Mastering Innovation in Healthcare: Practical Strategies for 2025 with David O'Malley

<p>you want to have long-term sustained Innovation you have to create innovators who can [Music] innovate hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy joined by a very special guest today we wanted to put together an episode where we could really kind of discuss the the intricacies and give some practical guidance on a topic that is extremely important in 2025 especially within the first couple weeks of 2025 I want to introduce you to David om ali uh David please introduce yourself for us uh in the audience yeah thanks Cole very much for having me uh my name is David om ali um I live in Norwalk Connecticut until recently I was SVP for strategy Innovation at VNS Health which is a New York based pider um I've worked over my career at large and small companies but I've always been focused very much on Innovation and the building of new products uh on a personal note uh since this is a podcast about Healthcare my healthc care Journey started as a volunteer emergency medical technition in Stanford Connecticut I come from a long line of nurses and my wife also is a nurse so I just want to give a huge uh shout out and respect for all our Healthcare Heroes tuning in today and you've been innovating in in the industry are innovating in general for 20 years or so more than 20 years now um as we're in 2025 uh which is hard to believe and and in 2025 people are talking about how if you do not innovate in 2025 you're not going to be around in 2030 that's what a lot of people are saying I know some of that of course is probably hype for the new year people want to get excited motivated but that does have a lot of individuals worried and so that's why I wanted to speak with you and in all honesty one of the first questions is a question that I have and what is innovation it's a term that people use as a buzzword a lot but what does it actually mean absolutely so look I'll explain it in in my words simply as possible Innovation simply put Innovation is about successfully implementing new ideas and creating value for your customers and stakeholders now when you want to put together an innovation program that means continuously doing that continuously creating continuing testing Innovations that can drive impact uh there's challenges in creating an innovation program which I would love to be able to discuss with you today um but but it is achievable it is possible if you apply certain principles and then you bring them into practice I I just feel like I guess one of my first questions is why why isn't everybody Innovative I mean because I I one of the things I think about is how we have all this Automation and all this Ai and all these Technologies but yet so many of our Industries especially Healthcare is still so far behind with implementation of any of these these things because it requires that Innovative step to get us from kind of a technology existing to actually being implemented do you feel like there's any kind of specific reason why it's so lacking in in a lot of our Industries well so first of all I'd say it's important to understand that being Innovative like the the principle of who you are being an in ative organization or being an Innovative person doesn't mean you have to create the next iPhone Innovation does exist in what you do right now so it is making your product Services better right so we talk about the horizons of innovation and the level one horizon of innovation is do what you do only evolve that so it better serves your customers better serves your stakeholders whether they be in internal or external level two on that Horizon uh on the horizons of innovation is extend your business models and I think this is really important because Innovation is very much about business models so extend your business models so that you're reaching out and you're engaging with your customers internal or external and your stakeholders in novel ways ways that add value and then your third level of innovation which is generally kind of what we think about when when it when we talk about Innovation is creating something net new so new business models that can either deliver impact that you previously weren't able to deliver generate new Revenue but have some sort of impact in the world to your customers to your stakeholders and so I think it's important to understand Innovation programs hit at can hit at all three levels but I would argue that most people when they're thinking about Innovation and driving Innovation at their organizations well 60% of that should be at Horizon 1 really okay at the the more basic level at the more basic level which is just kind of trying to make things incrementally better in the way so that could be waiting room times how our patients schedule how our patients message us that's all things like that safety safety okay flow within your organization absolutely um constantly revisiting how you do things and how you engage with your stakeholders and and making sure that that's leaned out and I I do see some of that of course but I I also see a huge want to do a lot of these things it's not like people are saying they don't want to be Innovative they're saying that they want to be and you shared with me a brief um if you don't mind sharing that with the audience a story that you had at at VNS yeah so and this this is an example of of somebody who wanted to create uh create a new product and was around dementia care in particular VNS Health was very much about working at the home right and so and empowering uh caregivers to to be able to look after their loved ones as well and so you know when we were going through a pitch and this was at the end of of of some work that was done some following an innovation framework when we were at the end of this pitch the the the leader the line of business leader said to the team as he was introducing this this product doing this for our community for our for our people out there that we serve