Creating an Innovation Playbook: Guide to Supporting and Scaling Local Innovations for Family Planning (FP) and Adolescent Reproductive Health (ARH)
Purpose
The Innovation Playbook aims to empower the capacity of local organizations anywhere to be able to nurture and grow social innovators and entrepreneurs to create positive health outcomes. Women, LGBTQ+ communities, and other vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected by lack of access to quality and affordable healthcare services. This playbook offers a step-by-step guide designed with tools, methodologies and assessment to help localize social innovation and convene key stakeholders, consolidated from Villgro Philippines’ work in supporting hundreds of social innovators.
Who is it for?
Whether you are an aspiring changemaker, an established entrepreneur support organization or a local government agency the tools in this playbook can be useful to create your own support programs to create, encourage and develop innovations. We have designed this toolkit to especially help government agencies, local government units, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and others to launch and implement your own incubation, acceleration or other capacity building programs to accelerate innovations in health.
Inside the Playbook
Inspiration
Convene events, hackathons and innovation challenges to build a pipeline of innovations and bring stakeholders together
Incubation & Acceleration
Design and deliver effective capacity building programs to launch and scale innovations in the local ecosystem
Investment
Create access and deploy critical funding to fuel the growth of innovative models.
Building an Ecosystem to Foster Innovation
An innovation ecosystem is made up of different actors, relationships and resources who all play a role in taking a great idea to transformative impact at scale. When we are building innovations in a highly regulated and challenging environment like the healthcare sector, collaboration amongst actors is key to success.
The startup or innovation lifecycle is characterized by key milestones that enterprises typically navigate as they progress from idea to market to scale. Along this journey, startups and innovators face many challenges from lack of funding, difficult operating conditions, last mile challenges, market entry, etc – To navigate these challenges they need different types of support as they grow.
Problem Solution Fit
At the idea and pre-seed stages, startups focus on
identifying and defining
a specific problem and
developing a solution that effectively addresses it.
Minimum Value Product
Startups build and launch an MVP – a basic version of their product or service that allows them to test hypotheses and gather feedback from early adopters.
Product Market Fit
Achieving product-
market fit means that there is significant demand for the
product or service in the market.
Startup Scaling
Once product-market fit is achieved, startups focus on scaling operations, expanding their customer base, and
increasing revenue.
Startup Maturity
Startups reach maturity when they establish a strong market position, achieve sustainable
revenue growth, and
potentially consider exit strategies.
To build a supportive ecosystem for innovation, a variety of interventions need to exist in the market. Some of the main models to deploy these solutions are listed below. While these aren’t mutually exclusive – in fact, they are sometimes used in combination by the same organisations.
Snapshot
An Overview of the Innovation Playbook
Context of Sexual, Reproductive Health Ecosystem
Health innovators recognize an opportunity to harness technology and creative solutions to address improved sexual, reproductive health outcomes. For instance, telemedicine and mobile health applications represent innovative approaches to deliver discreet and accessible reproductive health consultations and services. However, the sector is influenced by cultural, religious, and political dynamics, and it is important to understand the nuances, locally.
Healthcare Access & Services
Access to reproductive health services, including contraception and maternal care, varies across different regions of the Philippines. Rural areas, in particular, may have limited access to healthcare facilities and information, impacting family planning choices and maternal health outcomes.
Stigma & Societal Pressures
Discussions around reproductive health, especially topics related to sexual education, contraception, and abortion, are often stigmatized in Filipino society. There may be societal pressures that discourage open dialogue and comprehensive education on these matters, leading to misinformation and barriers to accessing necessary services.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this Playbook for?
We have designed this toolkit to especially help government agencies, local government units, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and others to launch and implement your own incubation, acceleration or other capacity building programs to accelerate innovations in health. However, this Playbook can be used by any organization looking to support innovators or entrepreneurs build and scale their solutions.
How to use this Playbook?
The playbook is divided into three pillars of ecosystem building – Inspiration – Incubation and Investments. Each section is designed in a modular way – so you could for example, go to Inspiration and find a step-by-step guide to run an Ecosystem Event. Or you could access toolkits to run a combination of activities. We urge you to pick one or more activities- pick any activity–for change and start there. And when you’re ready, try another activity. And so on. There are guides for a variety of activities based on your organization’s capacity and goals.
Who is Villgro Philippines?
Villgro Philippines is a gender smart incubator that funds, mentors and nurtures early-stage enterprises that address urgent social or climate challenges through innovative models. In the Philippines and Southeast Asia, Villgro PH has supported over a 100 enterprises who have impacted over 12 million lives. We have put together best practices from our own experiences to open source to any organization that would like to support innovations to improve the healthcare system and/or other social issues.
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