Healthcare was a domain at ease with the cascade or techno-push model of innovation, with a special attention on experimentation structured by legal test protocols. The management of innovation in healthcare has attracted renewed attention with the reference to AI, “big data”, biotechs, medtechs and with the reference to user-centric innovation (as most often illustrated with medtechs and biotechs). Research in healthcare is as complex and risky as ever, but time frames for the development of innovation have adapted to the new realities of AI and biotechs, and the scope of experimentation to new stakeholders. Disruptive innovation in healthcare is a crucial driver for the evolution for this industry over the last years.
Top-down and user-centric innovation management are not in opposition; they complement each other in different areas of healthcare research, and at different stages of innovation processes. Both processes coexist for the management of innovation today and have to invent how to complement each other. The twin reference to deeptechs and to digitalization has also reshaped how to process research and generate innovation in healthcare: new stakeholders now jump into the domain without prior vicinity with the its specificities as regards safety, legal issues or mandatory experimentation and validation protocols (as illustrated in medtechs, where lots of innovators directly come from computer sciences and other domains in physics).However, the stakeholders contributing to these processes do not follow the same rationales, and do not always understand each other. These aspects now require new and adapted practices in the management of innovation. This evolution develops also in an external environment framed by the rapid aging of world population, the difficult access to medical care for some social groups due to increasing budget constraints by national Governments, and the urgency incurred by specific diseases (e.g. the COVID pandemic).
This special issue focuses on new practices for the management of innovation in all subareas of healthcare. The special issues covers the development of user-centric innovation and of experimentation to healthcare, with a special focus on its complementarities with traditional cascade top-down (techno-push) innovation. User-centric innovation in healthcare makes it also possible to test new business models with the appropriate stakeholders. The healthcare domain is original because it provides field research to analyze the dynamics in the Triple or Quadruple Helix (State, research, industry, actual people) and the interactions between them in local ecosystems. It provides also a relevant domain to question the status of „user“ in user-centric innovation.
The aim of this special issue
To collect high-quality papers addressing and contributing to the debate about the main criticalities of the innovation management in healthcare systems and organizations. Drawing from the research directions presented earlier in this section, this call for papers seeks empirical and conceptual contributions that critically analyse the current state of top-down and user-centric innovation management in the healthcare sector. We welcome contributions about the articulation between these two approaches, and about the renewal of innovation management practices incurred by current technological disruptions, by the presence of more diverse stakeholders, and by the arrival of new innovation actors without any prior vicinity with healthcare (as medtechs most often illustrate it). Other topics may cover the main macro-, meso, and micro-level conditions (e.g., institutions and regulations, and pricing and reimbursement, adaptation of existing business models, introduction of innovative business models, supply-chain management) of innovation management in healthcare.
We also welcome papers exploring new methods to conduct research and analyse data in light of new innovations and technological disruption in the healthcare industry.
Authors are invited to submit theoretical and empirical papers that would contribute to fulfilling the aims of the special issue.
Publication Schedule
- Manuscript submission: 31 December 2020
- Reviewer reports: 30 March 2021
- Final paper submission: 30 July 2021
- Anticipated publication date of the special issue electronic from October 2021
- Anticipated publication date of the special issue print March 2022
- All submissions must be done through ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ejim
Guest Editors
Francesco Schiavone, University of Naples Parthenope, Department of Management and Quantitative Studies, Italy, francesco.schiavone@uniparthenope.it
David W. Versailles, Paris School of Business, newPIC Chair, France, dwv@newpic.fr Valerie Merindol, Paris School of Business, newPIC Chair, France, vm@newpic.fr
Uta Wilkens, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) – Institute of Work Science (IAW) – Chair for Work, Human Resources and Leadership, uta.wilkens@rub.de