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Chapter 4
Learning to Be Innovative
It always starts and ends with leadership. If the leaders aren’t under-
standing, embracing, and valuing innovation, why would anybody else
in the organization?
—Sarah Patterson
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer,
Virginia Mason Medical Center
Knowing and doing are intimately linked. It is difficult to encourage innovation
if the vast majority of individuals already think that they are doing their best, and
they do not know how to come up with ideas to do better. Until they know differ-
ent, they are unlikely to do different.
Further, while seeing is believing, the converse is also true. Numerous s