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

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Hidden innovation
• hospitals
• innovation monitoring and management
• visibility

Acknowledgements

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.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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).

Notes on contributors

Trust Saidi

Trust Saidi is a postdoctoral fellow in innovation studies at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. His research interests are on the processes through which health innovation makes an impact in society. He focuses on the development, use and management of technological as well as service innovations in health care.

Taran Mari Thune

Taran Mari Thune is a professor in innovation studies at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. Her research interests are on innovation processes, innovation collaboration and networks, industrial R&D and innovation, knowledge transfer mechanisms, the role of universities in innovation and public sector innovation.

Markus Bugge

Markus Bugge is an associate professor in innovation studies at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. His research interests are on understanding how modern economies and societies evolve through technological development, innovation and socio-technical change. He studies how processes of innovation are situated geographically and conditioned by institutions, policies and practices.