Prototyping

This chapter introduces the third phase of the Innovation Flow, Prototyping. Initially, prototypes are unpolished, created from scrap materials at low costs. Toward the end of the process, prototypes evolve to become increasingly sophisticated. Prototypes become well-designed pilots for validating and falsifying critical assumptions that underpin the concept. Political scientist Eugene Lewis Fordsworthe is quoted to have said: "assumption is the mother of all mistakes". Forecasting is predicting what will happen, whereas Visioning is ultimately about making it happen. Successful entrepreneurship in health care means having such a strong conviction that an idea will work, that its realization is driven with relentless commitment, ultimately saving human lives. This compulsive determination is required to push through all the barriers and convince the critics. Being a health entrepreneur entails taking the "road less traveled" by clinicians, championing a novel approach or set of ideas to improve health care.