Toward inclusive innovation : differentiated approaches and challenges

While innovation is often a promise of a better life and in a context where companies enable users to participate in the design of products and services (von Hippel, 1986; Chesbrough, 2003), some groups of people are generally excluded from it, both because they do not have access to the output of innovation and because innovation is systematically designed without them. Yet, those excluded groups, be they disabled, ill, aged or on low-incomes, have unanswered needs and could be a source of inspiration for innovation for the general public (Hannukainen & Hölttä-Otto, 2006). Inclusive innovation has highlighted this stake of innovating for and with excluded groups (Foster & Heeks, 2013; George et al., 2012; van der Merwe & Grobbelaar, 2016) but a lot needs to be done to precise the different modalities of Inclusive Innovation, considering all excluded groups. What are the different ways of doing inclusive innovation in companies and institutions? What are the associated challenges for companies and institutions? Building on previous literature, a new framework is presented with a typology of inclusive innovation outcomes and processes. Each stage of these typologies are then detailed and associated challenges depicted.