Towards a Business Case for Responsible Innovation

There is still work to be done in conceptualizing how responsible innovation applies to business. Lessons can be drawn from adjacent fields of inquiry such as sustainability-oriented or social innovation. However, the central challenge of developing a business case for responsible innovation requires additional insights into how responsible innovation may support companies in generating competitive advantage, and what levers can be effectively employed to engage business. This final chapter summarises the most important lessons learned from the contributions to this volume. Based on these insights, the authors develop the outlines of a business case for responsible innovation. In doing so, they show that responsibility and innovation can mutually strengthen each other. Such a synergy between responsibility and innovation may help to maintain trust in business’ ability to drive desirable social change while improving innovation performance.