top of page
How to think about innovation in terms of systems?
From the Book Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows,' I tried to take up an innovation 'Firefly's phototherapy device' and tried to understand how a single idea can affect the other systems in place and how can we lay out the map to measure overall progress. Thinking about larger ecosystems that our product affects helps us design more than just the product.
What is Firefly?
What is a System map?
Everything can be considered as a stock where the inflows are the Taps that if opened can increase the stock and outflows if opened can decrease the stock.
There are several drivers that trigger an increase or decrease in the stock. These stocks are interconnected in a system and any change in one stock affects the others.
Firefly Current System map
The goal of the system is to increase the no of infants that are treated with Firefly
What if 5 new ideas for Firefly are proposed?
How do they affect the system?
Example of 1 Idea: Lease Model, Renting the device to Infants parents
Idea 1 If a lease model is proposed where Firefly is leased to Parents of infants with a guidebook?
This will increase the overall stock of the Assess to Firefly machine which was previously used only by the hospitals and can ultimately increase the flow of Infants treated with firefly.
This is just a tool,
A systemic level change can truly be managed by enlarging our capacity to ask good questions and communicate more and more with our peers and outside.
bottom of page