PHDINN906 Sustainable and Digital Transformations for Responsible Organizations

Contents and structure

This course will elaborate upon actors, organizations and institutions, and their interlinkages, to understand the drivers and obstacles for innovation and responsible regional industry development. We will apply both a system perspective and a firm perspective. Innovation systems can have different scale and scope and have been investigated and operationalized through analytical concepts such as industry clusters and regional innovation systems. We will investigate how the dynamism and sustainability of these systems are linked to system-internal and system-external factors. Moreover, firms and agency are often overlooked within the literature on innovation system. Thus, in this course, we place an emphasis on how firm leaders, entrepreneurs and stakeholders contribute to the renewal and transformation of industries and regions. We intend to understand agency in context and especially the different that space makes, and the course will investigate how regional resources and capabilities are important when explaining firms and entrepreneur’s propensity to introduce responsible innovation.

The course entails approximately 4 weeks of work. A short research paper (

The course will provide insight into state-of-the-art knowledge of responsible regional industry development. We will investigate industry clusters, key issues within regional innovation system research, and the evolutionary dynamics and processes of renewal and transformation of systems and regions. The dynamism of these systems is linked to both systemic dimensions, such as the co-evolution and interdependency of different subsystems, and to the agency of actors. Agency is often overlooked within the literature on regional industry development. In this course, we place special emphasis on how firm leaders, entrepreneurs and stakeholders contribute to the renewal and transformation of industries and regions. We intend to understand agency in context and especially the difference that space make, and will investigate how regional resources and capabilities are important when explaining firms and entrepreneurs propensity to introduce innovation. In particular, we will examine the challenge of developing responsible and sustainable regional industries.

The course consists of three modules.

Module 1 - Path dependency and regional development

This module examines the path-dependent dynamics of regional innovation systems and clusters, and the development of regional industry structures through time and space. There will be a specific focus on the challenges of responsible or sustainable regional development.

There will be three main topics within this module: 1) Industry clusters, 2) Regional Innovation Systems and 3) Green path creation. The first part will investigate the concept of industry cluster and the link between cluster development and regional development. We will also discuss to which extent cluster policy is oriented towards responsible and sustainable regional development. The second part elaborate on the concept of Regional Innovation System (RIS) and the idea of the path dependent regional industry development. It will also discuss the role of firm agency and system agency. The third part discusses the emergence of new sustainable industries in regions. More specifically, it will look into the drivers and obstacles for green path creation.

Module 2 - Responsible innovation and renewal in established firms and industries

The focus in this module will be on the role of established firms for industry development. Especially we investigate  responsible innovation management and corporate social responsibility, and how this is situated in different regional contexts.  

The module will cover three main topics: (1) corporate social responsibility and sustainability; (2) responsible innovation in firm’s innovation process; and (3) responsible innovations in digital health-care. The first part of the module will have a general discussion on corporate social responsibility and sustainability and introduce different models of corporate social responsibility. The second part of the module will introduce the theoretical construct of responsibility and its implications for the firm-level innovation process. Finally, the third part of the module will study the role of responsible innovation in the context of digital health-care innovations with empirical examples.

Module 3 - Entrepreneurs, start-ups and sustainable business models

In this module we will examine the role of entrepreneurs and start-ups for industry development and regional renewal. There will also be a focus on how to develop sustainable business models in different regional contexts.

The module will cover three main topics: (1) sustainable entrepreneurship; (2) sustainable business models; and (3) commercialization of responsible innovations. The first part of the module will discuss the peculiarities of sustainable entrepreneurship and focus on how entrepreneurs can contribute to sustainable development through various entrepreneurial approaches. The second part of the module will cover business model innovations that lead to better organizational economic, environmental and social performance (i.e. sustainable business models). Finally, the third part of the module will study the role of entrepreneurs and start-ups in commercializing responsible innovations, with special focus on sustainable crowdfunding and marketing strategies.

Learning Outcome

Upon completion of the course, the candidate should be able to:

Knowledge

•  provide an overview of the general academic debates in the research field of responsible industry innovation;
• reflect on the role of actors and entrepreneurs in innovation systems 
• describe the main methodological approaches and their theoretical and conceptual underpinnings currently applied in the research field of innovation systems; and
• write an essay on theoretical, methodological and/or ethical issues related to his/her own PhD project.

Skills

•   identify the theoretical perspectives and conceptual foundations in the research field of responsible industry innovation;
• recognize the methodological approach(es) of a given study exploring innovation and its theoretical and conceptual underpinnings;
• structure analyses of the dynamism of innovation systems and the role of agency;
• develop his/her own research ideas in close collaboration with established innovation researchers; and
• apply state-of-the-art knowledge on innovation systems and agency in a short research paper.

General competence

• assess the applicability and limitations of theoretical and conceptual foundations in the research field of responsible industry innovation;
• discuss and relate recent developments and research trends within the research field of innovation systems and the role of agency;
• identify central scientific venues and journals within the research field of industry innovation.