Governing digital innovations for responsible outcomes – the case of digital healthcare and welfare services

Abstract

Digital innovations integrated with Responsible innovation (RI) offer great potential to address complex societal challenges in the healthcare and welfare sector but depend on how well firms can manage the innovation process to ensure socially desirable solutions. However, there is a lack of empirical studies examining whether RI principles can be integrated into a firm’s innovation development process. This paper aims to fill this gap through longitudinal case studies of six digital start-ups in the healthcare and welfare sector from 2016 to 2019. We followed innovation development in these firms, observing the stakeholder inclusion, pivotal moments and the emergence of new solutions based on the need-solution interactions. We found that stakeholder inclusion is critical. Therefore, we suggest that managers and entrepreneurs consider including a diversity of stakeholders and users from the design phase throughout the innovation process.