ESSEC Working Papers,
ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School

Abstract: This study deals with responsibility as part of innovation. Innovation gives birth to development for the organizations by nature and can take several forms. In an economic context always more global and more competitive, innovation can only be at the core of any strategy. At the same time, the race for innovation in the world today raises new questions. These questions stem most of the time from the impossibility to forecast the result of the

innovations: will it be successful or not? More exactly the questions innovation raise are also

about its consequences on all the society, and not only on the economics, as Schumpeter assumed (Schumpeter, 1939). The consequences of innovation can stretch to the environment, to the society and to social topics. They are to be placed under the innovator’s yoke as well. Thus the particularities of the responsible-innovation have to take into account these important questions and to be articulated according to different topics. Responsibleinnovation should indeed help to answer the problematic raised by the innovation.

In parallel, the common acceptance of the word ‘responsibility’ raises some questions about

its use and how it should be understood. What does ‘responsibility’ mean? Who is responsible

and for what? Is it the shareholder, the customer, the supplier or the manager? These

questions are at the core of our research; we try, by the notion of care, to provide an evolution of responsible-innovation. Contrary to it, the ‘innovation-care’ is about people and focuses on taking care of them. The purpose of the innovation-care is indeed to innovate while keeping up with the level of productivity necessary to any organization. It also has to take into account the essential interdependence between the innovator and the citizen, and to accept the role played by innovation in the individual’s life within the City.

Keywords: Innovation; responsibility; care; innovator; individuals; performance; interdependence; ethics

26 pages, January 1, 2012

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