Public-private partnerships in hospital innovation: what lessons for hospital management?

Healthcare systems in all developed countries are facing enormous socio-economic challenges. The development of cooperation between healthcare providers and of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has emerged as a priority area in the restructuring of the healthcare landscape everywhere. However, these public-private partnerships are regarded essentially in economic terms, as means of cost reduction. This approach, in which such partnerships are viewed solely as a ‘black box’, fails to do justice to the multiplicity of innovation and learning dynamics at work. Drawing on an in-depth case study of a PPP and on theoretical models of innovation in services, we attempt to breach the black box. This ‘forced entry’ is the starting point, firstly, for an investigation of the complex and many-sided nature of hospital innovation associated with certain PPPs and, secondly, the formulation of a number of recommendations for hospital management