Sources of Innovation : Stakeholder Theory Perspective

Innovation has become a key distinct feature of modern industrial society. It is generally recognized that new knowledge and technology are one of the most important sources of innovation. However, because of their limited resources, firms can not pursue all the promising new knowledge and technology that have possibilities to be developed into critical innovation. In this article, using the stakeholder theory, we try to establish a new conceptual model that can be used for understanding knowledge creation and innovation in society. In a society, there exist diverse socio-economic groups that have conflicting values and interests. Our stakeholder theory perspective on innovation claims that innovation can occur only when new solutions can satisfy their idiosyncratic stakeholder’ values and interests better than current existing solutions. From the viewpoint of stakeholder innovation theory, there could be three different types of innovation: value improvement innovation, non-traditional value Innovation, and innovation for non-traditional stakeholder.