Soft Innovation as Data-Driven Process Improvement Exploited via Integrated Hospital Information Systems

Soft innovations are regarded as insightful, useful ideas originating from stakeholders within the organization. This study takes a new approach to examining the origins of soft innovations within an open systems environment from an organizational context perspective. Based on a 30-month longitudinal study at a 990 registered-bed large teaching hospital, this paper shows that the complexity of technological change dynamics from radical innovation is a main factor that gives rise to process improvement as soft innovation. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.