School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK.
J Health Organ Manag. 2013;27(1):42-63. doi: 10.1108/14777261311311799.
The purpose of the study is to test the utility of a taxonomy of innovation based on perceived characteristics in the context of healthcare by exploring the extent to which discrete innovation types could be distinguished from each other in terms of process antecedents.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A qualitative approach was adopted to explore the process antecedents of nine exemplar cases of "challenging", "under-cover" and "readily-adopted" healthcare innovations. Data were collected by semi-structured interview and from secondary sources, and content analysed according to a theoretically informed framework of innovation process. Cluster analysis was applied to determine whether innovation types could be distinguished on the basis of process characteristics.
The findings provide moderate support for the proposition that innovations differentiated on the basis of the way they are perceived by potential users exhibit different process characteristics. Innovations exhibiting characteristics previously believed negatively to impact adoption may be successfully adopted but by a different configuration of processes than by innovations exhibiting a different set of characteristics.
RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: The findings must be treated with caution because the sample consists of self-selected cases of successful innovation and is limited by sample size. Nevertheless, the study sheds new light on important process differences in healthcare innovation.
The paper offers a heuristic device to aid clinicians and managers to better understand the relatively novel task of promoting and managing innovation in healthcare. The paper advances the argument that there is under-exploited opportunity for cross-disciplinary organisational learning for innovation management in the NHS. If efficiency and quality improvement targets are to be met through a strategy of encouraging innovation, it may be advantageous for clinicians and managers to reflect on what this study found mostly to be absent from the processes of the innovations studied, notably management commitment in the form of norms, resource allocation and top management support.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This paper is based on original empirical work. It extends previous adoption related studies by applying a configurational approach to innovation attributes to offer new insights on healthcare innovation and highlight the importance of attention to process.
本研究旨在通过探索不同类型的创新在过程前因方面的可区分程度，检验基于感知特征的创新分类法在医疗保健背景下的实用性。
设计/方法/方法：采用定性方法探索九种“具有挑战性”、“隐蔽”和“易采用”医疗创新实例的过程前因。通过半结构化访谈和二手资料收集数据，并根据创新过程的理论框架进行内容分析。应用聚类分析来确定是否可以根据过程特征区分创新类型。
研究结果为以下观点提供了中等程度的支持，即基于潜在用户感知方式区分的创新表现出不同的过程特征。具有先前被认为对采用有负面影响的特征的创新可能会成功采用，但采用的过程配置与表现出不同特征的创新不同。
研究局限性/影响：由于样本由成功创新的自选案例组成，并且受到样本大小的限制，因此必须谨慎对待这些发现。然而，该研究为医疗保健创新中的重要过程差异提供了新的见解。
本文提供了一种启发式工具，可帮助临床医生和管理人员更好地理解在医疗保健中促进和管理创新这一相对较新的任务。本文提出了一个论点，即 NHS 中存在创新管理跨学科组织学习的机会尚未得到充分利用。如果要通过鼓励创新的策略来实现效率和质量改进目标，那么临床医生和管理人员反思本研究发现的大多数创新过程中缺失的内容，特别是管理承诺（以规范、资源分配和高层管理支持的形式）可能是有利的。
原创性/价值：本文基于原始的实证工作。它通过应用创新属性的配置方法来扩展以前的采用相关研究，为医疗保健创新提供新的见解，并强调关注过程的重要性。
