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Jessica Heath and Mitchell Tsai recently evaluated a somewhat unusual article, ‘How Great Companies Think Differently’ by Rosabeth Kanter, published in the Harvard Business Review. This paper details how great companies build their foundations not just on profit-driven measures, but also on values that reflect a brand identity as a force for social good. However, what appears to be a tangential subject for F1000 readers delivers lessons relevant to medical practices, laboratories and beyond – with an eye toward enhancing innovation, improving service and gleaning more employee satisfaction.

Kanter worked with a variety of successful companies worldwide and found that they no longer subscribe to old business models; in contrast, great companies believe “business is an intrinsic part of society and, like the family, government, and religion, has been one of its pillars for centuries.” Great businesses pride themselves on how they make decisions, aware that they are investing in the company’s future as well as contributing to society. This “institutional logic” that Kanter describes has six key tenets that strengthen companies and the communities they serve, which are described in the F1000 evaluation. As Heath and Tsai state,

great companies … develop projects that their employees find emotionally satisfying … engage with their customers and form partnerships that promote community interests.

As for the application of such lessons to clinical practices, looking at what the Collaborative Chronic Care Network (C3N) is an inspiring case in point. As recently described in Scientific American, C3N is a “new paradigm and process for medical research” that presents an improved care system “by harnessing the motivation and collective intelligence of patients and clinicians.”

The project was co-founded by Peter Margolis and Michael Seid of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; currently over 30 US healthcare institutions have joined the initiative. The pilot project has focused on Crohn’s disease and has achieved an early but impressive 50-78% increase in remission rates without modifying medication regimes. PhD student Ian Eslick of MIT’s Media Lab, chief architect of the web platform, believes that the project is a corrective to large-scale clinical trials, in that promising therapies such as dietary changes can be scientifically tested and reported on a much smaller scale. Innovative utilization of real-time data tracking (e.g. with mobile apps that track a patient’s pain, food, medicine intake, bathroom visits), alongside connections via social media such as Facebook, has helped to build targeted support and mentoring networks online and in person.

In the C3N initiative, people are empowered, traditional doctor-patient relationships are being radically transformed, and those involved feel that they are collaboratively working together as part of a value-driven, open-source healthcare system.

So, how might your organization work towards a fuller embodiment of a great company ethos as Kanter describes?