In 2009, I joined Magellan Health and moved to Phoenix, and remember thinking on the plane how unlikely it seemed that lightning would strike twice. I had been involved with a team that created the Georgia Crisis & Access Line, which won the 2008 Council of State Government Innovations award and was featured in Business Week.
But on that same flight, I read the Ten Faces of Innovation by IDEO’s Tom Kelley, and began realizing that frame-breaking healthcare innovation does not occur by happenstance. It’s a discipline that comes from its aggressive pursuit. We played undercover boss to get a behind-the-scenes view, we borrowed from other fields and we prototyped relentlessly. And, we were Council of State Governments Innovations finalists every year from 2009 to 2012.
It’s time to put the innovate back in healthcare innovation, and this requires a global learning community. Our international summits are designed to support this development and the pioneers who are leading this important work.