Fostering innovation: an organisational perspective

This article offers an organisational perspective on innovation in healthcare. It suggests that healthcare managers can become active, rather than passive, forces of innovation and change adoption and can create positive organisational dynamics, by successfully identifying the inhibitors and enhancers of innovation processes. Four phases of the innovation process are introduced (i.e. problem identification, idea generation, idea evaluation and implementation), and the specificities of the individual, team and organisational context are considered to overcome barriers to innovation. Finally, the article highlights the iterative nature of innovation in relation to the four phases of innovation and illustrates how ideas are transferred and transformed as they unfold across organisational levels.