Required Capabilities for Employee-Driven Innovation to Emerge in Healthcare Organizations Comment on "Employee-Driven Innovation in Health Organizations: Insights from a Scoping Review"

Abstract

Employee-driven innovation (EDI) is still under-researched in health policy and system research, particularly in lowand middle-income countries. EDI is recognized as a lever to improve the commitment of health workers, promote quality of care, and contribute to creating value and transforming healthcare practices, services, structures, and processes. The mechanisms underlying the emergence of EDI processes and outcomes include core capabilities to cope with complexity, building spaces for learning, fostering sense-making and sense-giving, and collective problem-solving. The development of such capabilities depends on organizational and individual conditions. Organizational capabilities include complex leadership, trust management practices, task complexity, and the availability of slack resources. Individual capabilities comprise capabilities to cope with complexity, such as sense-making, autonomy, system thinking, and adaptive learning. The sustainability of EDI depends on local ownership and frontline employees' involvement during problem definition, innovation design, and implementation.