Managing values professionally is a critical success factor for (sustainable) innovation – with implications for business strategy and leadership, consulting and education, as well as entrepreneurship. Following more than two years of inspired writing, intensive discussion, and rigorous reviews, we are happy to announce an Special Issue of the International Journal for Innovation Management, edited by Henning Breuer, Florian Lüdeke-Freund & John Bessant.
We show to what extent values are an inevitable moment of innovation-related activities, requiring contributions from diverse stakeholders in normative, strategic, and operational management dimensions. We illustrate their practicality to promote rather than handicap innovation and clarify their potential to change and assume different meanings rather than being static entities. The explanatory power of a values-based approach, its generative potential, and its emancipatory impact motivate further research and development. The edition contains seven papers:
- Managing Values for Innovation (free-access editorial paper), by Henning Breuer, Florian Lüdeke-Freund & John Bessant
- Values-based business model innovation—The case of Ecosia and its business model (open access), by Kiril Ivanov
- How to strengthen a culture of innovation by combining values-based and evidence-based innovation management, by Matthias Seiler, Andreas Cott, Victor Torres, Julia Reif, Katharina Kugler, Josef Gammel, Felix Brodbeck
- A values-based approach to radical innovation: Facilitating the reinterpretation of core values through design-driven practices, by Silvia Eleonora Castellazzi, Emilio Bellini
- Sustainability-oriented technology exploration: managerial values, ambidextrous design and separation drift’ (open access), by Erik Hansen, Samuel Wicki and Stefan Schaltegger
- Developing values-based innovation competences: An eco-systemic approach, by Kadígia Faccin, Bruno Anicet Bittencourt, Lisiane Machado
- The evolvement of capabilities underpinning business model innovation for sustainability in large incumbent firms, by Jessica Lagerstedt Wadin, Lars Bengtsson
As editors, Henning of UXBerlin as well as his co-editors Florian and John are grateful to the authors for their thought-stimulating contributions and, not least, for their patience during the demanding review process. We also warmly thank those who submitted papers, even though their submissions could not be accepted this time. We are deeply indebted to the many people who found time in their busy days to review the papers that make up this special issue. Carmen Abril, Lara Anne Blasberg, Timo Brunner, Robert Dew, Klaus Fichter, Albrecht Fritzsche, Raz Godelnik, Minna Halme, Jacob Hoerisch, Kiril Ivanov, Jakub Kruszelnicki, Claus Lang-Koetz, Moritz Loock, Joan Manuel F. Mendoza, Alessandro Monti, Inge Oskam, Romana Rauter, Matthias Rauterberg, and Micaela Surchi, we thank you for your generosity, insights and advice. Heartfelt thanks also go out to the organizers of the ISPIM Innovation Conference, namely Lucija Barisic, Iain Bitran and Steffen Conn, for providing us with a platform to deepen interest in this special issue. The discussions we had were stimulating and have gone into making this issue a special one. We also thank Joe Tidd as Managing Editor of the IJIM and his team including Thaheera Althaf and Natalie Wee for the chance to create this Special Issue and for their support. We thank Paul Lauer for his copyediting this editorial paper, as well as our colleagues from the IMPACT project for sponsoring that work.