When and how do profit-driven firms innovate responsibly? Our new paper in JPIM explores this in three countries.
Our paper, “Responsible Innovation Management in Profit-driven Firms: A Cross-cultural Analysis in Germany, India, and Japan,” has been published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM).
This paper has had a long and meaningful journey, shaped by in-depth conversations with top executives and senior innovation managers across three distinct national contexts (Germany, Japan, and India), and by a question that feels increasingly important -
How can firms pursue innovation, growth, and competitiveness while also taking responsibility for the societal, ethical, and environmental consequences of what they create?
Three Key Insights from our Research –
1. Responsible Innovation is not the opposite of profitable innovation.
Responsible Innovation Management is not about slowing firms down or making innovation less ambitious. It is about building the managerial capacity to anticipate consequences, engage stakeholders, and align innovation decisions with broader responsibility.
2. Context and Culture matter. A lot.
Germany, India, and Japan each offer distinct institutional, cultural, and managerial conditions that shape how firms understand and practice responsibility in innovation.
3. Responsibility needs to be managed, not merely declared.
Good intentions are not enough. Responsible innovation requires structures, routines, leadership attention, stakeholder engagement, and strategic commitment. It has to become part of how innovation is actually managed in firms, which we call Responsible Innovation Management.
Here is the Open Access Article: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.70049
