Building Joint Value: Ecosystem Support for Global Health Innovations

Healthcare innovations for bottom-of-pyramid populations face considerable risks and few economic incentives. Can entrepreneurial innovators provide new solutions for global health? This chapter examines how a technology enterprise built a collaborative network and supportive ecosystem making it possible to steer an innovation for TB patients through discovery, development, and delivery. Ecosystem resources were mobilized and upstream and downstream co-innovation risks were mitigated to commercialize a new diagnostic test. Detailed evidence on this innovation for TB care uses ecosystem analysis to clarify core issues in the context of joint value creation. The case study shows how resources from private and public partners can be leveraged and combined by the focal firm to build joint value and to lower execution, co-innovation, and adoption risks in healthcare ecosystems combating diseases of poverty.