has been a dream of mine for over a decade this is the first time I've had a method or system to be able to make it a reality and that's the difference that's what you're trying to do you're trying to bring in these principles and these Frameworks that allow you to be more Innovative when you are at work um as well as when you're not I mean so you know in the context of we have work to do but we want to drive Innovation we want to be Innovative as an organization you need these principles and you need these Frameworks to allow you to be more successful to allow that individual to bring that advancement to the community or enhance that even at level one and then so you said 60% should be that level one that's that small incremental form and then how much you know we're looking at Horizon 2 or that that next level what are we looking at there I would say typically for organizations you want to be at at about 30% now we cage this we'll cage this the with the fact that some companies are out there they exist only to deliver level one you know sorry level three Horizons right I mean so you you hear about these small you know startups and Tech organizations that's they exist and that's there's nothing wrong with that um but if you are if you a large organization or midsize organization or even a small organization and and you want you have these Ambitions of being more Innovative it is good that you're able to try and play at all three levels with the understanding that you won't be successful not all of your Innovations will be successful so I think that that's important when you have a framework and we'll discuss this as we start talking about our principles and how you implement that Cod sorry to interrupt but no that is the question is I guess is about that risk in a way right because if you're a startup and you make all of your money from innovating then it makes sense to risk everything to innovate but if you're a a larger hospital that provides services to the community on a consistent basis you don't want to take massive risks to do massive Innovation like that I think it is imperative no matter whe you're a large organization or sport organization to drisk your Investments That is an imperative and as we get in towards maybe you know at the as we start working through this call let's talk a little bit about how you drisk your Investments so that you can still create many Innovations and you know when to disengage from the ones that just clearly aren't going to drive impact to your organization or to your stakeholders and help get the CFO signature as we were talking about earlier that's a key part of that um so I think the first thing is how do we prevent someone kind of ending up in that situation that that senior leader did at VNS where they're they had this great solution and this great idea but they were never able to to Really innovate and and iterate and Implement how do we prevent that from happening what are the kind of the steps as an organization or as a a team to establishing The Innovation and that Innovative environment so I think let's just step back for a moment you know if you want to be Innovative you have to allow Innovation to happen in your organization and and I have four principles of innovation that every organization I believe can Implement whether it's small scale or large scale they can balance that with their Ambitions and you know we can dive into these but at a high level uh the first principle is be deliberate the second one is create innovators you want to be Innovative you got to create innovators the third one is to make space and the fourth is be inclusive be happy to dive into those if you want to keep it cool yeah let let's start with the I guess kind of the implementation of in who's responsible I guess as well for each of these Keys especially when you're dealing with an organization sometimes of 40,000 50,000 people you have multiple layers of senior leadership everyone who's kind of responsible for different things so in those organizations how does those four Keys get implemented if we can go kind of one by one yeah absolutely look so let's let's kind of talk about this um so being deliberate I think it's very very important that no matter what you do in life that that you're deliberate about it and I I think that this gets to the initial part of your question all right it's got to be called out it needs to be owned and preferably it needs to be owned at the highest levels of the organization I I've i' well yeah I've been in SE Sweden and I've I've heard this from you know sea level Executives and even as high up as the CEO in the organizations I've been in how do we be more Innovative I'd like us to be more Innovative and and they really want to see that coming from their organization and I think that that's great because it starts off with that burning platform starts off with someone with gravitas saying we're we're going to be deliberate about our Innovations okay so whatever you decide to do make sure that there's alignment at the executive level and the next level of of the executive uh leadership team uh and your senior leadership team and make sure that you're doing it deliberately you again ideally the CEO wants to say I want to introduce Innovation to this organization I want us to be more Innovative you don't always get that of course but I think it's very very important to be deliberate and I just suppose that with you know you'll see sometimes what we call Innovation Theater which is you know you know someone will they'll they maybe they might run a shark tank or something which is by the way I have absolutely no problem with it I think it's great because people love that and it makes them feel good and it's it's great and it it takes away from The Daily Grind um but it should not be confused for a deliberate Innovation program that drives sustained Improvement and impact uh through bringing new innovative ideas and solutions to Bear yeah and and that's because like you kind of were