Abstract
Healthcare is a core service field, not least because all of us will be involved at least in consumption if not service delivery. It has improved dramatically over the past century and benefitted from a range of innovations, both technological and organizational. But in the process healthcare delivery has become a very complex process with many different stakeholders involved such that the process and outcomes of these service operations attract intense, often critical, public interest.
In this chapter John Bessant looks at one possible route drawing on experiences under ‘extreme’ or ‘crisis’ conditions where the lack of availability of financial and human resources is forcing a radical rethink of approaches to healthcare delivery. In this context there is certainly a need for improvement to service productivity. But this may not be achieved through incremental innovation alone. ‘Doing what we do but better’ is certainly an important part of the prescription and the adoption, for example, of ‘lean’ practices testifies to a constant search for process innovations to improve efficiency. However the challenge is serious enough to require more radical solutions and this raises the question of where and how such solutions might be identified and explored.
There are demonstrable examples in places like India, Latin America and Africa and these models owe much to the systematic application of lean principles similar to those which enabled such spectacular productivity gains in the low cost airline industry. The chapter looks both at the how-question but also at the implications for diffusion to more established healthcare systems. It highlights the problems of a ‘not invented here’ response and suggests a process through which learning and transfer of these ideas might take place.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
‘The emerging market in healthcare innovation’, McKinsey Quarterly, May 2010.
- 2.
General Nursing and Midwifery and Auxiliary Nursing and Midwifery certification by the Indian Nursing Council.
- 3.
The UK supermarket chain Tesco uses a similar principle; it captures learning about supermarket operations and codifies them into a standard operating model (SOM) informally referred to as ‘Tesco in a box’; this package can then be used to transfer to new locations in a ‘drag and drop’ manner. New learning from the new site is then developed and assimilated back into the SOM.
- 4.
David Green’s approach provides a system level example of low cost manufacturing and micro-franchising which enables employment at the bottom of the pyramid whilst also offering low cost solutions to key product and process needs like eyecare, hearing care or clean water.
- 5.
Similar patterns of shared experimentation can be seen in the activities of online user communities.
References
Aggarwal, A. (2010). Impact evaluation of India’s ‘Yeshasvini’ community-based health insurance programme. Health Economics, 19, 5–35.
Akao, Y. (1991). Hoshin Kanri: Policy deployment for successful TQM. Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press.
Aker, J. C., Boumnijel, R., McClelland, A., & Tierney, N. (2010). Zap it to me. The short-term impacts of a mobile cash transfer program. Woodstock, CT: Tufts University.
Bessant, J. (2003). High-involvement innovation: Building and sustaining competitive advantage through continuous change. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Bessant, J., & Francis, D. (1999). Developing strategic continuous improvement capability. International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 19(11), 1106–1119.
Bessant, J., & Stamm, B. (2008). Search strategies for discontinuous innovation. In J. Bessant & T. Venables (Eds.), Creating wealth from knowledge. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Bessant, J., Stamm, V., Bettina, V., & Moeslein, K. M. (2011). Selection strategies for discontinuous innovation. International Journal of Technology Management, 55(1/2), 156–170.
Christensen, C. M., Anthony, S. D., & Roth, E. A. (2004). Seeing what’s next: Using the theories of innovation to predict industry change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Christensen, C. M., Grossman, J. H., & Hwang, J. (2009). The innovator’s prescription: A disruptive solution for health care. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Crisp, A. (2010). Turning the world upside down: The search for global health in the 21st Century. London: Hodder Education.
Dosi, G. (1982). Technological paradigms and technological trajectories: A suggested interpretation of the deteminants and directions of technical change. Research Policy, 11(3), 147–162.
Hamel, G. (2000). Leading the Revolution: Harvard Business School Press.
Hargadon, A. (2003). How breakthroughs happen: The surprising truth about how companies innovate. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Henderson, R., & Clark, K. (1990). Architectural innovation: The reconfiguration of existing product technologies and the failure of established firms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 9–30.
Hines, P., Cousins, P. D., Jones, R., Lamming, R., & Rich, N. (1999). Value stream management: The development of lean supply chains. London: Financial Times Management.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Prentice Hall series in experimental psychology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Leifer, R. (2000). Radical innovation: How mature companies can outsmart upstarts. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
March, J. G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science, 2(1), 71–87.
Monitor Group. (2008). Market based solutions to social care in India. Boston: Author.
NESTA. (2012). Frugal innovation: NESTA national Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. London.
Nonaka, I. (1991). The knowledge creating company. Harvard Business Review, (November-December), 96–104.
Prahalad, C. K. (2004). The blinders of dominant logic. Long Range Planning, 37(2), 171–179.
Prahalad, C. K. (2006). The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Pub.
Radjou, N., Prabhu, J. C., Ahuja, S., & Roberts, K. (2012). Jugaad innovation: Think frugal, be flexible, generate breakthrough growth. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ramalingam, B., Scriven, K., & Foley, C. (2010). Innovations in international humanitarian action. London: ALNAP.
Rich, B. R., & Janos, L. (1994). Skunk works: A personal memoir of my years at Lockheed. Boston: Little, Brown.
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. New York, NY: Free Press.
Rosenberg, N., & Birdzell, L. E. (1986). How the West Grew Rich: The economic transformation of the industrial world. New York: Basic Books.
Schumpeter, J. A. (1950). Capitalism, socialism, and democracy (3rd ed.). New York: Harper.
Shingo, S. (1983). A revolution in manufacturing: The SMED system. Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press.
Skinner, W. (1974). The focused factory. Harvard Business Review, 52(3), 113–121.
Spender, J. (1996). Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm: (1986–1998). Strategic Management Journal, 17(Winter Special Issue), 45–62.
Tidd, J., & Bessant, J. R. (2009). Managing innovation: Integrating technological, market and organizational change (4th ed.). Chichester, England: Wiley.
Ulwick, A. W. (2005). What customers want: Using outcome-driven innovation to create breakthrough products and services. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Utterback, J. M., & Abernathy, W. J. (1975). A dynamic model of process and product innovation. Omega, 3(6), 639–656.
Vaag, M. (2001). The introduction of CI through TPM: CI2000: From improvement to innovation. Denmark: Aalborg.
Womack, J., & Jones, D. (1996). Lean thinking. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Womack, J., & Jones, D. (2005). Lean solutions. New York: Free Press.
Leifer, R., McDermott, C., O’Conner, G., Peters, L., Rice, M., & Veryzer, R. (2000). Radical innovation. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bessant, J. (2014). Service Productivity in the Healthcare Sector. In: Bessant, J., Lehmann, C., Moeslein, K. (eds) Driving Service Productivity. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05975-4_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05975-4_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-05974-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05975-4
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)