’s office. Often it will be things aligned with new emerging technologies or care experience improvements the CIO is interested in. But being part of the team for four years, we have our own perspectives from talking to different stakeholders, both internally and on the hospital side. We see a lot of the day-to-day feedback that doesn’t always have a channel to share through.”

How do projects get prioritized and developed? Tacconi uses a portfolio approach—“I’m always thinking about the innovation funnel. It’s nice to have a blend of projects in different areas, from early-stage explorations to prototyping or proof-of-concept in a clinical environment. You want a range of things in the funnel where you’re exploring, testing, validating, and at various times, saying, ‘Okay, we’re not going to explore that anymore, but this one feels promising. Let’s move that forward.’”

Innovation Funnel Key Stages:

1. Exploration – Identifying and scoping potential opportunities.
2. Ideation & Early Prototyping – Generating solutions, using tools like AI-generated images to visualize concepts.
3. Rough Prototyping – Quick, low-fidelity prototypes (Tacconi jokes, “cardboard and duct tape”).
4. Proof of Concept – Testing in a limited real-world environment (e.g., one exam room, select clinicians).
5. Small Scale Rollout – Controlled expansion to validate impact and adoption.
6. Enterprise Deployment – Full rollout, once the solution is “de-risked.”

This methodical approach borrows from models like Six Sigma (with its “stage gates”), but Tacconi is quick to note that innovation is “kind of like art in a way”—requiring creativity and comfort with ambiguity.

What Does Human-Centered Innovation Look Like on the Ground?

Explicit answer: Innovation at NYU isn’t top-down. It’s designed to surface frontline ideas, rigorously vet them, and ensure solutions are both meaningful and feasible.

Tacconi describes a flagship project: Nursing staff on the inpatient side had a lot of questions and ideas… so we shadowed a bunch of nurses and figured out, well, what is a day in the life of a nurse like? We watched them get interrupted a million times. We talked with them about the systems, the technologies, the workflows. Then we summarized opportunity areas and hosted what we called an ‘ideation break room.’ We gave them food and things like that for them to join us on their break, share some ideas, and then go back to the floor.”

Why did this work?

• It acknowledged the reality of frontline schedules.
• It created a psychologically safe, convenient space to contribute.
• It resulted in a flood of ideas, which Tacconi’s team distilled into five key concept areas, now under consideration for vendor partnerships and broader implementation.

Tacconi admits, “At first, we thought we’d host a workshop at lunch. But in conversation, we realized, ‘If we had all the nurses come through at lunch, who would be taking care of the patients?’ We had to be responsive to new information, propose an alternative, and leadership saw the logic behind it.”

Real innovation requires:

• Flexibility in methods.
• Responsiveness to frontline realities.
• Leadership buy-in for creative, sometimes unconventional approaches.

How Do You Prioritize and Tune Frontline Feedback?

Explicit answer: By separating how staff function day-to-day from what ideas they suggest, and digging into the “why” behind requests.

Tacconi says, “When we go out and talk to people on the floor, there are questions about how your day-to-day functions and questions about what ideas you have. We like to focus more on the day-to-day side because then you really understand what’s working and what’s not. Understanding that contextual knowledge is really what we need as innovators.”

Often, staff will suggest a solution (e.g., “we need a newsletter”), but the real need is different—a better communication medium, for example. The team interrogates why a solution is requested, ensuring the final design truly addresses core needs, not just surface symptoms.

Tacconi’s framework for evaluating frontline ideas:

1. Ask about the daily experience first.
2. Understand the pain points and workarounds.
3. When a solution is proposed, ask why—what underlying need does it serve?
4. Design around the core need, not just the suggested fix.

How Does the Innovation Team Deal with Failure and Resistance?

Explicit answer: Failure is not just tolerated—it’s mined for learning. The innovation team at NYU holds regular retrospectives to debrief on setbacks, extracting valuable insights and ensuring psychological safety.

Tacconi reflects, “You learn more from failures than successes. A success just shows you the path you took was good, but won’t even tell you if it’s optimal. A failure will tell you the myriad of things that didn’t go well. By inadvertently failing, we stumble upon new knowledge we didn’t know existed.”

How does this show up in team culture?

• Project failure does not reflect on team members’ value or performance.
• Retros are held after unsuccessful stakeholder conversations or presentations: “We’ll all gather together and debrief and say, okay, what happened? What did we learn about that person, their values, their expectations? What did we learn about the work itself? About the healthcare industry? Then we take those learnings and just do smarter work next time.”
• The aim: foster a culture where learning from failure is part of the process, not an exception.

Tacconi adds, “I want to create a culture where learning from failure is part of how we do things, and we’re really open to that as a learning culture.”

This approach does three things:

1. Normalizes honest reflection and sharing of missteps.
2. Accelerates learning cycles.
3. Builds trust and long-term resilience.

What Advice Does KP Tacconi Offer for Aspiring Innovators?

Explicit answer: Focus on developing your curiosity, your qualitative research skills, and your willingness to seek diverse perspectives—formal training helps, but practice and mindset matter more.

Tacconi shares, “The master’s that I did definitely broke my brain and retrained it to think in a different way… but I know not everyone can take two years to go through that kind of exercise. Doing really good qualitative research is a massive part of it. Being really curious about understanding who someone is and what their context is—that’s a really critical component.”

KP Tacconi’s actionable tips for building an innovation mindset:

• Practice deep, open-ended listening—seek to understand why stakeholders feel or act a certain way before proposing solutions.
• Flex your creativity muscles by finding “sandbox” opportunities to think more broadly without the pressure of being technically feasible.
• Shut off your inner critic temporarily to allow for expansive ideation (Tacconi credits improv comedy classes for developing this muscle).
• Seek diversity of thought and inspiration: “My colleagues have different interests… having those sources of inspiration is helpful for keeping you intellectually curious and creative.”

Tacconi emphasizes that in healthcare, the most effective innovations rarely come from lone geniuses—they come from diverse teams willing to challenge assumptions, explore broadly, and adapt based on lived experience.

Takeaway: Curiosity Is the Catalyst

Tacconi’s story and NYU’s approach make one thing clear: innovation in healthcare isn’t a product of luck or rigid process. It’s the natural outcome of cultural curiosity—of organizations and leaders willing to probe deeper, embrace ambiguity, and prioritize learning at every step. If you’re aiming to drive innovation in your team or organization, start by asking better questions, building diverse relationships, and treating failure as your best teacher. As Tacconi reminds us, “Creativity always stems from inspiration. Seek out diversity, keep yourself interested, and your innovation work will follow.”

Actionable Insight: Whether you’re an executive or a rising professional, carve out time this week for “innovation curiosity.” Shadow a team member, join a conversation outside your usual circle, or try a rapid-fire brainstorming session—no judgment, just exploration. The next big idea might come from the question you haven’t asked yet.