Voices of Innovation: Bonus Drop (ft. Ed Marx)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices Podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marx.

Hey everyone, Ed here, and really excited about sharing an opportunity for all of my listeners to be part of a book. So let me tell you the backstory and then some ideas about why you might want to be part of this book. So I was approached by HIMSS, it's probably 6, 7 years ago, to write a book on innovation. And I was like, oh, I'd love to. You know, I've been fortunate that many of the organizations where I served were super innovative. My teams were super innovative, and we did innovative things. And, you know, they helped save people's lives, improve quality of care. improve operations, all these different things. So I was like, yes, of course. But then I realized, wow, if I write a book on innovation, they're just gonna get a little piece of the great innovation everyone is doing, or many organizations are doing in healthcare. So I went back to HIMSS and the publisher and I said, hey, what about this? I'm happy to write a little bit and organize and edit, but what if we took the best of innovation that's happening and let people tell their stories? And that way, It's much broader than just one person's perspective. And there's a bunch of better ideas and better innovations that others are doing. So let's have multiple contributors. And they said, that's a great idea. So what we did is we took the innovation framework from him. So it's like 8 steps and it's a framework. It's not the end-all be-all. There's other good frameworks, but it is a framework that at least people can relate to. And then for each part of that framework, We would share 4 or 5 case studies, if you will, or examples of innovation being done that sort of addressed that part of the framework. So when you got the book, which came out in 2019, right before the pandemic, when you got that book, you learned about the framework. And then in the subsequent chapters, each chapter was about one specific aspect of that framework. And it had 4 or 5 examples from great organizations that you would recognize from around the world and, and some vendors as well. And so it was this great compilation. So if you were out there thinking, oh, I, I really need to innovate, we're not doing a lot of innovation, how do I do it? You could grab this book, you'd have a framework, and then you could see 4 or 5 examples of each part of the framework in action. And then you could copy that, or you could call those individuals and say, hey, I read in the book how you did X, Y, and Z, you know, can you help me? And so that's what happened. The book became a bestseller. And the foreword was written by my then boss, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. And we were off to the races and heard tons of feedback how it really helped other organizations become more innovative. So it's been 3 years now. We've gone through a pandemic and the publisher approached me and said, Ed, that book really hit a sweet spot for organizations really interested in innovation, sold a lot of books, bestseller. Can you do a second edition? And I'm like, well, already working on some other projects, but since it is a contributor-led sort of book, as I just explained, it doesn't require a tremendous lift on my part because I'm getting contributions from many other authors. So I said, sure, because I really believe in it. And I'll tell you 3 reasons why I implore you as well to So the first reason is be part of a book. I mean, I don't know that it's on everyone's bucket list to write a book, probably not, but a lot of people have interest in writing a book, but it's hard and it takes a lot of time. So this is the next best thing, is to be part of a book. So you'll have other co-authors with you, including myself, but you don't have the burden of writing an entire book. So you can like half checkmark. that part of your bucket list. It's like, and if you really love it, you write your own book. So at least you'll get some exposure on how it's done. The second is you're helping others. So truly, while we might be competitive in some marketplaces, I think the way we're all wired is we just want to help save people's lives, improve quality of care. And so we wanna share with others what we're doing. That's why we go to user groups and we share about the great things that we're doing in our organizations, 'cause we We believe it'll help other people. So this is your chance to help others. So that great innovative innovation that you've done, or the process in which you do innovation, write about it. Let other people read it, and it helps that organization. And you know, sometimes you'll never know the impact that you will have, and it's actually better that way, right? We don't want to do things just so we could get some sort of reward or feedback all the time. Sometimes it's just cool to. put things out there in the universe. And, you know, you'll, again, you'll never know the impact. So you write about something about innovation, 'cause it's done some great things for your organization. You might end up helping hospitals around the world save people's lives. So that's pretty cool. So helping others. And then the third reason is that all the proceeds for the book go to cure cancer. So with Voices of Innovation, the first edition, All of the proceeds— this is the author's proceeds— all of them went to help cure cancer. It went to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. And so we're going to do the same thing with this book. I believe it's going to be the Mary Crowley Cancer Research that the profits will be going to. So none of us are getting any money from this work. All of the money will go to help cure cancer. So that's something I'm super, super, super excited about. So again, 3 reasons. One is, hey, be part of writing a book. It's a great experience. 2— so these sort of build on one another, so that's pretty cool— but 2 is you're helping others who need help, your colleagues around the world, to help save lives or again improve the quality of care. Improve experiences, clinician experiences, patient experiences, their family. I mean, the list goes on and on. And then third, and maybe the most special, at least to me as a cancer survivor and having family members who died of cancer, is the fact that we're raising money to fund cures for cancer. So I hope that you're interested in helping me. This is sort of how it works. If you're interested, drop me a note at marks@divergent.com, and I will respond with some instructions on how to do this. And to make it easier, probably assign someone to help you. It's a pretty straightforward process, but it, it probably won't hurt to have someone help you in this, especially if it's your first time. And then within about a month, you'll see a timeline And I think it's going to be around mid-September. We will review all of the submissions, and then we'll have to make some decisions about which ones we accept. And then we will get back to you on that acceptance. And there's editing back and forth that's involved, and that we should be wrapped up by the end of the year. And the book will be published and released hopefully around the time of HIMSS. So send me an email, reach out to me on LinkedIn. a wide variety of ways, and we'll make it all happen. So I hope you will consider this and make a submission. Thank you so much.

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