“I feel really burned, violated — fooled, really,” says Noelia Almanza, reflecting on a series of recent roles as the head of innovation at comp

Innovation theatre doesn’t just kill startups. It kills innovation managers, too

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2021-06-05 14:00:05

“I feel really burned, violated — fooled, really,” says Noelia Almanza, reflecting on a series of recent roles as the head of innovation at companies that started with big plans for innovation but which then fizzled out, with no budget or staff to carry them out.

“This is the fourth time I have experienced this in healthcare, with a company not backing me up. It has left me thinking I don’t want to work in innovation anymore.”

Almanza is a long-time health professional turned innovation manager. Having worked first to modernise the Bolivian healthcare system and then for several years in emergency medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, she became interested in using technology to push the boundaries of healthcare.

“When I worked with the ambulance service in Sweden we had this vision that the ambulance would become something that would ring on your doorbell 10 minutes before you were about to have a heart attack — because we would be so good at monitoring and taking a preventative approach to health,” she says.

Almanza first started her own healthtech consultancy and then was headhunted several times to lead innovation efforts at various healthcare organisations. But a disturbing pattern of behaviour emerged at these companies — despite having headhunted Almanza at great cost, the companies would fail to commit to carrying out the projects she suggested. It was all so-called “innovation theatre”, where there would be a lot of talk about transformation but very little actually done.

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