Much innovative activity today includes complex social processes and is incremental, not patented and with little or no formal R&D. Hence, innovation management scholars have pointed out the need to explore the “human side” of innovation, focusing on the people who harness their creative ideas and transform them into new products and services, but also carry out, test and put into daily usage such innovations.
In the public healthcare system, innovation entails a range of complex outputs, where product and process novelties are combined, and tangibility and intangibility are intertwined. Innovation in the system tends to be difficult, costly, and hierarchical. Despite it being one of the most complex and fast-moving sector, with new understanding of diseases and how to tackle these being developed at an incredible speed, a limited number of innovations is successfully adopted into every day, mainstream practices. Yet, much of the innovation taking place in the field remains unknown, with mechanisms that lead to successful innovative services still underexplored.
This study embraces the call for research focusing on the roles and motivation of actors involved in innovation and operating at the very core of the system. It does so by exploring healthcare professionals’ roles, motivation, and perceptions of innovation processes.
