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The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is pleased to announce that Founder and Chief Catalyst, Saul Kaplan has been named a Founding Member of The IEEE Fair Trade Data Initiative, a collaboration to develop a standards framework governing the fair trade of human and personal data.

The BIF team recently visited Castle Family Health Center in Atwater, CA and Lawndale Christian Health Center in Chicago, IL where we conducted interviews with the health centers’ leaders, staff, and patients. As we began to analyze and synthesize our findings, a few emerging curiosities came to the surface.

Last week, the BIF team visited Bond Community Health Center in Tallahassee, Florida and Eau Claire Cooperative Health in Columbia, South Carolina to conduct interviews with leaders, staff, and patients as we continue our work with the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). BIF and NACHC leadership are joining forces to explore the questions:

Can story be used to help patients, providers, hospital administrators, caretakers, and other stakeholders to better understand one another?

Signals are our most basic communication platform. Be it 0’s and 1’s or smoke signals, we humans often find the ways to communicate simply what we can’t otherwise say.

Carnegie Corporation of New York has partnered with BIF to design and run the Integration Design Consortium (IDC). Rather than funding programmatic proof points, the IDC is giving leaders permission to test various integrative approaches to support students throughout their journey in the education system.

It’s beyond me how so many public and private sector leaders have ignored the elephant in the room for so long but one thing is clear, no one can ignore Amazon any longer. The question of what to do about it looms large for every leader.

BIF kicked off a new project with The Sherlock Center on Disabilities and five service providing agencies in RI to reimagine the services offered to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the state.

Business Innovation Factory (BIF), in collaboration with The School of the Possible founded by Dave Gray, Hatch founded by Yarrow Kraner, and Overlap founded by Michael Dila, is launching a project to explore the opportunity for a transformational personalized medicine business model.

It's safe to say that all of us have left #BIF2018 changed. Inspired. Hopeful. Ready to self-organize and create the conditions necessary for all of us to freely combine and recombine our capabilities to make the world a better place.

The healthcare industry is disrupting and many organizations are struggling to keep up with the times. Often times, business model transformation feels harder than it has to be. Business model innovation isn’t about practices, it’s about next practices.

At BIF, one of our core beliefs is that a good story can change the world. By sharing our insights and perspectives, we can connect, inspire, and transform to enable purposeful networks. Guest contributor Ann Keehn shares her thoughts and emergent takeaway from BIF2018.

Making the most out of your #BIF2018 experience: I make a list of no more than 5 insights that are so powerful that I must act on them. I create an intention for what that action looks like, define the barriers and risks of acting in new ways, and I hold myself accountable for starting.

One of our core beliefs is that a good story can change the world.  We’ve never prescribed what our storytellers have to say, nor will we. At #BIF2018 we are modeling how to enable self-organized purposeful networks. It’s up to us to accept the responsibility to convert random collisions from the Summit into powerful and purposeful collaborations.

We had an opportunity to catch up with Mark Brand, CEO of MB, Inc. and highly anticipated storyteller at BIF2018. Passionate and purposeful, Brand talks to us about the power of connectivity, combining purposeful networks, and some of the fascinating endeavors he's taken on. 

This September 13-14, 500 innovation junkies will convene in Providence, Rhode Island to listen to 32 storytellers share their passionate stories about transformation at the annual Business Innovation Factory (BIF) Collaborative Innovation Summit. BIF’s Patient Experience Lab is most excited to listen and learn from these 5 speakers from the healthcare industry:

Check out this webinar featuring BIF's Chief Market Maker Eli MacLaren and Student Experience Lab Manager Jessica Brown as they unpack the business model imperative for education, BIF's design methodology, and a real-world case study.

While healthcare leaders understand the imperative of business model innovation, it is often scary to disrupt a large system that has been in place for years. When the motto of healthcare is “do no harm,” it is hard to be the guinea pig to test out new business models and next practices. Our goal was to help them make the business model innovation process safer and easier to manage.

This (100k Ideas) is our favorite type of model here at BIF because it taps into what we call “the gold in the grey space” — working across sectors and industries to meet true citizen needs while transforming each of the latter.

