How do grand challenges determine, drive and influence the innovation efforts of for-profit firms? A multidimensional analysis
Vijay Pereira, Yama Temouri, Geoffrey Wood, Umesh Bamel, Pawan Budhwar
kHUB post date: April 11, 2024
Originally published: May 28, 2023 (PDMA JPIM • Vol. 41, Issue 2 • March 2024)
Read time: 68 minutes
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While raising concerns, the recent proliferation of grand challenges has sparked interest in the role played by innovation in causing them, and in how the attempts made to fix them may cause even greater challenges that present themselves down the line. This article provides an analysis of the bibliographic metadata, published between 2002 and 2020, focusing explicitly on the private-for-profit sector. By identifying common themes from 66 documents, a framework highlighting the shared concerns and research trajectories was derived. Our results are illustrated and discussed along 11 research themes. We contribute theoretically by identifying the innovation efforts of for-profit firms that directly relate to grand challenges, through two cases of carbon capture and storage and deep-sea mining. We conclude that a more holistic understanding of innovation and its many possible consequences needs to be developed. We highlight the limitations of perspectives that do not always take full account of the potential divergence of interests between stakeholders, and, how fuller input by a greater cross-section of stakeholders may help identify any negative effects of innovations at an earlier stage. Informed by recent extensions of social innovation theory, we explore the potential for synthesis around a pragmatic understanding of institutions, stakeholders, and the nature and quality of ties that bind them.
Practitioner Points
- We highlight the differences in the innovation efforts of for-profit firms that directly relate to grand challenges, and how they might be analyzed and understood by portraying a case of carbon capture and storage and deep-sea mining by businesses.
- We also significantly contribute to uncovering what may constitute sustainable activities conducted by multinational enterprises, linked to their capacity and relative willingness to contribute to national development. Such contributions are claimed via the transfer of superior technology, innovation, and knowledge assets, and in deploying these to help ensure the enactment of sustainable practices and corporate social responsibility.
- At the macro level, we explored both the positive and negative impacts of the technological fixes of grand challenges. At the macro and meso levels, we introduced and explored institutional constraints and enablers of innovation. At the micro level, we explored when and how organizations respond to grand challenges, and why innovation in some areas may be matched by inertia in others.