Award for the best paper to Associate Professor Jouni Juntunen and researchers from Audencia and Aalto University

The authors include Associate Professor of Innovation Management Jouni Juntunen, Associate Professor Jennifer Goodman and Professor Minna Halme.

The conference paper Sustainability-Oriented Innovation for System-Level Impact examines how systemic innovations can be developed together with stakeholders.

"Stakeholder integration in innovation processes should take place when it is still easy to change plans and specifications"

According to Associate Professor Juntunen, the paper's subject is essential because grand challenges are complex and require collaboration with various stakeholders.

– Our analysis unveils how stakeholder collaboration can be built in order to reach system-level impact. Early inclusion of stakeholders in the development processes is of high priority if the companies aspire system level impacts.

According to Juntunen, especially non-profit-oriented stakeholders should be integrated in the process.

– Our research is a result of a long collaboration between us authors. There has been a lot of talk about systemic innovations, but when measuring systemic nature, there isn't much earlier research available. It has been inspiring to develop a model for the measurement and in-depth examine stakeholder integration, says Juntunen.

• The Academy of Management conference was organised in Boston, Massachusetts 4–8th August. The conference brings together over 11 000 researchers and experts. The Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division studies social issues, institutions, interactions, and impacts of management.