Digital social innovation: how healthcare ecosystems face Covid-19 challenges

Abstract

ABSTRACT By examining digital social innovation in healthcare ecosystems, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on ecosystems’ ability to change, adapt, transform, and/or restructure in response to unexpected crises. Drawing on the extant research on social innovation and ecosystems, an interpretative model has been applied to a real-world case study. Our model contributes to shedding new light on how digital platforms boost multi-actor interactions intended to digitally find innovative solutions to emergent and sometimes critical social issues. Our findings demonstrate the ecosystem's ability to reshape itself in the face of emergent crises, such as the COVID-19 epidemic and the resulting socio-economic transformations. This is one of the first attempts to empirically describe the co-creative network of interactions that led to digital social innovation development at the core of the ecosystem's ability to re-shape itself for facing unexpected crises.