Special Issue Innovation: Organization and Management“Rethinking Medical Innovation: Organizing R&D, Responding to Crisis, Delivering Health Services”

Innovation, entrepreneurship and the organization of research and development in the context of healthcare organizations, the medical devices and pharmaceutical industries as well as the broader field of medicine and life-sciences have been of great interest for many researchers across different innovation and knowledge related domains. For multiple reasons, however, common approaches to analyzing and explaining these developments may require rethinking how, why, and when medical innovations occur and are diffused in society. A first reason for “Rethinking Medical Innovation” derives from the challenges facing traditional ways of innovating in this sphere. Specifically, scientific and technological progress in bio-medical and related disciplines such as personalized therapies (Denicolai & Previtali, 2020) as well as digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence in innovation processes (Schneider et al. 2020) challenge existing ways of innovating. At the same time, the disruptive element of the global COVID-19 pandemic as a crisis event opens up new opportunities, and raised questions about the potential for a redesign of where and how medical innovation is conducted (George et al., 2020). This may encompass the INNOVATION: ORGANIZATION & MANAGEMENT 2021, VOL. 23, NO. 3, 439–444 https://doi.org/10.1080/14479338.2021.1954745