Dick Pfeil’s Hand Cramps After 2,000 Signatures

As never one to be satisfied with things as is, Dick Pfeil recently reached out to more than 2,000 regional organizations, through personally signed letters, about the need to participate in the Innovation immersion program at Pfeil Innovation Center. “Signing my name on each letter was a simple way of saying that ‘I’m committed to Michiana and helping organizations learn this trainable competency that will lead to job creation and improved quality of life.’”

If there is something that Dick Pfeil will never be accused of, it’s resting on his laurels. The long-time South Bend business owner has never been fond of the status quo; keeping things as is; never content, with, well, being content.

Dick and Beacon Health System share this in common. It’s not just about being better, but about being transformative. Becoming different at what you do starts with learning transformative ways to accomplish goals. And that takes Innovation.
Innovation runs deep in the Beacon DNA, just as it has for Pfeil and his business career. At just 30 years old, he became president of Koontz-Wagner Electric Company, where he constantly sought ways to grow the company by forging new business opportunities and encouraging his staff to develop smarter, more efficient ways to accomplish their work.

During the 1980s, Dick began a relationship with Memorial Hospital that continues to bear much fruit today. While serving on Memorial Hospital’s Board of Directors, Dick, just as with his business, asked the question, “How can we make health care better?”

Then-Memorial President Phil Newbold, now Beacon CEO, shared Dick’s passion for innovation, and the two spearheaded a hospital-wide focus on improving quality within the hospital while also increasing differentiation for the organization, most notably, the patient-care experience. It resulted in numerous success stories built on the principle of Innovation, including patient-friendly design projects—the development of HealthWorks! Kids’ Museum and Innovation Café and unique partnerships with such retailers as South Bend Chocolate Café. Numerous initiatives and programs have been undertaken over the years involving Associates from all levels that have resulted in an innovation culture at Beacon.

The inviting confines of Pfeil Innovation Center, 420 N. Niles Ave., South Bend, has been a business-friendly environment for hundreds of people attending the Innovation immersion program.

With so much success thanks to innovation permeating every aspect of health care, Phil wanted to share the hospital’s innovation methodologies and best practices with the entire community. He reached out to Dick, who didn’t have to think twice about contributing the seed money for the creation of the Pfeil Innovation Center, the nation’s foremost center for Innovation education that’s focused on helping organizations make Innovation a central principle in everything they do.

“We think our Innovation program, built over the last 15 years at Memorial, is the best and most unique of its kind in the country,” says Matt Krathwohl, Beacon Health System executive director of Innovation and Lead Faculty at the Pfeil Innovation Center. “And that’s because we have implemented proven methodologies, strategies and approaches from all industries and blended it into a hybrid approach that no one else has.”

While some may think Innovation is a difficult concept to teach, Dick insists that it is a “trainable competency” for any industry. Since the Pfeil Innovation Center began offering its increasingly popular two-day Innovation immersion program, more than 700 people from more than 90 organizations across the region and even across the country, large and small, for-profit and non-profit, government and private, have participated and returned to their place of business with ideas to transform their own way of doing things.