Open Workshop: Bringing Responsibility to Firm Practices - Strategies and Challenges
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
Speaker: Professor Tatiana Iakovleva, Stavanger Business School, Norway
The notion that Responsible Innovation (RI) can address significant societal challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, poverty reduction, and the needs of aging societies is gaining traction. RI can be defined as a transparent interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsible to each other with a view to the ethical acceptability, sustainability, and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (Von Schomberg, 2011). However, RI is currently impeded by the lack of a defined governance process with practical guidelines for implementation, remaining largely theoretical and normative (Ribeiro et al., 2018; Thapa and Iakovleva, 2019).
Recent studies have begun to explore RI’s relevance in firm practices (e.g., Callegari and Mikhailova, 2021; Gurzawska, 2021; Iakovleva et al., 2021b). These studies highlight that the motivation to engage in RI is often not the problem (Garst et al 2017; Scholten & Blok, 2015; Martinuzzi et al., 2018), but that the gap in RI exists regarding specific frameworks for involving users and stakeholders in the innovation process (e.g. Blok et al. 2015; Iakovleva et al., 2021a), including whom to involve, how, and when (Silva et al., 2019). In my presentation, I will provide an overview of the field development in terms of responsible innovation and entrepreneurship, and illustrate the challenges by highlighting some of the recent work my colleagues and I have been doing on that topic. In particular, I will refer to three articles recently published (all open access):
Thapa, R. K., & Iakovleva, T. (2023). Responsible innovation in venture creation and firm development: the case of digital innovation in healthcare and welfare services. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 1-27.
Naughton, B., Dopson, S., & Iakovleva, T. (2023). Responsible impact and the reinforcement of responsible innovation in the public sector ecosystem: cases of digital health innovation. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 1-25.
Oftedal, E. M., Foss, L., & Iakovleva, T. (2019). Responsible for Responsibility? A Study of Digital E-health Startups. Sustainability, 11(19), 5433. doi:10.3390/su11195433
Tatiana Iakovleva is an esteemed Professor of Entrepreneurship at Stavanger Business School, Norway, with a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship from Bode Graduate School of Business (2008). Her research primarily focuses on entrepreneurial intentions, gender in entrepreneurship, social responsibility in business development, and the impact of digitalization on opportunity recognition. She has authored two influential books: the first in 2019 on inclusive entrepreneurship practices in digital health across seven countries, and the second in 2022 discussing the role of entrepreneurial universities in European regional development. Her upcoming third book, due in 2024, explores opportunity recognition and boundary innovation spaces in digital health.
Dr. Iakovleva has contributed over 55 publications to international peer-reviewed journals in the fields of responsibility, innovation, and entrepreneurship. She leads the Responsible Innovation Special Interest Group at the Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM), significantly influencing responsible innovation discourse.
Currently, she is leading the “Releasing the Power of Users: articulating user interest to accelerate new innovative pathways in the digital health and welfare sector” project, investigating responsible innovation in digital health across six countries, highlighting her commitment to advancing knowledge in this vital area.
Discussion moderated by Dr. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge.
Please sign up for the seminar, by writing to arnis.sauka@sseriga.edu by January 16, 2024.
The aim of the SSE Riga Open Workshop Series is to:
- Foster cooperation between business and management researchers, practitioners and policymakers, as well as
- Promote academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences, focusing on but not limited to entrepreneurship, marketing, management, public administration, and strategy.
Organised by the Centre for Sustainable Business at SSE Riga