If a business model is a network of capabilities woven together into a sustainable financial model, a system is a network of business models that have learned to collaborate. Until organizations learn how to do this, integration in our education system won’t work, and innovations that fundamentally transform outcomes will remain localized and dispersed

Welcome to Integration Nation! Hear from members of the Integration Design Consortium, a group of five passionate design teams who are advancing equity, innovating with purpose, and shaping the future of education reform.

The time has come to be a market maker, not a share taker. Business model innovation must be a strategic imperative for all organizations. BIF is releasing a deep dive into our Design Methodology for Next Practices and New Business Models with our 22 step Playbook complete with guides and tools.

When a child has autism, it can be hard for families to do normal things like go out to dinner or meet other families that have similar pain points and struggles. “We often feel isolated and alone,” she revealed. “We just need a place where families can be families.”

"Something is happening and it affects us all. A global revolution is changing politics and politics is changing the world. We want to change the world."

As new business models emerge, we believe that those that put and maintain DEI at their core are best positioned to transform and improve the experiences and lives of their consumers.

Throughout this project, we saw powerful glimpses of these conditions in action. They enabled us to go beyond surface level solutions to think more holistically about how school and communities could better learn and grow together.

The first in a series of blog posts focused on how we are seeking to put DEI at the core of business model design. We invite you to join these conversations and to explore how putting DEI at the core of your business model exploration can surface opportunities for transformation.

How might play spaces become the civic spaces that bring diverse people together, encourage connection, and shared experiences?

Sometimes leaders are ready to jump into the exploration of transformational next practices and new business models, but more often than not, they need to see the path and understand the investment. At BIF, we created Membership as an easy way to help leaders do this.

With the shift in the healthcare landscape to more personalized, self-directed behavioral changes, asking people to take more ownership of their health, it's imperative that we look to ensure we're providing people with the right tools to do so. Open Source Wellness is one such organization seeking to do just that.

What happens if we allowed ourselves to live in in the possibility of "what could be" rather than accepting what is? Leveraging our capacity to build safe spaces for innovation is imperative to unlocking the building blocks of the future.

Here at the BIF, we believe that storytelling can be an incredibly powerful tool for building empathy. It can open people to new perspectives, create shared experiences, and promote insights and learnings.

What does collaborative innovation actually look like in practice? Part two takes a deeper dive into the right conditions needed in order to not only succeed, but that is needed in order to successfully come together to scale transformative change.

What does collaborative innovation truly mean? Understanding what it means, and more often than not what it doesn't mean, is imperative to accelerate the pace of change.

When we connect outside our normal silos, we build our network of capabilities and gain the most by experiencing change through the lens of others. Transformational change is a generative act that we can all participate in.

It's time to dig deeper and move away from traditional learning practices and utilize alternative methods that will further engage students to move beyond boredom and into deeper learning.

A fellow pharmacy school graduate and colleague from early in my career, George Zorich, is writing a book advocating for pharmacy schools to integrate entrepreneurship education into their standard curriculum. A section of the book will contain stories of pharmacy school graduates who leveraged their education in surprising ways, catalyzing non-traditional and interesting career paths. George asked me to share my story. I’m honored to be asked and I found it invaluable to reflect on my own convoluted career path. Are you doing what you originally set out to do in college? If you’re like most people you’ve had to reinvent yourself multiple times over your career. The world of work is changing faster than ever. What’s your from….to story? Here’s mine.

One of the most difficult experiences for those in education is to understand challenges within our system but have no method for creating meaningful, transformative change.

We need flexible, adaptable, and agile public services, truly designed to meet citizens where they are and when they need them — whether confronting homelessness or any other calamity, ideally well before a crisis takes hold in a way similar to how the affordable housing shortage has imperiled citizens nationwide.

Our health system has the ability to accelerate society’s path to what’s ‘next’ — a next that holds the promise of focusing on health rather than health care or, better yet, sick care.

Emerging technologies don’t deliver value in the real world until they’re converted into capabilities. If they’re constrained by the straightjacket of today’s business model, they will deliver tweaks at best.

