—Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change
innovAGEING (iA) has just marked its first year anniversary as Australia’s national innovation network for the age services industry—a good time to remind ourselves that great innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and true innovation rarely ever happens by chance.
Combine this with urgent industry pressures, such as the need to respond to reform challenges, capture new market opportunities, meet changing consumer preferences, and invest in technologies that allow providers to be wired to care—the innovation imperative in our industry is unequivocal, and the need for a true aged care innovation network is undeniable.
In this regard, iA has consistently focused on the following objectives:
As an innovation network, iA has stewardship and curation responsibilities—addressing organisational challenges in aged care is in our DNA. In essence, we are a community of practice, sharing ideas and working together to solve complex industry problems.
To date, our work has emphasised that:
Supporting this, a few iA milestone initiatives have included:
It really is incredible what a difference a year makes, and to get a sense of the rich exchange of ideas currently underway in our industry, a quick review of the Innovation Hub speaker’s program at LASA’s National Congress in Adelaide shows the panoply of the impressive ideas and initiatives underway in aged care.
Likewise, a headcount of the attendees at the Innovation Hub presentation sessions and panel discussions, and approximately half of National Congress attendees visited the Hub at least once over two days.
Moving ahead, iA is collaborating with its Foundation Partners—the Commonwealth Bank and KPMG—to deliver a national aged care innovation awards program, and the innovAGEING Olympics in 2019.
We’ll continue to work with our network participants, listen to their wants and needs, promote their hard work, and celebrate their wins.
Looking to the future, as we move beyond the one-year mark, iA is acutely aware that what we do next matters far more than what we’ve already done.
To learn more about innovAGEING visit here. To join the innovAGEING Open Lab visit here.
Published in Fusion, Summer 2018