From ‘Publish or Perish’ to Societal Impact: Organizational Repurposing Towards Responsible Innovation through Creating a Medical Platform

Why would an academic project incentivized towards scientific publications be repurposed to become a medical platform for responsible innovation? Patient Innovation, a non-profit medical platform that focuses on the sharing and dissemination of innovations to find solutions for rare and chronic diseases, was initially set up as an academic research project. However, team members reframed their core purpose from conducting research on user innovation to providing global access to these innovations and creating societal impact. Using a framing lens to understand organizational repurposing, we illuminate how serendipitous inspiration, moral emotions and the power of socially conscious users and catalysts drove this emergent reframing of core purpose and develop a model of organizational repurposing. We show how a frame drift towards a change in purpose occurs spontaneously in interactions, as actors frame and reframe situations and feel inspired and morally motivated to transcend their immediate self-interests and serve collective goals.