talking about with the different kind of Horizons this is a much like you said sustained that was a key word this is not a let's come up with a random idea just for the sake of coming up with an idea so that we can you know Market it this is a way of solving problems and making things better and expanding the organization I think that's really important and with that deliberateness how do let's say the CEO and the executive and everyone's on board and now it comes down to kind of the project managers and the actual team who are creating this do you have any advice on some of the first steps in a project to make sure that you're taking all the actions deliberately um well so yeah absolutely look we can talk about there's a there's always you always have to worry about when something gets decided an executive level how it then translates down to the ground level and you're always going to be running up against uh a you know the rock on the hard place of Executives want to see more Innovation which is great right and so then you kind of get down into the the that management layer and there's a large management layer that's responsible for operational improvements it's for it's got key metrics that it's responsible for and those folks are going be well there now I've got something else on my plate all right so how am I going to do that it's the how right and I think there's two there's two things that are very very important and it gets down into the next two principles the number the next principle is create innovators okay you want to have long-term sustained Innovation you have to create innovators who can innovate now you're now you're starting now you're starting to really get down into into the into the meat of things there's great EX examples of how you're were able to do that and again that doesn't have to be we're going to go on some large you know Journey on that you can create the opportunity for people to be uh microlearning through Innovations and and I'll will give you a couple of examples on this Adobe created in the open sourced and you can you can actually buy these thing called the red box and it was very simple it was very easy it was given out to teams of about two or three people anywhere in an organization and they had to follow a small little process they're actually given coffee cards I believe as well because they say no innovation happens coffee and so uh they would uh you know you would actually go through a timed uh basis of coming up with an innovation that you think might be able to work and again this was very low risk there was nothing to it it cost almost nothing but it was deliberate so the teams would start out with a critical question usually in the form of how might we how might we improve something reduce something reduce waste improve experience maybe uh increase quality something along those lines so you they were given that opportunity to be able to do that and and so by a by doing this you're making it so that you actually are creating this Innovative Spirit within your organization I would give you go back to GE um GE had a lot of manufacturing around the world and in these lean-based organizations they had a thing called a moonshine shop and it was literally a place where where employees could go if they had downtime because machines obviously would go down they could go up there and they could Tinker with things they could say well if we move the flow in this direction it would be okay right and so you know you you put that in with a good framework for testing those hypotheses making it safe and all of a sudden you're starting to create that Innovative thought process the last thing I'd say is when it comes to is don't be afraid to invest in coaching get people in your organization whether it's you know kind of a consultant consultancy and you don't have to go to the very large ones you know get somebody in your organization train them up ideally over a period of time get them some coaching get them some help so that you're able to again keep this sustainable I would love to see if an organization wants to go and and be more Innovative I think it's very important again in in this idea of being deliberate that we have people who deliberately think about Innovation all of the time and are constantly engaging in that I was very lucky in GE to have that as more or less my full-time role um so I think that that's important to to do but so that's number two and I I think the the next part of your question on on the how is the third one is principle is make space make space okay so just to recap where we are for everyone so far SE Suite needs to be deliberate and so does middle management we are going to innovate and the next thing is we're going to create innovators it's not just we're going to innovate let's get to town it's okay we're going to innovate we all are really going to push this forward but we need to create innovators uh and to do that we might need to invest in coaching we need to make it a safe space through the use of some very lowrisk things right you know Anonymous suggestion boxes or just I know one of the things that we've done at Jefferson Health Plans is some of the teams are given an hour of free time to think about areas for improvement once a month um so a lot of great suggestions and then now this is the next step which is okay we have some innovators or people who are are feelings more safe but we need to make space for them to actually put things into action can you explain how that works and what that means you've just almost explained it which is one hour a week you know again if it's a deliberate time box I mean as Leaders this is something we can do this is absolutely something we don't need we shouldn't need permission and this shouldn't be higher for us if Innovation is a priority treat it like one um our I mean here's a great example the the quarterly board meetings are important they're scheduled we scheduled them so schedule your Innovation don't we don't be afraid of of