Artificial Intelligence as a Tool for Innovation Processes Enhancement: An Inductive Study in Healthcare
通过归纳定性方法，研究不同类型AI（机械型、思考型、情感型）如何加速医疗保健行业的创新管理及新产品开发，并识别内外部条件。
The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across industries marks a significant technological shift, positioning AI as a pivotal general-purpose technology. However, effectively leveraging AI to enhance innovation processes is particularly complex, since it involves a more data-driven approach to innovation, and the integration of machines on performing cognitive and creative tasks. This way, this paper investigates how AI accelerates innovation management and new product development by examining different AI types – mechanical, thinking, and feeling AI – across the innovation stages of ideation, prototyping, and commercialization. The method used in this paper follows an inductive qualitative approach based on a three-step research design. The study is contextualized in the healthcare sector and involves interactions with 31 companies and 20 interviews with managers of companies located in eight countries. The findings identify internal (technological and organizational capabilities) and external (position on the value-chain) conditions of AI-enhanced innovation processes. Moreover, the study provides an examination of how various AI applications are integrated into different stages of the innovation process, offering specific examples. We identified that “mechanical AI” has been applied more broadly across the process, while less evidence has been found of AI applications at the front-end of innovation.