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This paper presents Convergence Innovation (CI) as a new sustainable core competence of organizations. It explores how CI can be a catalyst for managing the current COVID-19 pandemic and charting the path to post crisis. According to the authors, the study makes contributions to both innovation literature and to practicing managers with new insights on sustainable innovation strategies for organizational performance and beyond.
The authors present the concept of CI including its autonomous ecosystem enabled by advanced technologies, unique life cycle features, relationships with other innovation approaches, and its purpose of value creation for the stakeholders and beyond. Unexpected crises, such as market gyrations, political uncertainties, climate change, wars, health issues, put organizations to a test of sustainability. To survive but also flourish in the time of crisis, organizations need to rely on their innovation capabilities. According to the authors, sustainable innovation has become imperative for enterprises, governments, and nonprofits.
This paper is very current in this time of crisis as it presents the concept of CI that with its autonomous ecosystem pulses the changing environment in real-time (with the support of digital technologies) for on-demand decision making.
The authors, first, present how changing giga market force in the 4IR and DT age has made sustainable innovation imperative for organizational success and people’ s well-being. Second, they review the power of convergence for value creation for people, organizations, governments, and society at large. Third, they present the concept and structure of CI as a self-managing ecosystem for value creation and beyond and suggest how the life cycle S-curve of CI is different from the typical innovation life cycle. Last, they discuss the differences and relationships among the various sustainable innovation strategies.
The authors underline that these new perspectives will contribute to the innovation literature and provide new insights to practicing managers in strategizing in the formulation efforts for sustainable innovation. Another critical contribution of this paper is the articulation of the functions and capabilities of CI during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the authors, this is the first study that relates how convergence innovation can be a key weapon for managing global emergencies such as pandemic crises.
You can find the paper here.