“What if?”

It’s a key part of Michelle Holleran’s article for LeadingAge entitled "Innovation in Senior Living," which has insights for transformation in the world of aging services and beyond. It also includes this excerpt from a recent innovation summit in Colorado, which Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts attended and describes . . .

How to Encourage Innovation 

Creating a culture of innovation requires deep commitment and constant work. Kathryn Roberts of Ecumen has been working on it for nearly a decade, and says the organization still has a way to go. Her latest tool for spawning more innovation was learned at the Innovators Summit she attended this fall—getting the right people in the room to create intersections of ideas.  

“The summit used a focused business design template and brought people who see aging from different perspectives into the same room to collaborate,” she explains. As a result, seven new business models were hatched at the summit, a few of which hold great promise for going forward. “Some will actually turn into innovations, others will not,” she notes in a practical tone. Roberts and her team conceptualized a model called Vital-cocity, offering cities and rural communities a package of tools, processes and services to create livable communities that are socially and economically vibrant. The concept capitalizes on the idea that many baby boomers are unprepared for retirement, and leaders in aging services need to create new aging-in-place options for this new generation of retirees. The model follows the basic concept of what the Chinese are creating in their quest to build 50 age friendly cities from scratch, but instead retrofits current cities to better accommodate and attract boomers as they age.  

Roberts believes the process of inviting innovation into an organization is an important one. In addition to adopting the format of the Innovators Summit, launching the Ecumen Idea Box, and creating a new way to measure innovation, she has dedicated space in the home office campus in Shoreview, Minn., so employees can create new ideas in a place that welcomes staff to “think the unthinkable.”