Beyond Organisational Borders: The Soft Power of Innovation in the Health Sector; Comment on “What Managers Find Important for Implementation of Innovations in the Healthcare Sector – Practice Through Six Management Perspectives”

Document Type : Commentary

Author

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

Health is not just a physiological state, it is also a relational phenomenon. This means health is a collective challenge, often a cross-border one. Diplomacy in the health sector has progressively received more attention from formal actors (national states, international organisations, etc) but after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) challenge, this attention became a global emergency mobilising an expansive set of knowledge-seeking players (industry, research networks, civil society, etc). This paper comments on and leverages the contribution by Palm and Feschier on innovation management at the organisational level to address a complementary dimension: the internationalization process, and the need for a particular set of skills and routines to make innovations travel through different markets and regulatory contexts. Our argument is that marketing (knowing about customers) and diplomacy (understanding framing institutions) constitute a set of dynamic capabilities (soft power) that are critical for the effective internationalization of innovation.

Keywords


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Volume 11, Issue 12
December 2022
Pages 3125-3128
  • Receive Date: 21 March 2022
  • Revise Date: 05 June 2022
  • Accept Date: 26 June 2022
  • First Publish Date: 27 June 2022