Human-centered design, the core of BIF’s methodology, helps leaders shift how they understand a problem, see interconnections, and better frame wholistic solutions. That is one benefit to a Next Practice Lab: it can generate more holistic models that can be scaled by social impact bonds, getting more bang for the taxpayer buck. 

You have to get to know the community with which you are working, the people that live there, and what their aspirations are before you can begin any sort of sustainable work in community transformation.

So how do we get the experienced cooks in the kitchen to design thoughtful and lasting solutions? How do we make sure that educators and students close to issues surrounding equity have the power to create change?You can not create successful, equitable solutions unless you are proximate. You can not cook without heat.

We live in a time that screams for transformation yet too many institutions are only capable of tweaks. We developed BIF’s Design Methodology because a growing number of institutional leaders know they need a better approach to innovation.

Famous last words; This time it’s different. No really, this time it is. We have arrived at that Malcolm Gladwell tipping point. Well at least I have, and I don’t think I’m alone. Let me make it personal. We each find our own reasons to reach for another gear, to reinvent ourselves, and to do work that matters. My burning platform is comprised of three things that are changing simultaneously: 1) The Market 2) BIF 3) Me. It’s not about me or my three things, it’s about being informed by and engaged in what’s changing around you, being self-aware and intentional about what’s next, getting better faster, and being clear about what’s important and what you value. Whatever your reasons, please hurry up and figure it out, because we need everyone to play, transformation is a team sport and a generative act. It’s go time!

It is not best practices, but next practices that will sustain your organization on a strong growth trajectory. While you continue to pedal the bicycle of today’s business model make sure that no less than 10% of your time and resources is dedicated to exploring new business models and developing next practices.

Higher education has a business model problem. The business model for U.S. colleges and universities — how they create, deliver, and capture value — hasn’t changed since Harvard, our country’s first college, was founded in 1636. Our higher education system is a national treasure that creates enormous societal value, but its 380-year-old business model fails to deliver affordable access and post-secondary credentials to an increasing percentage of our population.

The BIF Summit storytellers will push you to the edge of your thinking and help you find comfort there. In the interactions BIF refers to as ‘Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects’, you’ll find yourself conceiving, sharing,  and learning about new ideas and ways of thinking.

The BIF Summit is designed to allow attendees to break free from their silos. There are storytellers and stories, not speakers and presentations. There are no pre-set theme s or topics. Within this environment, attendees can boundlessly explore new ways to make themselves, their businesses, and our world a better place.

At the Summit, I have time to spend with this unique collection of people, sharing stories and ideas. Everyone is at the BIF Summit for a reason and everyone has a purpose. But there’s also an incredible element of surprise over the course of those two days.

Roberto Rivera’s personal story is about the expansion of true consciousness in one young person, who was tagged early on as learning-disabled, then shunted from one alternative school to another. He got into trouble, and almost slid into an abyss of statistics that presumed his ultimate disconnection from family and community — from the “good life.”

It’s the innovator’s day. CEOs everywhere know that keeping their companies relevant in a rapidly changing world is imperative and that innovation is the solution. Corporate leaders also know their legacies depend on their organization’s ability to reinvent itself. It’s not going well.

We're excited to announce Cale Birk as this years first Community Scholarship recipient! We asked Cale why he's excited to attend BIF2016 and his response was nothing short of inspirational.

By engaging families in the design and delivery of models, we've learned that families know the challenges they face in striving to be well and what the needs of their communities are.

BIF Summit storytellers featured in our healthcare and Patient Experience Lab work.

We asked Shelley one question: What is it about the BIF Summit that excites you the most? Here's her answer:

A selection of who to watch in and around education during the BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit.

"I love the random collisions of unusual suspects, interweaved with the commonality of humanity. Where else would you have Richard Saul Wurman, Irwin Kula, Daniel Pink, and Camille Beatty? You'd never get that lineup at a regular conference."

We asked Dara one question: What is it about the BIF Summit that excites you the most? Here's her answer:

The distinct perspectives of the #BIF2015 Summit storytellers — poetry, mathematics, healthcare, online leaders — cannot help but jar loose our cherished assumptions, baked-in preconceptions, and limiting frames.

