Process antecedents of challenging, under‐cover and readily‐adopted innovations

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to test the utility of a taxonomy of innovation based on perceived characteristics in the context of healthcare by exploring the extent to which discrete innovation types could be distinguished from each other in terms of process antecedents. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach was adopted to explore the process antecedents of nine exemplar cases of “challenging”, “under‐cover” and “readily‐adopted” healthcare innovations. Data were collected by semi‐structured interview and from secondary sources, and content analysed according to a theoretically informed framework of innovation process. Cluster analysis was applied to determine whether innovation types could be distinguished on the basis of process characteristics. Findings – The findings provide moderate support for the proposition that innovations differentiated on the basis of the way they are perceived by potential users exhibit different process characteristics. Innovations exhibiting characteristics previously believed negatively to impact adoption may be successfully adopted but by a different configuration of processes than by innovations exhibiting a different set of characteristics. Research limitations/implications – The findings must be treated with caution because the sample consists of self‐selected cases of successful innovation and is limited by sample size. Nevertheless, the study sheds new light on important process differences in healthcare innovation. Practical implications – The paper offers a heuristic device to aid clinicians and managers to better understand the relatively novel task of promoting and managing innovation in healthcare. The paper advances the argument that there is under‐exploited opportunity for cross‐disciplinary organisational learning for innovation management in the NHS. If efficiency and quality improvement targets are to be met through a strategy of encouraging innovation, it may be advantageous for clinicians and managers to reflect on what this study found mostly to be absent from the processes of the innovations studied, notably management commitment in the form of norms, resource allocation and top management support. Originality/value – This paper is based on original empirical work. It extends previous adoption related studies by applying a configurational approach to innovation attributes to offer new insights on healthcare innovation and highlight the importance of attention to process.