The HHS Ignite Accelerator

Cultivating a Culture of Innovation

The Ignite Accelerator was -- and still is -- a fairly unique program within the federal government. 

Ignite is a competitive program for federal employees with an idea for how to improve the way their office or agency carries out its mission. The program gives selected teams 3 months of innovation training, design and entrepreneurship coaching, and seed funding of $5,000 to help take an early-stage idea to a tested-prototype through iterative customer engagements. 

We launched this effort in 2013 as a beta because... we didn't know whether the whole idea behind the program would work!

Would people apply? Would they have good ideas? Could we help them in any way? This was new territory for government, but we adhered to the principles we taught: We stayed close to our customer (aka: the federal employees we hoped to build this program for), we adjusted along the way, and we worked to ensure we were being most useful.

Round 1 of the program worked fine, but it needed tweaks. And so the program began it's evolution.

By the time I left in the middle of 2017, Ignite looked very different than from where we began. We had 5 rounds under our belts. We had cultivated an incredible cross-gov’t community and generated interests in the concepts beyond even those who where in the program.

We heard hundreds of pitches, and supported over 50 projects. About a third of those went on to make significant impact. About a third of them went nowhere. About a third muddled somewhere in the middle.

Project domains ranged everywhere from data visualization and 3D printing to process streamlining and automation, from sex trafficking and child welfare services to scientific research and medical devices. The topic doesn’t matter. The methodology and approach is the same.

Along the way, a couple really interesting things began to develop. Here’s one: After Round 2, we invited some of the best project leads to volunteer their time be coaches for teams in Round 3. They were eager to dedicate a portion of their time to thing being created; and being a coach gave them a way to further develop their innovation chops while getting a bit of management experience as well. Out of this feedback, we developed a coaching program, one with its own pipeline and its own community. Some of those coaches then went on to launch their own accelerator programs within their agency. 

The HHS Ignite Accelerator has been picked up and implemented -- at least in part -- by multiple federal agencies including: the CDC, HRSA, NIH, NSA, the VA, and the DOJ. 

The program continues today.

Philosophy & Approach

On Methodologies and Buzz Words. While we used the words "Design Thinking" and "Human-Centered Design" and "Lean Startup", we also worked hard NOT to use them. These mean different things to different people; from ideas to hard methodology. But at their core they share the common elements of getting to know your customers, start by building some small, testing it, learning, iterating, etc...

On Learning vs Wisdom. Studying yields knowledge, but experiences yield wisdom. And we need more wisdom. The core tenet is to get people to get out of their usual routines and go do something. We’d help them glean insights, and then we’d have them go do things again, hopefully a bit smarter, a bit better. There were lectures, class-room-style teachings, and the sharing of information over emails and all that. BUT those only supported the real work: Every week each team reported back to their coach who they talked to (or tested their idea with) and what they learned from that interaction.

On Process. We value human interactions over process. So there's no recipe to follow, but rather principles to strive for: don’t over plan; conversations are better than emails; do the smallest easiest things first; always be learning. And then there’s a structure of people (always of people) to both help and provide accountability. The coach + team relationship was critical. Each coach used their own judgement to meet the team where they were and then help them as they saw best.

On Innovation Management. Ignite provides a space to test out ideas. Lots of people talk about "testing" ideas, but often this involves months of powerpoint presentations that turn into budget lines that turn into programs that go on forever. Nah. That sounds terrible. With Ignite it’s very simple: You pitch to us to get in. Then, you have three months to prove yourself! We provide a framework and some training, but this is your opportunity. After three months, we are no longer able to support you and your idea. We move on. It’s very important to have a place to test out ideas. And it’s equally important to have process and place for the bad ones to die.

On Ideas and People. Actually, we believed that ideas are over-rated. The hard part is not finding an idea (I can google for a thousand of them right now), it's turning that idea into a thing and over-time having impact. But sometimes, the idea is good but the people aren’t the right ones to do the job. Or sometimes it’s a bad idea, but great people. For a project to succeed BOTH the idea and the people have to be good. There has to be a good match. If either is not good, the whole thing fails. If you’re only going to have one of them be good, then ensure it's the individuals and then trust that they'll figure it out along the way. Too often we invest in ideas when we should be investing in people.

Further Reading & Resources

Overview of the Innovation Pipeline (SlideShare)  | These are slides that you can click through quickly that go through the history of how the Pipeline, which goes beyond just the Ignite Accelerator, developed and where it was when I left. This history is more than just informational: HOW things come about is a really interesting and important element. (That lesson is, as it turns out, sort of the whole point of the Ignite process.)

Ignite Accelerator Website: Home Page (HHS.gov)  | Lots here, including: our selection process and access specific projects that have gone through. This has likely changed a bit since I left.

Syllabus for teams Selected into Ignite (HHS.gov) | A micro-site I built for selected teams. This provides a more granular insight into what the teams experience, including our thoughts on methodology / approach / tools. This has likely changed a bit since I left.

The 3-Day Boot Camp (Idea Lab Blog)  | This post dives into this 3 day gathering that kickstarts each new Round. It's part training, part work (but really that's a false dichotomy). 

Considering launching something similar in your organization?

I've worked with many organizations, from governments to non-profits, to help them think about what their "Ignite" looks like. Feel free to reach out!

Would love to chat.