Bottom‐up solutions in a time of crisis: the case of Covid‐19 in South Korea
研究了韩国边缘行动者（医生和大学生团队）在新冠疫情期间快速提出自下而上的创新解决方案（如免下车检测系统、疫情应用程序），并分析了推动创新的三个驱动因素和系统中介的支持作用。
Innovation systems have seen diverse actors attempting to tame the Covid‐19 crisis, under varying degrees of government direction. Largely neglected in scholarly and public attention, however, are ‘bottom‐up’ solutions arising from the periphery of innovation systems. Drawing on inductive case research on a fringe doctor who invented the idea of the drive‐through testing system, and two university student teams that developed coronavirus applications, this study examines how peripheral actors generate innovative, bottom‐up solutions at speed in a time of crisis. Our findings reveal that, in a crisis situation, bottom‐up solutions transpire on the basis of three innovation drivers: (a) peripheral status , expediting the commence of innovation activities; (b) interdisciplinary collaboration , enabling access to a greater spectrum of knowledge and perspectives; and (c) prior knowledge , prescribing the direction of solution generation. We also identify that system intermediaries support the innovation activities of peripheral actors, thereby helping bottom‐up solutions to become more customer facing. Such functions of intermediaries include demand articulation , technical assistance , and promulgation of generated solutions . Our findings offer theoretical implications for the literature on innovation in a time of crisis and practical implications for governments and organizations preparing themselves for the potential second wave of coronavirus emergencies, or even a completely new form of future crisis.