Networked Responsibility Approach for Responsible Innovation: Perspective of the Firm

Responsible innovations in the industry gains important attention, however, a better understanding of the interaction of different components with regard to responsible innovation (RI) in the industry is still needed. Moreover, a firm acting in an open innovation regime has to approach the responsibility criteria from various stakeholders’ perspectives, include internal and external stakeholders, and execute innovation in a mutually responsible way. This paper builds on the existing and emerging literature on RI in commercial contexts by providing a networked nature of RI and a set of factors that drive RI in a firm that acts in the open innovation regime. The conceptual framework proposes the analysis of a firm’s inner environment (motives for implementing RI, RI practices, and internal stakeholders), outer environment (norms and external stakeholders), and the networked nature of the firm’s internal and outer environment components. Such a distinction enables us to gain a better understanding of which factors play a role inside the firm and what induces the firm to implement RI activities from its outer environment. Also, it helps to better understand the networked nature of the firm and its stakeholders.