Paradigm Outcomes’ 2016 Innovation Symposium brought leaders from a variety of specialties together to discuss the challenges and opportunities of leading through change. Presenters and attendees discussed strategies for staying ahead of the curve in an age of innovation, as well as pitfalls to avoid when dealing with change and uncertainty. Below are some highlights from the presentations that can be kept top of mind heading into 2017.

Breaking the Mold

Candy Crowley, a former chief political correspondent for CNN, kicked off the Paradigm Outcomes Innovation Symposium with her thoughts regarding the 2016 U.S. presidential race. “I have never seen so many people so wrong about so much for such a long time,” she told the audience. She warned attendees to not rely too heavily on historical data alone going into 2017. “Templates are out there to be broken,” she said and recounted examples from both her career as well as U.S. history where conventional wisdom was upended by not accounting for human sentiment. “It matters that people feel like you get them and you understand their lives,” Crowley said.

Balancing Risk and Reward

Susan Collins Ph.D., a board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and dean of public policy at the University of Michigan, spoke at the Innovation Symposium about the Fed’s intentionally veiled and opaque manner of addressing the public. “‘Fed-speak’ has become more transparent of late,” she said, “but it won’t stay that way.” In light of the uncertainty in the current economic recovery– and the massive amount of data the Fed must process and understand in order to make decisions– it’s perhaps inevitable the Fed’s representatives are difficult to understand. Collins called the Fed’s current attempts to balance risk versus reward when determining whether to take immediate action “the new normal” … and not just for the Fed, but for all of us. Finding meaning in the data, rather than reacting to single data points, will be the big challenge for organizations as data becomes more and more immediately accessible.

Sheer Terror

Brian Muirhead, chief engineer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA, depicted the advantages of building trust and taking risks in an era of big data with a seven-minute video of the Mars lander’s final landing. This feat was achieved at 13,000 miles-per-hour speeds to the planet’s surface. To Muirhead, the Mars landing project parallels how teamwork and innovation are the keys to unlocking infinite potential in the most high-stress situations. “Go out there and take risks. But do not fail,” Muir told the audience. When absolutely everything must go right, you need a team you can trust to take risks that make a difference.

Navigated Health

Kent Riddle, CEO of Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, spoke about a conundrum in primary care. “Physicians currently write 0.8 prescriptions for every visit,” he said. “The U.S. contains 5% of the population and 90% of the drugs. Prescription medications have become Big Business, and the American populace is paying the price.” Riddle suggests “navigated health” as a new model for care. Physiatrists– doctors who evaluate diagnoses and stress rehabilitation and functionality in physical medicine– can play a key role in helping create a system that prioritizes health over illness and conservative treatment over intervention. Care navigation can break down treatment to individual procedures and small-scale decisions. Riddle believes this bottoms-up approach to care has the potential to reduce the country’s health care costs by a third through diminishing the current $3 trillion in medical and pharmaceutical costs.

The Paradigm team is passionate about bringing together top thought leaders to share innovative ideas with those in the workers’ compensation industry through a regular series of webinars and events. To find out when we will hold our next event, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page.