Creating Value through Incremental Innovation: Managing Culture, Structure, and Process.
While the looming threat of large-scale disruptive innovation consumes disproportionate attention, incremental innovation remains an important tool for preserving and growing radiology practices within a dynamic marketplace. Incremental innovation, defined as the process of making improvements or additions to an organization while maintaining the organization's core product or service model, is accessible to practices of all sizes and must not be overlooked if practices are to maintain their competitive advantage. This article explores cultural, structural, and process enablers for incremental innovation. Successful innovation cultures foster the ability to import and exploit external knowledge (adaptive capacity), encourage creative thought from all levels of the organization, display sensitivity toward the competency-destroying potential of certain changes, cultivate a positive perceptual bias toward organizational threats, and build tolerance for risk and uncertainty when prototyping new ideas. Structural elements promoting incremental innovation include dedicated resources for innovation planning, flexible and organic team structures, strong centralized governance models, robust communication systems, and organizational incentives encouraging exploration of new concepts. Processes important to innovation include periodic environmental scanning, strategic and scenario planning, use of an objectively gated system for testing and filtering new ideas, and use of an approach to implementation that emphasizes empowerment of project managers, removal of barriers, and proactive communication around change.
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- Radiology
- Planning Techniques
- Organizational Innovation
- Organizational Culture
- Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
- Humans
- 3202 Clinical sciences
- 11 Medical and Health Sciences
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Location
Related Subject Headings
- Radiology
- Planning Techniques
- Organizational Innovation
- Organizational Culture
- Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
- Humans
- 3202 Clinical sciences
- 11 Medical and Health Sciences