Placement: Stanford University
Mentor: Sara Singer, M.B.A., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine; and Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Co-mentor: Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H., Adjunct Professor, Medicine — Primary Care and Population Health, Senior Scholar at Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center
Project: A New Model for Innovation in the Healthcare System: Transforming Employees into Entrepreneurs
Clémence Mainpin, M.P.A., is a 2021–22 French Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She is a Project Manager for the French Ministry of Health, where she designed and drove implementation of several public healthcare policies, including the national strategy for telemedicine, the public hospital reform law, and the national experimentation framework. Mainpin began her career in transformation at a university hospital as Head of Performance, Head of Finances and Deputy Director of Maternity Services. She has since implemented design thinking methods into public authorities, and cofounded the HOSPITALENTS program, which is dedicated to promoting intrapreneurship within public hospitals. Mainpin in passionate about promoting innovation in healthcare, and lectures at the EHESP School of Public Health and is a founding member of the University of Change Management, a public/private project to drive pragmatic reform in the healthcare system. Mainpin holds an M.P.A. from Sciences Po Paris and graduated from the French School of Public Health. She also holds a certification in advanced management from ICN Business School.
Project Overview: Giffort Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot introduced the concept of intrapreneurship in 1978, defining intrapreneurs as “those who take hands-on responsibility for creating innovation of any kind, within a business.” Within health care, intrapreneurship appears to be a robust model for innovation as it favors a high level of expertise (necessary to identify relevant problems and feasible solutions) and rapid dissemination (through contamination models). Despite this, intrapreneurs often face obstacles within their own units, as managers may consider them a threat to the existing hierarchy. If intrapreneurs lack sponsorship and support, they can fail to prototype their ideas. Therefore, intrapreneurship programs must create safe havens for experimentation. One such model is “excubation,” in which intrapreneurs are placed outside their unit in the early stages of a project so they can develop their innovation without interference.
This research will explore intrapreneurship and excubation from multiple stakeholder perspectives: 1) public authorities and regulation issues; 2) healthcare providers and management issues; 3) health professionals and motivation issues; and 4) patients and acceptance issues. It will rely on a literature review, a survey of key innovation actors, in-depth interviews, and case studies. It also may include an experimental stage to test some of the identified hypotheses.