Governance of new product development and perceptions of responsible innovation in the financial sector: insights from an ethnographic case study

We describe an ethnographic study within a global asset management company aimed at understanding the process and governance of new product development (PD) and perceptions of responsible innovation. We observed innovation to be incremental, with a clearly structured stage gating model of governance involving numerous internal and external actors that was framed by regulation and coordinated by a small PD team. Responsible innovation was framed largely in terms of considering client needs when innovating and the understanding of operational, legal, regulatory and reputational risks. Staff perceived the company as having an inherently cautious culture, where the probability of bringing something destructive to market was perceived as being low. We conclude that the observed stage gating architecture offers considerable scope as a mechanism for systematic embedding of more broadly framed, emerging concepts of responsible innovation.