Corporate responsible innovation for sustainability: towards firm-level measurements for process and outcomes

Whereas the concept of responsible innovation (RI) has attracted increasing academic attention in recent years, little is yet to be known about how this policy-linked agenda has been implemented in the competitive environment. We argue that building a firm-level measure for the current innovation practices of corporations could be a valuable step towards exploring sustainable innovation practices. Because there are similar concepts, such as corporate social responsibility, featured in business and management studies, corporations should already be taking action concerning RI, as well as facing challenges. To shed light on RI in business practices, we adopted a topic modelling approach on the corporate annual report to arrive at firm-level measures for RI, uncovering current actions and challenges of implementing RI, both in terms of the innovation process and outcomes. Our results revealed that RI in competitive environments is still in its early stages of development and that additional actions are required. This could be accomplished by strategic alignment and increasing strategic awareness of RI in corporations.