Making ‘hidden innovation’ visible? A case study of an innovation management system in health care

T. Saidi, T.M. Thune, M. Bugge

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Innovation activities in health care are difficult to monitor and manage as they are often tied to improvements of ongoing practices and services. Finding a way to make ‘hidden innovations’ visible is important if innovation is to be managed strategically within and across hospitals. This paper analyses the development of an innovation monitoring and management system in the Norwegian health care sector. The system, more precisely a technical infrastructure and development of practices to support its use, is analysed as an ‘inscription device’. The paper looks at whether the system has enabled an increased visibility of innovations, and whether this has improved the capability to manage innovation. The findings indicate that the system has to some extent contributed towards making hidden innovations more visible, and it has enabled sharing and learning not only among the hospitals, but also with external partners. However, there is still a limited use of the system, which relates to lacking abilities and incentives among staff to engage with the system, as well as the absence of common guidelines and joint understanding of the notion of innovation. This underscores the point that organisational practices need to be developed for innovation to be supported and managed.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)729-741
JournalTechnology Analysis and Strategic Management
Volume33
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway through Oslo Institute for Research on the Impact of Science-OSIRIS (project number 256240) and Centre for Connected Care-C3 (project number 237766/O30). We are grateful for the constructive feedback from reviewers at the Eu-SPRI Conference (2019) in Rome where we presented an extended abstract which formed the basis for this paper. We greatly appreciate the informants who participated in the study.

FundersFunder number
Centre for Connected Care-C3237766/O30
Norges forskningsråd256240

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Making ‘hidden innovation’ visible? A case study of an innovation management system in health care'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this