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By Sue Jacques

In early 2004, following the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, US president George Bush announced the retirement of the remaining fleet.

By 2006 space agency NASA had announced that it was establishing the Commercial Orbiter Services programme (COTS). COTS would see the private sector take over flights to low orbit, allowing NASA to concentrate on missions to the moon, asteroids or Mars.

Elon Musk, a South African-born American entrepreneur, jumped at this opportunity, quickly hiring some of the best talent and creating a new business model. Spacecraft design was simplified and manufacturing was kept largely in house.

SpaceX was born.

In 2010 Mr Musk launched a 23kg wheel of cheese into space during the first orbital test of his Dragon spacecraft atop his brand new Falcon 9 rocket. The cheese, a Le Brouère, is displayed at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. The Soviets had Laika the dog, the US had Ham the chimp, and Mr Musk, inspired by Monty Python, a wheel of cheese.

More recently he has delivered half a tonne of provisions and equipment to the International Space Station on another Dragon spacecraft, which returned to Earth two minutes ahead of schedule, landing in the Pacific Ocean.

The NHS and NASA are, on the face of it, two incredibly different organisations. Their drivers for change and their response to these are, however, less different. Both believe that transformation and innovation is necessary to future success and affordability, and that competition from the private sector can help bring that about more quickly.

So as we move into a more regulated environment, with less central control over how services should be provided and a greater focus on the outcome, it will be important for us to liberate the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit from within our organisations.

As a finance function we must therefore resist creating blockages to change from a misguided belief that all change brings too great a risk, but rather construct incentives to allow successful innovation to flourish. As Geoff Mulgan and David Albury noted in their 2003 Cabinet Office paper Innovation in the public sector: ‘Without innovation, public service costs tend to rise faster than the rest of the economy. Without innovation the inevitable pressure to contain costs can only be met by forcing already stretched staff to work harder.’  

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement cites research that identifies seven dimensions of organisational culture most closely related to innovation over time. These are:

• Risk taking
• Resources
• Information
• Targets
• Tools
• Rewards
• Relationships.

We could do a lot worse than urge our own teams to reflect on these and encourage our organisations to do likewise. Those of us who do this might never bear witness to the first tourist trips to Mars, but may well be credited with helping create an NHS that is both fit and sustainable for future generations.

Contact the president [email protected]