Customer-Driven Innovation in theMental Health Sector: Preliminary Findings of Three Mental Health Hospitals in Greece

In the highly competitive health care market, corporations need to develop successful new services that meet the needs of customers. This is a complex system consisting of many actors and interest groups, and while there are many development opportunities, they seem in many cases dispersed and fragmented. Little has been written about how new health services are developed and to what extent should patients be involved in the development process. Furthermore, little in-depth research has been conducted into how entrepreneurial opportunities can be developed by health care organisations from patient-oriented services. The paper reviews relevant literature and develops a model that investigates and explores the level of patient involvement required for successful new service development and how these new services could aid the cases organisations with establishment and growth in the sector of mental health hospitals. The contributions of this paper are deemed to be important especially since evidence and measurement of relevant outcomes from interventions in the mental health sector in Greece are somewhat limited and non-comprehensive. Qualitative research techniques were applied to address the research questions. The preliminary findings show that health care organisations should adopt service innovation processes, involving users in the design and development of new offerings. This will also give them the ability to identify further entrepreneurial opportunities in the wider sector of health services.