We asked Doug one question: What is it about the BIF Summit that excites you the most? Here's his answer...

The impact of the model on the elements of family well-being is, in large part, still to be determined. But these stories? Strong evidence of the power of designing, iterating, and executing in partnership with our end-users.

What do you get when you put 5 classroom teachers, 6 teaching artists, 3 youth development staff members, 3 graduate students, 1 coach, and 1 parent in BIF’s office space for a 2-day intensive “design jam”?  What if they all come with a problem they’re currently facing and want to tackle? During the last weekend in March, we found out.

The narrative playbook is a practical guide for patients, providers, and caregivers - it provides strategies for using narrative methods in healthcare, in ways that have real impact.

Welcoming some of our Storytellers to our Collaborative Innovation Summit.

While we have much work ahead of us — synthesizing scenarios, codifying methods, developing language and tone, and building the deliverable itself — we hope to continue to bring people into the process to co-create the narrative of the power of narrative in healthcare.

It reaffirms my belief that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools for transformation…and the more context, depth, empathy, and honesty that the story has, the better chance we have at using those stories to inspire new relationships, design more relevant experience — and transform social systems.

Those who know us well know that at BIF, we believe a great story can change the world. So we're happy to say that we have just kicked off an exciting new project with funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, all about the power of story in healthcare.

The most successful businesses today are movements more than companies. Movements don’t market. Movements inspire and engage. They create an emotional connection through storytelling. Not stories to be enjoyed passively but stories we see ourselves in, stories we can actively participate in.

The storytellers will make your heart sing...and make you cry. You will make friends, you will develop new contacts, and you might even embark upon a journey that takes you places you never could have imagined. - Nicole Radziwi

Many innovators face stiff organizational resistance when they try to offer a new way of doing things. It's a lonely battle trying to lead change and get others on board. At the BIF Summit, however, innovators find like-minded others. Everyone "gets it" and people support each other.

You never know which BIF Summit story of passion, determination, and focus will transform and inspire you. It may a single story. It may be the curious intersection of many stories.

The BIF Summit is like the college experience should have been — a lot of intellectually curious people connecting with each other. - Jon Follett.

We know this sounds like a pipe dream. And that's one of the reasons we created this "power of #RCUS" blog series — to share real #RCUS stories that make the idea more tangible.

Go to the BIF Summit because of who you are going to accidentally, serendipitously sit next to, have coffee with, meet during breaks. Go to the BIF Summit because of the conversations that will be started as a result of the amazing storytellers you're going to see on stage.

At the BIF Summit, you can leave your language at the door and just talk. - Lois Kelly

To me, the BIF Summit is a humbler, more intimate version of TED. It's where you can talk to people doing amazing things and there's a sense of inclusion between the participants and the storytellers.

"You'll never see things in the same way after you've been to the BIF Summit. " — Tim McDonald

Simon Majumdar, traveler, bestselling author and Food Network Star has a perfect recipe for transformation. Get a taste for his innovation journey with this recent Q+A interview, before he whips up the main dish on the BIF-8 stage.  

Elizabeth Stefanski is an impatient social innovation junkie with over a decade of experience in building and leading social ventures. She recently joined the Business Innovation Factory as chief market maker, where she is attracting capital and building partnerships to generate new models for transforming complex social systems.

One of the best conferences I’ve ever attended was BIF-6, held in Providence, RI and hosted by Saul Kaplan of the Business Innovation Factory.

BIF-6 Recap. Optimism prevailed during this year's BIF-6 Summit. Innovators are a unique bunch. The glass is ALWAYS half full.

Storytelling is the most important tool for any innovator.  It is the best way to create emotional connections to your ideas and innovations.  Sharing stories is the way to create a network of passionate supporters that can help spread ideas and make them a reality.  We remember stories.  We relate to stories and they compel us to action.

The idea of the MinuteClinic is as much a mindset problem as it is a financial threat. The model runs counter to everything a physician has been trained for. Another problem - most physicians don’t want to be businesspeople and this is a real business conundrum.

Through a series of clear, straightforward, and thoughtful prompts, and several small group activities, the power of storytelling to persuade, cajole, and inspire was demonstrated.