Building a Healthier America: Innovation within the Boardroom

Board members are sometimes asked to assume latest ways to shape strategies to satisfy the board’s mission. It is a natural role for nurses to contribute to management discussions. Nurses have significant and lived experience of meeting challenges and opportunities, using their creativity to resolve problems, develop ideas and/or innovate.

So what’s innovation?

Innovation is the invention of recent possibilities through a brand new way of pondering triggered by a unique context to enable latest, useful, creative and unexpected connections that usually generate a brand new solution or unique adaptation, leading to optimal results for the advantage of all stakeholders.

SCAMPER technique

When asked to contribute latest ideas or solutions, it can be crucial to take care of intention and include different perspectives. It’s about creating connections between seemingly unrelated things, people and problems. Developed by Bob Eberle, it’s a tool that gives reflection questions that help stimulate modern pondering within the boardroom.

• substitute – Should we consider changing the name?
• ombine – what elements are best to incorporate to get a selected result?
• dapt – Can we adjust the context or goal group?
• odify – What can we remove or make smaller, condensed, lower, shorter or lighter?
• purpose – how can this be adapted to a different purpose?
• liminate/Minify – What is irrelevant or unnecessary?
• Earrange/Reverse – Can we modify the pace or schedule?

Remember that innovation is about purposefully solving problems or developing unique solutions. This is particularly vital in today’s boardrooms, the rapidly changing and dynamic environment through which all organizations operate.

How have nurse leaders innovated through the pandemic?

Debra Albert, senior vice chairman of patient care services and chief nursing officer at NYU Langone Health

Huber, D., Bair, H., and Joseph, M. L. (2019). An motion plan to stimulate innovation in healthcare. (6), 505-508. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2019.09.007

Mulder, P. (2018). The SCAMPER technique by Bob Eberle. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from ToolsHero: https://www.toolshero.com/creativity/scamper-technique-bob-eberle/