of being being able to say listen we have a critical question you all are recognized as innovators we've made this investing and some sort of facilitation or coaching we would like you to spend 4 hours one day one week or whatever it takes to deliberately help innovate around this critical question right and again the the bigger problems or the bigger Innovations will probably take more time the smaller ones will probably be less I you s an hour whether that's a week or you know four hours maybe a half day a month or something along those lines it's something that is quantifiable um and then you know you want to make sure that when you do bring people into that space you're not wasting their time you're bringing the right tools to solve the right problems and there various Frameworks that you can use depending on where you are in that Innovation cycle and what problem it is that you are trying to solve but you know making space I think is is is critically important I like what you said if it's a priority then we should schedule like a priority that's so important because like you said with board meetings and things we we schedule but when it comes to our creative processes we kind of just fill that around whatever gaps we have if if anything in your career or your life for that matter slides up the side of your desk it's not going to get done it's not a it's not going to be a priority and when it's not a priority there'll be no accountability for it there'll be nobody nobody you know you'll be accountable for all of these things and not for that which again it gets back to the being deliberate side of things one of the reasons that I held off of Academia for so long was because of this idea that we kind of turn out research without implementing it or having ever some some researchers never implemented and uh I kind of worry about that when it comes to Innovation you know I'm a big fan of like hackathons I think they're really fun um but like you were kind of saying earlier you know it's kind of it's not sustainable that's one of the issues hackathons and things like that but even if you are sustainably coming up with ideas and sustain sustainably you know setting aside that time there is that other end of it which is actual implementation and kind of rate of success as well and so once we have that time set aside and that space set aside where do we go from there so like at the beginning we started talking about how you drisk your investment in this Innovation program right or with any Innovation that you're bringing to bear at some point in time kind of like the example we had earlier on at some point in time you're going to say well look we've we've we've ideated around this we've we feel we've got something here and again if it's your level one I everything in healthcare needs to be done you know it's it's a very regulated environment um not that other organiz not that other Industries aren't but but you speak for healthcare it's very regulated and you know at very least you need to document Sops and everybody you need to share what some of this information is so it's very very important that you have a system as you move along I am a very big fan of what I would call trunch funding which is and and this you know by the way you're see f is going to love this right because they don't want this big black hole which is give me a million dollars and I'll be Innovative right you're able to you're obviously you're going to need something I mean being delivered you're going creating spaces is also creating budget but what what you're going to be able to do there is you're going to be able to say okay look I've got these five or six ideas that might work so let me let me ideate around those let me just get so far and then test them and then say well you know we came up with six of them three of them I don't know maybe maybe not they're going to work they're not going to work or we're just not ready for those right now then you would move on to the next phase and you might shed one and you would move on to the next phase I think you're obviously the the lower the impact and I suppose in your horizon one Innovations as well I think that's more focused on yourselves your internal selves I think so you probably would get to see smaller changes more incremental changes but better changes that stick longer especially when you you you know what the environment that is being released into and as you start to get into some of the others then I I think the the risk goes up but also so does the reward if we're being honest with each other and so I think that this is important that you have a balanced portfolio because look I mean there's no problem with sticking with with level one I mean our operations run our business but you know the your ability to actually create the higher rewards like with everything are going to be when you you move up that scale yeah and so trch funding along with a structured framework for being able to bring you to the point where you know something's got legs and it could work and it could still not work of course but at least you've tested it rigorously through a process and now you've der risked it as much as you possibly can how did do that trch funding work I'm just taking notes so I I love the balanced Innovation portfolio and I think that's important in a variety of reasons not just risk and financial but also um for the economy of your organization but what what is trch funding how does that work I know some of our like myself Healthcare people might not be as familiar with that yeah absolutely so I mean we'll use some round numbers the beginning of the year you say we're going to engage in an innovation program you know we we'll make some assumptions which need to be tested but some assumptions might be that you've got some structures in place that would allow you to be Innovative and what you would say in general you would say was look I want to spend let's say a million dollars towards Innovative programs within our