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Technologically Reflective Individuals as Enablers of Social Innovation
The Journal of Product Innovation Management
|May 3, 2016
Summary
This study introduces a scale to measure technological reflectiveness (TR), identifying individuals who consider innovation
Area of Science:
- Innovation Management
- Societal Impact Assessment
- Psychometric Scale Development
Background:
- Technological reflectiveness (TR) is crucial for developing innovations with societal benefits.
- Individuals demonstrating TR often participate in public online idea competitions for social problem-solving.
- A validated scale is needed to identify TR in both public and private reflection settings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To systematically develop and validate an easy-to-administer multi-item scale to measure an individual's level of technological reflectiveness (TR).
- To empirically assess the relationship between TR and an individual's innovation generation capabilities.
Main Methods:
- Systematic scale development process for measuring technological reflectiveness (TR).
- Empirical study applying the TR scale to a health monitoring system.
- Analysis of the correlation between TR levels and the generation of new product features, societal impact, and feature elaboration.
Main Results:
- Individuals with higher degrees of technological reflectiveness (TR) generated more new product features and uses.
- TR positively correlated with the generation of features possessing higher levels of societal impact.
- Higher TR was associated with the creation of more elaborated product features.
Conclusions:
- The developed TR scale effectively identifies individuals with a strong tendency to consider societal impacts of technology.
- Technologically reflective individuals are more capable of generating innovative features with significant societal benefits.
- Companies can leverage the TR scale to identify and integrate these individuals into new product development (NPD) for sustainable and impactful innovations.
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