Innovation Lifecycle Management: Innovation Connectors

When an innovation is widely applicable across multiple sectors, we often call it a horizontal solution, while an innovation that mainly works within a single industry, like healthcare, is called a vertical solution. Zoom Technologies’ webinar used as a medium for telehealth during the COVID-19 Pandemic is an excellent example – with no change to a horizontal solution, it solved many healthcare vertical problems.

The Innovation Connectors subject area caters to unmodified horizontal solutions that can be applicable, helpful, and potentially even more disruptive than healthcare-specific vertical solutions. The unobvious ‘Innovation Connectors’ have a potential to significantly disrupt healthcare ecosystem and the way certain healthcare practices are conducted. This section focuses on various how-to-guides for innovation practitioners to see unobvious “connections” and “cross-pollination” opportunities outside of healthcare that help discover relevant horizontal innovations to address healthcare vertical problems. Cross-pollination creates a collision space which will lead to unexpected innovation to solve healthcare problems.