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Exploring Digital Innovation Paths in Healthcare: The Case of a Large Swedish Healthcare Organization

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Electronic Government (EGOV 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14130))

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Abstract

Digital innovation has been advocated as bringing new opportunities to organizations. At the same time, here is still a gap of empirical research on the paths, i.e., choices in directions manifested over time, of digital innovation in public sector healthcare. In this study, we aim to fill this gap through analyzing a complete set of three years of centrally funded innovation projects in a large incumbent healthcare organization. Using a previously proposed framework combining the Resource Based View and Organizational Ambidexterity into a positioning of digital innovation opportunity, we investigate the paths of digital innovation. The findings show that the predominant path of digital innovation lies in exploitative innovation through utilizing internal and shared resources. In contrast with the literature the use of complementary assets in the form of external resources i.e., engaging customers and other external parties in value creation, is only found in one of the projects. We describe this as a case of path dependency, where the organization avoids tapping into some of the core opportunities in digital innovation. This is discussed in relation to the digital innovation literature and the future paths of digital innovation in public sector healthcare.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swedish Center for Digital Innovation, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Johan Magnusson, Andrea Gajic, Leman Isik & Christina Nilsson

Authors
  1. Johan Magnusson
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  2. Andrea Gajic
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  3. Leman Isik
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  4. Christina Nilsson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johan Magnusson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Ida Lindgren

  2. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Csaba Csáki

  3. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Evangelos Kalampokis

  4. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Marijn Janssen

  5. University for Continuing Education Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria

    Gabriela Viale Pereira

  6. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Shefali Virkar

  7. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Efthimios Tambouris

  8. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Anneke Zuiderwijk

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Magnusson, J., Gajic, A., Isik, L., Nilsson, C. (2023). Exploring Digital Innovation Paths in Healthcare: The Case of a Large Swedish Healthcare Organization. In: Lindgren, I., et al. Electronic Government. EGOV 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14130. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-41137-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-41138-0

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