Creating Positive Perceptions of Your Innovation

1. Creating Positive Perceptions of Your Innovation Jim Dearing Center for Health Dissemination and Implementation Research Kaiser Permanente Colorado Synergy Project for Research, Practice and Transformation January 10-12, 2010, Albuquerque NM

2. Session Objective:To help you select, refine, and communicate one or more innovations for scale

3. What are the typical ways we select which new things to do in our organizations?

4. Traditional criteria • Is it consistent with our mission? • Do we have the staff? • Do we have the know-how? • Can we afford it? • If we build it, will they come?

5. Evidence-Based Spread Selection Criteria • Compatibility • Cost • Simplicity • Adaptability • Effectiveness • Observability • Trialability

6. These Criteria are “Innovation Attributes” • From the perspective of potential adopters, they are the characteristics that add up to positive or negative perceptions and thus decisions • Pros & cons • Pluses & minuses • Advantages & disadvantages

7. You Can Use Attributes to • Assess how staff perceive an innovation • Assess how staff talk about an innovation • Assess how potential adopters perceive an innovation • Rate websites and other information portrayals about an innovation • Compare innovations to decide the readiness of each for scale

8. Using Attributes Can Help Answer Questions Such As… • How can our outreach representatives improve presentations about our center? • Which approach to diversifying the ICT workforce will be best received? • Which faculty development strategy can most rapidly spread to other cities? • Have we described our new curricula in ways that will interest faculty at other community colleges?

9. Compatibility • … is the extent to which an innovation fits with preexisting routines, beliefs, and norms

10. Cost • … is the extent to which an innovation is less costly relative to alternatives

11. Simplicity • … the extent to which an innovation is easy to understand

12. Adaptibility • …the extent to which an innovation can be customized by an adopter without decreasing effectiveness

13. Effectiveness • …the extent to which an innovation is better than an alternative

14. Observability • …the extent to which the results of using an innovation are visible

15. Trialability • …the extent to which an innovation can be tried with low or no risk

16. Are Certain Attributes Especially Powerful? • Compatibility • Cost • Simplicity • Adaptability • Effectiveness • Observability • Trialability

17. Attribute Rating Tools • The innovation matrix • Attributes by staff perception, staff portrayal, potential adopter perception (7x3) • Diagnosing communication barriers via the matrix • The innovation profile • Composite of attributes (1x3) • The Potential for Adoption Rating score

18. In Sum • There is an evidence basis that you can use to help assess the readiness of your center’s innovation for the purpose of scale-up • The same set of attributes can be used in different ways • Attribute measurement can be as rigorous as you want it to be

19. www.research-practice.orgjames.w.dearing@kp.orgDearing JW (2009). Applying diffusion of innovation theory to intervention development, Research on Social Work Practice 19: 503-518.