Responsible innovation among academic spin-offs: how responsible practices help developing absorptive capacity

Abstract

Responsible innovation (RI) among technology-based start-ups has received little attention, while these firms are known to operate on the edges of what is socially desirable or ethically acceptable. In this paper we develop a conceptual model that captures the RI practices among 61 academic spin-offs and investigate how it affects the capacity of the firm to absorb external knowledge to better the exploitation of the innovation. The findings indicate that potential absorptive capacity is increased by both stakeholder engagement and social responsiveness, while realized absorptive capacity is moderately increased through social responsiveness. Remarkable is the finding that the extent that sustainability practices resonate in the start-ups operations does have a negative effect on the potential absorptive capacity. These results provide insight in the way in which start-ups adopt a RI philosophy to their innovation process and help to better understand how they learn and acquire external knowledge to increase the acceptance of their innovations. The findings provide clear recommendations for entrepreneurs and policymakers in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Lessons for Responsible Innovation in the Business Context: A Systematic Literature Review of Responsible, Social and Sustainable Innovation Practices

“…Firms engaging in knowledge synthesis can also develop better innovations when combining external knowledge and exploiting this by combining it with knowledge already present within the firm [51]. Examples of this are: collaboration partnerships and information exchanges between firms and external actors [45,59,60,79,90,93,106].…”

“…Firms engage in knowledge development with other actors, where together they obtain new knowledge [40,41,47,59,90], for example by joint R&D agreements [41,105]. Firms can also absorb external knowledge to bring it within their own firm, for example by bringing in extant knowledge by partnerships or communicating with stakeholders who have creative and/or practical knowledge [41,43,51,52,68,72,87,106]. Firms engaging in knowledge synthesis can also develop better innovations when combining external knowledge and exploiting this by combining it with knowledge already present within the firm [51].…”

Company Strategies for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI): A Conceptual Model

“…RRI may have clear advantages for companies and contribute to competitive advantage [18][19][20]. It helps them to better know and understand their clients and stakeholders, and thus to identify their needs and concerns and translate these into the development of products that will be better accepted and more socially acceptable.…”

Managing communication to for the promotion of Responsible Research and Innovation: a proposal of protocol proposal from discourse from the ethics

“…Finally, the protocol offers response to a need of a science for and with the society promoted and demanded by the European Union, impacting both the decisions about what is wanted to be done -for-as well as who shall take part -with- (Owen et al, 2012). Likewise, the protocol addresses the "golden rules" established in the practice guideline for RRI (RRI Tools, 2016), among which there are being open and transparent, an aspect that is "vital to generate public trust" and that includes disseminating results, methods and data; favour participation and a significant dialogue and of multiple routes with all interested parties; and establishing the grounds for accountability. Among the "golden rules" the model responds to, there is also the "respond and adapt" in the sense of changing as consequence of contributions, collecting the society's feedback.…”

“…Therefore, from the application of discourse ethics, guidelines with moral validity can be complied with, finding an ethical orientation for action. The tools guide for RRI developed through the European project RRI Tools suggests the model of the dialogue, linked to this ethics perspective, as a successful model that allows involving interested parties (RRI Tools, 2016).…”