I have been newly intrigued by entrepreneurship through a series at Creative Live called 30 Days of Genius. This series is essentially 30 different interviews with the world’s brightest creative minds, business minds, entrepreneurs, coaches, etc. The interviews are fantastic and they email you one interview per day for 30 days.

It is tough to listen to these creative geniuses, brilliant entrepreneurs, and great business minds without being a tad bit inspired. Because physical therapy is my career and healthcare is my industry I view these thought-provoking interviews through a certain set of lenses. How can I apply these great principles of creativity and business to my field and make a difference? It’s a tough but intriguing question.

I think the solution starts with seeing the problem with as wide of a lens as possible. The soldiers in the trenches of warfare have a no ability to see the grand narrative of the whole war, but only the mud, muck, and danger that is right in front of them. It is the general who can zoom out and see the bigger movements of the opposing troops, underlying strategies and use data, as well as intuition, to predict his next move. We need more generals in healthcare. Seeing the big picture in healthcare is very difficult however because it is such a big system with so many parts and so many players. I don’t claim to see it very well or clearly, but I do think it is helpful to try to think on a large scale.

The second part of creatively solving the problem of healthcare is breaking down the problem into small and manageable pieces. Costs are high, quality is low, access is poor, waste is rampant, people are unhealthy. We have a lot of problems, that list is a very small one. Each piece can be broken down further. Why are costs high? Why is the quality low? Why is access poor? Why is waste rampant? Why are people unhealthy?

Then we go to the drawing board. What solutions can change the way healthcare is delivered to drive cost down? What solutions can make healthcare higher quality? What solutions can make access to healthcare better? What solutions can eliminate waste in the system? What solutions can improve peoples’ health?

I think we usually stop at this point. Most of the conversations on twitter derail here. We know there is a problem, even a solvable problem but there are at least 2 viewpoints and we end up smashing our heads against the wall and conversation stops. We don’t have time to deal with these questions, we have patients to treat and errands to run. I get that. But I truly believe that innovation happens when an individual takes a problem and tries to solve it. Healthcare is a big mess and there are plenty of problems, I don’t think the solution is for it to become “their problem” or an “us problem”. What is happening at the “you level?” What problems do you see in your community and how can your skill set change that? What about regionally? Nationally?

I believe that we need some major thinkers in healthcare, some generals that can see the whole battlefield and move skillfully toward solutions. Don’t let yourself think too small or too practically, true genius is born when boundaries are broken and limitations lifted.