Situated novelty: Introducing a process perspective on the study of innovation

Factors contributing to innovation readiness in health care organizations: a scoping review

Background

Increasing innovation readiness of healthcare organizations is necessary to meet upcoming challenges, including population aging, staff shortages and reduced funding. Health care organizations differ in the extent to which they are innovation ready. This review aims to clarify the concept of innovation readiness and identify which factors contribute to innovation readiness in health care organizations.

Methods

A scoping review was conducted based on the framework from Arksey and O’Malley. PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL and Web of Science were searched for studies that (a) aimed to contribute to scientific knowledge about innovation readiness of health care organizations, (b) were peer-reviewed, (c) reported empirical data and (d) were written in English, Dutch or German. Factors researched in the included studies were bundled into 4 overarching main factors and 10 sub-factors.

Results

Of the 6,208 studies identified, 44 were included. The majority (n = 36) of the studies had been conducted since 2011 and almost half of the studies (n = 19) were performed in hospitals. Of the 44 studies, 21 researched factors contributing to innovation readiness in the implementation stage of the innovation process. The authors used a variety of words and descriptions addressing innovation readiness, with hardly any theoretical frameworks for innovation readiness presented. Four main factors and 10 sub-factors contributing to the innovation readiness of health care organizations were summarized: strategic course for innovation, climate for innovation, leadership for innovation and commitment to innovation. Climate for innovation (n = 16) was studied the most and individual commitment to innovation (n = 6) was the least studied.

Conclusion

Our study identified four main factors contributing to the innovation readiness of health care organizations. Research into innovation readiness of health care organizations is a rather new field. Future research could be directed towards defining the concept of innovation readiness and the development of a framework for innovation readiness. More understanding of the interplay of factors contributing to innovation readiness in all stages of the innovation process and in diverse health care settings can support health care managers to structurally embed innovation. This review contributes to the first stage of theory building on factors contributing to innovation readiness of health care organizations.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08185-x.

Novelty Knows No Boundaries: Why a Proper Investigation of Novelty Effects Within SHRI Should Begin by Addressing the Scientific Plurality of the Field

Research on psychological novelty effects within the fields of Social Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction (together: SHRI) so far has failed to gather the momentum it deserves. With the aid of exemplary descriptions of how psychological novelty is currently approached and researched across (certain main regions of) the larger scientific landscape, I argue that the treatment of novelty effects within the multidisciplinary SHRI reflects larger circumstances of fragmentation and heterogeneity in novelty research in general. I further propose that while the concept of novelty may currently function as a Boundary Object between the contributing domains of SHRI, a properly integrated, interdisciplinary concept of novelty is needed in order to capture and investigate the scope and scale of novelty effects within research on social human-robot interaction. Building on research on the New Ontological Category Hypothesis and related studies, I argue that the novelty of social robots can be understood as radical to the extent that their comprehension requires revisions of traditional core categories of being. In order to investigate the sui generis effects of such novelty, which should not be narrowly understood as mere “noise” in the data, it is paramount that the field of SHRI begin by working out a shared, integrative framework of psychological novelty and novelty effects.

Negotiating attachments to plastic

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the office and warehouse of an organic wholesaler in Germany, this article presents a trans-sequential analysis of an innovation that aimed to reduce the use of plastic wrap. During the analytical reconstruction of the innovation process, the substitution of plastic wrap turned out to be a precarious process of negotiating attachments to plastic. Against this background, innovation is not simply about the implementation and substitution of technology by human actors, but about negotiating attachments that humans have towards objects within socio-technical assemblages. Drawing on actor-network theory and the sociology of attachment, the article highlights the dynamic interplay between persistence and problematization of plastic wrap, which characterizes the innovation process. This interplay is seen along several steps during the innovation process: from (1) the problematization of plastic dependency to (2) the mobilization of alternatives, to (3) resistance against measures to be implemented and (4) the enforcement of reusable strings as technological substitution and (5) to conclusive retrospection on the innovation process. The trans-sequential analysis shows that 'getting rid of something' might be an imperfect approach to dealing with unsustainable object relations. Instead, withdrawing is a double-sided process of detaching and attaching, removing constraints and building new ones.

A Research Pathway Model for evaluating the implementation of practice-based research: The case of self-management health innovations

This study explores the evaluation of research pathways of self-management health innovations from discovery to implementation in the context of practice-based research. The aim is to understand how a new process model for evaluating practice-based research provides insights into the implementation success of innovations. Data were collected from nine research projects in the Netherlands. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, we analysed how the projects start, evolve, and contribute to the healthcare practice. Building on previous research evaluation approaches to monitor knowledge utilization, we developed a Research Pathway Model. The model’s process character enables us to include and evaluate the incremental work required throughout the lifespan of an innovation project and it helps to foreground that innovation continues during implementation in real-life settings. We found that in each research project, pathways are followed that include activities to explore a new solution, deliver a prototype and contribute to theory. Only three projects explored the solution in real life and included activities to create the necessary changes for the solutions to be adopted. These three projects were associated with successful implementation. The exploration of the solution in a real-life environment in which users test a prototype in their own context seems to be a necessary research activity for the successful implementation of self-management health innovations.