Down the annals of time, it’s common for disruptive innovation to emerge from a small upstart that dared to challenge the status quo. Such small enterprises are therefore often a crucial route by which new ideas and concepts find their way to market.
A recent study from researchers at the University of Birmingham looked at the role micro-businesses can play in bringing innovation to the social care sector.
The study focused on three specific types of innovation:
- what innovation, ie what service is delivered
- who innovation, ie who provides and receives the service
- how innovation, ie how the service is delivered
What innovations
For the first type of innovation, a number of new approaches emerged, with micro-businesses offering a range of interesting approaches to care for both old and young alike.
Who innovations
There was a similar level of innovation around who was engaged, and this manifested itself in two main ways. Firstly, micro-businesses were able to deliver support to a broader range of people than their larger rivals.
It was also common for services to be set up by users of those services, and the authors advocate a culture whereby service users are empowered to self-manage as much as possible, whether that’s individually or within a local community.
How innovations
The how based innovations were found to be much more prevalent among the older age group, with a particular focus on home based support. Innovations focused around changes to the traditional time and task based approach, with more flexible and personalized approaches being delivered to patients.
When the authors spoke with the owners of these enterprises, they revealed how their size afforded them the flexibility to try new things as the feedback loop was so short, the learning cycle was therefore incredibly quick.
Sadly, stories of new approaches being squashed or lost amidst layers of bureaucracy are legion, and the research highlights the continuing challenges faced by larger organizations that wish to become more agile and responsive.
Now, of course, innovation is not the preserve of small organizations, but it does underline the difficulties faced by larger organizations who strive to adopt the sense and respond style experimentations of their smaller peers in order to deliver the kind of personalized service that people increasingly strive for.
It seems unlikely that big behemoths will ever go away, and there are undoubtedly many advantages to having scale, but this study reminds us that there are also clear benefits to adopting an open approach to innovation and partnering up with those capable of delivering the experimental approach that is so often required for innovation to thrive.