organization in 2025 right and so what I think that that represents is really should represent is is is an upper limit of where you want to be but it's not a floor and so what you would say is you you would talk about what your possible opportunities are and you would have a system for saying well the this is where we want to be strategically and these are some of the opportunities we have to uh be Innovative that align to where we are want to be from a strategic perspective okay that's number one now let's I talked about those six so you would deliberately come in and there's governance structures in place and you would say we want to take those six to the next phase those six all combined with will take X number of hours with X number of people and if you're in a healthcare organization and you're you're using uh clinical staff you're going to have to backfill that you're going to have to pay for overtime or you're going to have to pay for for uh prdm nursing to come in so that's a cost that you should be allocating that towards your your Innovation budget but with those six you'll get there and three of them in our example fell out after maybe the first phase or the second phase you're not going to pay for anymore you're only going to fund the next set and so let's say for example in in my model you know the the first stage gate is about six weeks it's not 40 hours at six weeks it's but it's it's six weeks in duration and let's say it takes combined 100 hours with all of your team together you funded that you're not going to fund that for those three products or three ideas that won't go forward now you look at the next ones and you say well okay now we're getting to the next phase which is a little more in depth therefore we need to spend a little more money on this and you'll get to the next phase and one of them will fall out and so as you're you're not committing to you know whatever a million divided by six is for an entire year you're trunch funding these at each stage once you feel a critical threshold has been made and you can have debates about this is it is the ROI there and that does allow you very much to stay engaged and on point and deliberate again I use that word on what are you trying to achieve with this Innovation how does it support us is this the thing that we should be doing should we be focusing our our scarce resources on this and let them drop out as as they start to fail the criteria for moving forward you will get to a point where it says look this is legs we need to spin this off into its own business unit clearly or we need to we need now we need to really focus down on this and double down on this let's put it in the annual planning budget let's get marketing weight behind it let's get you know clinical weight behind it let's get quality legal Etc and and and let's get the change management in place to make this a reality great but now you've got your pipeline your pipeline is now coming through with new Innovations and New Opportunities so you're replacing those ones I think it's very important you're replacing the ones that don't make the first stage gate with new opport unities as you get through so you're always continuously filling your funnel so you set that budget and then that allows you have that yeah ideally it allows you to have that flow I I have a question about the implementation part after the part where you're transitioning to a department or a unit and this is off off we had scripted it's an important question um a lot of Hospital systems are Mo you know 35 hospitals 100 hospitals Etc it's getting very large one of the problems that I I've seen I spoke with someone at um Providence about this but when you innovate something at let's say hospital in Center City Philadelphia yeah as you kind of go further out in the application of that Innovative product or idea at different hospitals it begins to get implemented less and less correctly right is there any advice you have on on how to make sure when you're transitioning from kind of the Innovation team to to the implementation team how you make sure that across hospitals and geography it's effective well so I I would say so let's go back to the levels of innovation at the horizons of innovation when it's Horizon one we should have a methodology in place for making any changes so those are usually your Sops right it's usually education and your your education departments there's usually something that helps to change management when it gets to the others so these are new ways of engaging customer are just completely new new products and I I think this is a great example of this because my answer here is treated like a product get product management in place start to understand you're going from one hospital to 35 in your example could be multiple States as well with multiple levels of Regulation okay so now what you need to do is now you need to start about like treating this as if it was a marketable product and bring this to the hospitals one after the other by meeting maybe some of the criteria and the needs that hospital 10 would have that you know site one two and three don't have we we would one of the examples we had on this ge was a G digital we try to create products that would help in service for example so every business unit had a service line you sell a jet engine it needs to be serviced you sell a power station it needs to be serviced and so the goal there was to be able to to to start with a subset of Industries uh Al line of business and how they service the thing that they sold but then over time you want to be able to build on that so you've got the same platform you've got the the product set is going to is going to expand and it's going to increase that was obviously very complex because it's a global organization there's you know an MRI versus a power station there isn't much in common but would you would you would think there's more commonality in a Health Care System the changes obviously are going to be some of the local