"Leaders do not lead innovation. Leaders have to facilitate it. Leaders will impinge on everyone else's innovation," said Michael Howe at the 2010 World Innovation Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported for attendees. Howe, described by Forbes as one of the top 10 innovators of the past decade, believes the goal of businesses should be to create the right environments and support to foster innovation, and to align innovative ideas around business strategy and customer needs.

Howe explored the pace of innovation through the approach he mastered as chief executive of MinuteClinic, pioneer of the retail healthcare concept.

Innovating healthcare, Howe said, forced the company to use a different approach - one grounded in its PACE — which was framed around its Purpose, Acceptability by end-users, Culture of accountability, and the External influences it encountered along the way.

The concept, he says, was to take nurse practitioners and put them in a retail environment, putting the focus on simplicity, consistency, functionality and the confidence these trained healthcare professionals could instill in patients desirous of the convenience of a retail setting to solve the kind of (typically) minor ailments that might otherwise "ruin their weekend."

"We wanted to redefine healthcare in America by integrating it into the consumer's lifestyle," Howe recalled.

Critical to the company's innovation and financial success, he added, was its commitment to truly understanding the patient's needs, expectations, preferences and decision influencers, while at the same time acknowledging and meeting the needs of its staff. Both would be essential in creating an operational and emotional connection between patient and practitioner.

To innovate in today's business climate, Howe explained, companies must provide clarity of purpose, a mechanism for creativity and exploring possibilities and must create a web of communication for idea sharing. It's also important, he added, to encourage people to explore and understand and apply their unique gifts. In order to reach organizational potential, Howe said, "We have to get people to understand they bring a set of specific gifts, experiences and thought processes that you want them to use. You have to encourage people to understand and use those gifts."

The key, he concluded, is to encourage them not to focus on the current organizational dynamic, but rather, on what's possible and what they can do to multiply their own personal impact on the attainment of team and company goals.

"Innovation requires the right PACE," Howe said. Consider these three questions: "What are you doing? Why are you doing it? And how will you do it?"

Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan

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