Open innovation in digital health: a design science approach

Gaining traction in the past decade, “open innovation” has offered a framework for firms to collaborate with non-traditional stakeholders, tap into new sources of knowledge, and accelerate the development of novel products and business models. In pursuing such new partnerships, firms must contend with many unforeseen and ill-defined risks, which arise from conflicting stakeholder agendas and needs, organisational barriers, and other challenges of open innovation. Practitioners and scholars alike have responded by developing conceptual frameworks of stakeholder engagement. However, there is still a lack of research on the design activities, mechanisms, and digital platforms to promote stakeholder engagement in open innovation. To address this gap, our study employs the Action Design Research methodology to develop design principles for digital platforms and organisational mechanisms that promote stakeholder engagement in open innovation. The research question is: "How should a digital platform be designed to enable engagement among various stakeholders in open innovation?" An initial set of five design principles was developed based on an open innovation process framework and contingency theory. The design principles were then applied to instantiate an ‘open digital health platform’ and evaluated in a healthcare company. More than 80 percent of the users agreed that the instantiated platform was effective in increasing the breadth and depth of engagement between internal and external stakeholders from different domains. The design principles were also refined based on user feedback. This study contributes to research by developing and empirically evaluating a set of theory-guided design principles for open innovation platforms that enhance stakeholder engagement: • Identify and motivate collaborators to design compelling value propositions for new product ideas. • Scout for internal and external partners with capabilities to form an open innovation venture. • Integrate experience and knowledge from all stakeholders in the design of the prototype, so that they feel motivated to share. • Establish channels for formal and informal exchanges of knowledge, so that stakeholders can remain informed and engaged. • Align stakeholders’ interests on a recognised criterion, to motivate decisions on product scalability. For practitioners, the design principles serve as guidelines for innovation managers on how to integrate different systems, methods, and processes for open innovation implementation. Additionally, they offer theories and practical recommendations that innovation managers may use to engage with senior management, especially when pitching to start new open innovation programs.Master of Science (Information Studies