Redesign of Home Care Service Delivery: A Systemic Approach to IT Innovations

The Dynamic Approach To Interconnected Innovations And Actors

Innovation has been defined as the “…process of turning opportunity into new ideas and of putting these into widely used practice” (Tidd, Bessant & Pavitt, 2005, p. 66). Innovations can be categorised as independent “autonomous” or interdependent “systemic” innovations whose “benefits can be realized only in conjunction with related, complementary innovations” (Chesbrough & Teece, 1996; Maula, Keil & Salmenkaita, 2006). Systemic innovations are defined in this study as “an interconnected set of innovations, where each influences the other in the system and in the ways in which they are interconnected with the actors and the environment”. These interlinked innovations are often characterised under such terms as product, process, service and organisational innovations; or they are novel, incremental, radical, discontinuous or disruptive innovations (Tidd et al., 2005; Augsdörfer, Bessant, Möselin, Stamm & Piller, 2013). Some studies have focused on converging technologies, while others focus more on sociotechnical aspects or on the interactions between actors.