PROVIDENCE – Innovation and design thinking are the business of the Business Innovation Factory, but for the past year, the Providence-based company has applied that thinking to its own model.
In a pivot made before the pandemic but recently made public as it launched the maternal health initiative LunaYou, the Business Innovation Factory has started selecting and moving ahead on its own projects.
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In a recent interview, BIF founder Saul Kaplan said the turn from sponsored projects to the new model of self-initiated projects was a natural progression. After 16 years and 70 projects completed for businesses or philanthropic partners, Business Innovation Factory was ready to use its tools on its own choices, rather than having philanthropic partners, such as the Gates Foundation, come to it with a proposal.
“It’s different in that we pick the design challenge,” Kaplan said. “And we’re committed to go through the process.”
LunaYou, a maternal health initiative, represents its first initiative. Instead of turning over its program design to a partner to put into action, Business Innovation Factory will design a program and implement it itself.
The disruption brought about by the pandemic has been a way to think about how social services and businesses can function differently. Kaplan said the new model has put Business Innovation Factory squarely into an entrepreneurial role.
“I don’t want to spend the next 10 to 15 years being a trusted adviser who gets paid for giving advice. I’d much rather be an entrepreneur and taking on a challenge. And actually putting in the real-world models that can solve them.”
LunaYou is a health care initiative that is aimed at empowering women through their pregnancies and after childbirth to monitor and improve their health. The effort uses an app and women will submit their own data, including factors such as weight, stress management and physical activity. Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island is partnering with BIF and incorporating the program into its suite of services for pregnant women.
Using that partnership, the project is expected to grow from the 37 women who were its pilot participants, to about 500 women.
The program last week had 43 individuals sign up within the first few days.
The design is meant to empower women to track their health, encouraging them to speak to their doctors and to build a community. The women all are paired with a personal health coach.
While aimed at improving maternal health outcomes among Black women, Indigenous women and women of color, the program is open to all pregnant women who are insured through Neighborhood Health.
“We wanted a challenge that was a very big social problem,” Kaplan said. “We wanted it to be a problem that could be solved,” he said. “Evidence had already suggested the solution was empowering the end user, the customer.”
In a news release announcing the launch of the program, Neighborhood Health said the program aligns naturally with its goal to apply interventions to the social determinants of health and improve outcomes for women.
The program is available to Neighborhood Health customers, free of charge, throughout their pregnancy and for three months following childbirth. Data that is shared with the insurance company comes only as an aggregate, not tied to individual women.
According to Neighborhood Health CEO Peter Marino, Rhode Island’s maternal health outcomes reflect national data, which has found women are 50% more likely to die or experience a serious complication in childbirth than their mothers.
The annual summits that the Business Innovation Factory is known for will eventually return. But at least initially, while LunaYou is a startup, the in-person conferences that have drawn hundreds from around the world have been suspended.
“As soon as I feel confident that the wheels are on LunaYou, that it’s on a path to scale,” then BIF can look at raising resources to invest in community building, including by holding another summit, Kaplan said.
He noted that through the pandemic, the Business Innovation Factory was able to use the social media platform Clubhouse to keep people engaged in working together.
“If we have a growing community of interest in the work we’re doing, it’s in everybody’s best interest to build a community that can celebrate and support, not just LunaYou, but a series of ventures over the years that we intend to create.”
Updates with a statement from Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island on the LunaYou program.
Mary MacDonald is a staff writer for the PBN. Contact her at macdonald@pbn.com.
