Back October 17, 2018

Canada will soon have a force for innovation pay us a visit – the inimitable Shawna Butler. She is a nurse and economist by training. Now she is the EntrepreNurse-in-Residence at REshape Innovation Center in the Netherlands and the engine behind the Exponential Medicine program at Singularity University. Shawna brings the clinical, practical, and human sensibilities of a nurse to work with early-stage ventures, large-scale health organizations, early stage health tech ventures and emerging and converging tech and other market solutions. She listens, learns, finds, and activates the mavericks and projects with a serious chance of delivering better health outcomes and making society stronger. 

In her clinical nursing life Shawna has a breadth of front line patient care experiences spanning emergency, cardiac, critical care, international medical flight transport, and workplace wellness. At Exponential Medicine, Shawna and her team focus convening a global community to understand and experiment with  opportunities to reimagine health and care presented by emerging technologies that scale as fast as software scales e.g., robotics, AI, VR, machine learning, supercomputing, genetic sequencing, blockchain, 3D printing, drones, crowd + cloud solutions. Now she is creating a global movement to reimagine and reposition the nurse as a vital driver and amplifier of innovation.  The common thread in all of her work is to accelerate the distribution of adoption of health innovation to impact patients, health systems and broader society.

In this context, for the past few years Shawna and a small band of peer health innovators in the US, UK and Netherlands has been shaping and the growing EntrepreNurse movement (she always says it’s just a spelling error on the word Entrepreneurs where the “e” is simply mis-placed).  She is the first ever EntrepreNurse-in-Residence in the Netherlands (and anywhere in the world, actually!). After all, they make up more than half of the health workforce (which usually comprises around 10% of the total workforce in most developed economies, a.k.a. nurses are about 5% of the workforce). They are the original hackers of the medical supplies closet and have been documented to innovate on the spot with workarounds some 70 times in a nursing shift. Without anyone telling them they “need to be innovative” like we are trying to do now with the myriad innovation training courses and masterclasses that have proliferated globally. This burgeoning industry of innovation education attempts to rewire the DNA of staff in health organizations. No rewiring for innovation is needed for nurses. 

Shawna brings sharp wit, common sense, and deep caring to projects worth doing and ideas worth amplifying. Thinking BIG is a regular habit. As a strategy advisor with a passion for quantum collaboration, she is a fierce advocate, amplifier, and connector. She is simply a hard working rockstar. And we’re so thrilled to host her October 23 in Toronto to inspire us as we launch the Canadian EntrepreNurse movement.

Join us!