An Investigation on Responsible Innovation in the Emerging Shared Bicycle Industry: Case Study of a Chinese Firm

Zheng Liu,Lei Ma,Yue Zhu,Wenchao Ji

doi:10.3390/joitmc5030042

Abstract

In the current era of Industrial 4.0, open innovation, and the sharing economy, innovation ecosystems are formed through government-industry-university (triple helix) interaction. The concept of responsible innovation has emerged to explore how innovation can be conducted in a transparent, trustworthy, and sustainable way so as to respond to the public interest. While current literature provides a conceptual framework, details of how responsible innovation can be formed, developed, and sustained in the sharing economy, in particular in developing countries, have been under-explored. This paper aims to explore factors of responsible innovation, linking dimensions with business practice, and identify the dynamic stages of the industry life cycle. Through an in-depth case study of China’s shared bicycle industry and the firm Hellobike, this paper has prioritized factors which lead to responsibility, such as user safety and friendliness in product design, real-time operations combined with big data, collaboration between industry and local government for industry standardization, and user credit systems. It has enriched key dimensions based on literature and case studies and proposed dynamic interaction models for industry, government, users, and universities at different stages of responsible innovation in the shared bicycle sector. From this empirical study, future research areas have been identified.

Highlights

With technology advancement, Internet of things, big data, and government-universityindustry-public collaboration, the sharing economy has become a new phenomenon
The proposed conceptual model has addressed the dynamics of the open innovation economy, closed innovation economy, and social innovation economy, which is known as the open innovation economic system (OIES) theory [3]
Driven by theory and practice requirements, this paper aims to explore responsible innovation in the sharing economy from emerging countries

Summary

Introduction

Internet of things, big data, and government-universityindustry-public collaboration, the sharing economy has become a new phenomenon. The concept of responsible innovation has emerged as a process seeking to create new products, services, and business models in a transparent, trustworthy, and sustainable way, so as to respond to public interest. This can be linked with inclusive innovation studies which consider social development by articulating spatial, seasonal, sectoral, skill, and social factors [1]. This can be further developed as a theory of social inclusive open innovation, connecting industry with societal needs [2]. As firms seek strategies to combine technology and business growth with social values, the mutual transfer between open/closed innovation and

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