variants based on maybe where location is or what their service lines are like what what services do they offer in a particular location but I would say but the answer to your question is invest in product management treated it like a product that consumers want to buy that makes so so basically we'll we'll start from the top seite will say hopefully that we're ready to innovate we're going to create the space for these innovators we're going to create the innovators investing in coaching really really giving them the opportunity and then we need to get the CFO and some Financial Funding on board to allow for like you said that the stages and to kind of integrate the financial management within project management and then kind of as we're getting towards the end if it's a a smaller project one that maybe has to do with I'm just thinking of like Epic do phrases like let's say you studied technique coaching techniques for patients or any of these things that don't require you know major um overhauls go through L&amp;D Learning and Development you know get it out that way that's a good way of doing it but if it becomes something like especially uh one of the things I do is I developed some software at a time uh but it's something that needs to be implemented you need to put it in a department have a budget assigned to it or treat it as a product or maybe on Horizon 3 level right an individual its own business unit entirely essentially yeah I mean you would often see this as well in uh in in sort of Hospital Systems is you've gathered a team the team will go through the process and at the end of the day the team becomes the new product you you actually bring the team along with you so I mean and on that team yes you could have technical folks but you could have clinical folks who are coming in there that's not unheard of I mean that happens I think more often people probably hear about um you know I think one of the other things we have to sort of also think of uh this concept of decentralized command let's try and get away from the idea that every Innovation you again in this idea of creating innovators has to be you know weighted and it's heavy let let's bring in some prag pragmatic um perspective onto this I was at a a hotel because these to travel a lot in California was it was a marot and I was I was maybe going up to somebody who was taking care of the lounge uh that was there I looked in the back and I saw these all Post-it notes all over the place and some some drawings it was clearly different I said that's interesting what what do you got there and they said oh we have um we have somebody who comes by and engages our entire team um and it it happens once a quarter and they they they shut down the lounge for a day or they take us offsite for a day we do it in here and mean and we we just we just want to know how can we make the customer experience better and you know they didn't want me to go in back but I could kind of see uh so here's the things we're doing this quarter and here's how we're going to measure them to see if they worked and because I was in that area I was great to see and that that's that's an example of there's a deliberate investment and it's a critical question there's a process and there's a hypothesis and now they're testing that and they're determining whether or not they get the ROI back on that that was that was simple that was done at a local at a ground level that's you know let's make sure that we're not making this so heavy and so weighted that we want to lose that it's almost like you said earlier on having a suggestion box I think a suggestion box is half the problem you know that the suggestion box is I would like to you know that's the critical question all right well should you have some autonomy in your unit or you know in you're in labor delivery or you're in college or something to just go and make the change that's very much something that needs to be weighed by every ex organization but I would encourage that I would say you should be thinking about how you allow you've created innovators let them be Innovative let they know mostly what it is that the consumers uh in their organization whether it be the other clinicians or whether it be the customers the the patients and their caregivers need and want so let's let these micro Innovations come out and let's they're the lowest risk as the risk goes up whether it's funding or the impact that you might have positive or negative on on a patient and their families then we might want to start to re you know make this something that's uh a little more inspected of course and and that's really good advice and it's very it's very important as well uh that like you said we're we're not always going towards the extreme end where it's Innovation that requires you know approvals from you know surgeons and whatnot it's good to focus on smaller things so no very good advice I think the article is also going to be excellent from this episode because uh I've I've took a lot of notes here and we really walked us through the process so can can I just say one thing that we left off Cole which is you know and it gets to this point which is the fourth inclusive but but you're we've rol right into that now you know yeah I firmly believe and I've seen this everywhere that I've been that anybody can be Innovative if they're given the space and they're given the tools to do so not one person has to come up with the idea you know I mean even the most Innovative companies you know we tend to think it was you know this we put this person on still they're Innovative they surrounded themselves with Innovative folks who who were given the space to innovate right and so I think it's important to a meet people where they are right so make sure we're meeting people where they are and make allow the Innovation to happen at every level we see sometimes maybe not as much in healthare but we definitely see um organizations create Studios Venture Studios and and and those Studios I I I love