Open Innovation in the Public Sector: A Case Study Empowerment and Education Projects in Health Services across the Public Sector of the United Arab Emirates

The ongoing rapid spread of globalisation, which has brought with it significantly increased workforce mobility and the widespread dispersion of knowledge, has required firms to become more open and to engage more effectively with the external environment by means of open innovation strategies (Chesbrough 2003). An open innovation system is based on the idea that collaboration is essential among stakeholders, in that it can help firms obtain and exchange new ideas and knowledge, both enhancing their performance and avoiding many potential risks (Gesing et al. 2014). Researchers in this area have generally focused on the private sector, however, and though in recent years, there has been an increased interest from the public sector in using open innovation, this has not been extensively researched (Smith et al., 2018).

The pressure of funding in the public sector and the increasing demand for public services imply that most governments’ attempts must now be focused on delivering more services at lower cost. Thus, all governments must consider new ways of providing public services (Schoeman et al. 2012). Innovation in the public sector has thus manifest in new processes, new facilities, and new forms of innovation in recent years, such as commercialisation partnerships (Brown and Ryan, 2000).

This paper therefore asks “how is value captured and created among the stakeholders in an open innovation system in Public Sector?” It investigates the concept of the exchange of value in open innovation in health services in the UAE by examining how stakeholders engage with the Empowerment and Education Diabetes Program (EEDP) across health services in the United Arab Emirates over three sites: the Headquarter of the Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) in the Emirates of Dubai, the Training and Development Center in the Emirates of Sharjah, and the primary healthcare Centers in the Emirates of Ras Al-Khaimah, thus applying a qualitative inductive and single-instrumental case study approach which incorporates stakeholder theory as well as input from resource-based theoretical perspectives.