Change Challenge: how it worked

The Change Challenge was delivered using one of Clever Together’s crowdsourcing methodologies. Some call this method a “hackathon”.

It involved four phases of crowdsourcing activity - the first three were delivered using Clever Together’s crowdsourcing platform, which acts like an online workshop, and the fourth used open access tools like Google Documents.

Phase 1: Understand

The crowd was invited to the platform to answer the question: What things help or block you when you try to create bottom-up change?

In response, 1,455 people got involved and shared 7,524 contributions.

Independent teams from HSJ and Clever Together used a “grounded theory” approach to the analysis.

This theory is about creating an analysis framework from the data.

The result of this process was a shared agreement between both research teams of 10 barriers and 11 building blocks for bottom-up change, emerging from the data collated from the crowd.

Phase 2: Answer

The crowd was invited to use these barriers and building blocks as inspiration in sharing solutions that could support bottom-up change in health and care. They shared 291 unique ideas.

The research teams from outside the NHS, as well as members of HSJ and Clever Together, independently coded every solution in terms of how they can tackle the barriers or create building blocks for bottom-up change.

They then debated and reached agreement where differences of opinion arose.

Phase 3: Prioritise

The research teams selected 47 ideas from the 291, by considering if it was:

• supported;
• “doable”;
• able to help establish one or more building blocks of bottom-up change; and
• if it was innovative.

The crowd was invited to nurture and develop these ideas, in doing so they submitted 722 comments.

Phase 4: Act

Using the same prioritisation criteria, 17 of the 47 ideas were shortlisted, and their authors and main contributors were invited to develop these ideas into mini-guides for publication.

Virtual “design teams” formed around collaborative documents to build each shortlisted solution. Fifteen were selected for publication based upon the quality and consensus of the contributions.

The result is a cutting edge interactive guide that can inspire staff at every level to overcome the barriers to bottom-up change and create the conditions that support this critical process within the UK’s health economy.

Over this whole campaign 3,595 people have got involved and shared 13,895 contributions to develop this guide.