them they're great but they're usually not in the location where everybody else is and you've got to go there it's almost like you know you have to get the you know Willy Wonka's golden ticket to be able to go to the to the studio and and it's there and it's it's kind of this this th that's up here and more often than not you hear that those studios are discontinued more often than not you hear that those Studios do not produce um and that's unfortunate I think we there is Great Value in being able to take the different perspectives of people's life experiences and include those in our work we we talked about this once there's that phenomenon when you walk through a door your your perspective changes and I I I I don't know what the the the psychological term for it is but when people walk through it it's why you forget where you you know you went into the garage um or you into a room but yeah there's something about making that move from one room into another that resets your memory and for me it's incredible because we almost have that work in everything that we do we're Innovative when when we need to be Innovative and we need to get things you know we need to work through problems in our lives we could be very resourceful the minute we walk through the doors at work we leave that resourcefulness at home and now we start to dive into just the operational you know do X Y and Z and absolutely being inclusive does doesn't mean just the folks who are in the room working on something but it means taking their individual life experiences and allowing those to allowing them to bring that out in the Innovative process I had I I mean I always get nervous about this because you never know what you're going to get when you run an innovation Workshop but I've never it's never been wrong it's never failed me and the we had somebody we were working through a particularly ha uh problem that we were trying to work out level three for sure and you know as I was working through it I said look are there any parallels you might have or you might have seen outside of work in your daily life that you think is something that could contribute to solving this problem or to the experience we're trying to create and I'll never forget it people were coming up with their experience of the douggy daycare there's no correlation between douggy daycare and let's say hospice care or you know labor and delivery or something along those lines there's no correlation between it someone's like I do you know what I really like I like that I can do this yeah you know I like that I can you know all the way down they would have all of these ideas and you would bring that in you would say well what would that look like if we were to implement it here well I'll tell you exactly what it would look like right if I'm putting myself in the consumer shoes and so be inclusive is very much about making sure you're you know as what they say the business of business as people humans are are your greatest asset it's about making sure that you're taking their experiences and you're you're leveraging those the fullest effect in in your organization and so I think that that is it you know by making it safe by making it inclusive by being deliberate by creating that space that's your payback that's what you get out of this and it's sometimes unquantifiable but it never fails to deliver and it's so essential for healthcare because we serve everyone in healthcare so it's odd to innovate using only a subset of our of our market right especially when I know from not just my person maybe not everyone is is this way but personally speaking I cannot fully understand what someone else's life feels like for them when it's so different than mine you know I can I listen I try to understand but you can't fully get it so how could I innovate if I was in their shoes I need them to help me to do it so I think that's really important advice absolutely or even going to the place at GE we were we were creating a pretty strong Innovation for some factories and you know that I I said right well let's go to a factory there was only there was three of them in the world um so we were either going to go somewhere in South Carolina or Vietnam or Germany we went to Germany at the end but it was it was it was it was eye opening we could have spent months trying to analyze the problem from afar rather we we took a team we went there for a week we actually looked at what are you know it's a body storm this how do I walk in what's the first thing I do you know where is how is my Innovation going to affect this all the way through and so being able to go through that process in the place where we're expecting The Innovation to actually happen is critical and and that's all a part of being inclusive it's it's inclusive of the people inclusive of the experiences um that we're trying to drive that will help us drive The Innovation and and the ROI that we want to see from that investment really excellent advice David thank you again for for coming on I hope we can have you back on again in the future I think it's going to be a great video and a great article for the audience and uh I really appreciate you giving us your time and and excellent advice yeah well I'd be happy to come back in and again to to reiterate um innovator die it look Healthcare has always actually been an Innovative organiz industry it's always been innov we think of the innovations that we've driven in healthcare maybe maybe we tend to be a little bit hard on ourselves but I do believe there is an imperative to innovate in health care to support our mission of what we're trying to do what we're the results we're trying to to achieve uh in the healthcare industry so I'd encourage everybody who might be thinking I've always wanted to be more Innovative to actually take that leap to be deliberate about it to research it and to start to put some of the mechanisms in place that allow their companies and their people to be more Innovative in 2025 and well beyond</p>