Kristina Lepp\u00e4l\u00e4’s blog text on stakeholder sensemaking and the future value of personalized medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do organizations persuade stakeholders to invest in innovations whose value remains uncertain? This question sits at the heart of many healthcare innovations, particularly in the field of personalized medicine. Although advances in genomics, diagnostics, and data analytics create new opportunities for patient care, stakeholders often hold different views about the benefits, costs, and practical implications of these innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our recent study, Business Venture Sensemaking on the Future Value of Personalized Medicine: Healthcare Innovation in a Multistakeholder Setting, examines how a healthcare venture constructs and communicates the future value of personalized medicine within a complex network of stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study, authored by UEF CECE researchers Ida Parkkinen, Hanna Lehtim\u00e4ki, and Kristina Lepp\u00e4l\u00e4 (me), focuses on a fundamental challenge that many innovators face: future value does not speak for itself. Companies cannot assume that healthcare professionals, policymakers, patients, investors, and researchers will interpret an innovation in the same way. Each stakeholder group brings its own priorities, expectations, and concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To understand this challenge, we draw on the concept of sensemaking, which refers to the processes through which individuals and organizations interpret uncertainty and construct meaning. In the context of personalized medicine, sensemaking helps explain how stakeholders evaluate emerging technologies whose outcomes, adoption pathways, and long-term impacts remain difficult to predict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our findings show that the future value of personalized medicine emerges through ongoing interaction among stakeholders. Rather than presenting value as a fixed characteristic of a technology, ventures actively shape and negotiate understandings of value through communication, engagement, and narrative construction. These activities help stakeholders connect present actions with anticipated future benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study highlights the important role of future-oriented narratives. Organizations use these narratives to explain how scientific advances may lead to improved patient outcomes, more targeted treatments, and more effective healthcare delivery. Such narratives help stakeholders envision potential futures and reduce uncertainty surrounding innovation decisions. At the same time, organizations must revise these narratives as stakeholder expectations change and as new evidence becomes available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The findings also contribute to broader discussions about sustainability. Healthcare systems across the world face growing demands, rising costs, and increasing pressure to improve outcomes while using resources more effectively. Personalized medicine offers one possible pathway toward more sustainable healthcare because it seeks to align treatments more closely with individual patient needs. More precise interventions may support better outcomes and reduce unnecessary treatments, which can contribute to the efficient use of healthcare resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, our study suggests that technological potential alone does not guarantee sustainable impact. Stakeholders must first develop shared understandings of what constitutes value and why a particular innovation deserves support. Sustainability therefore depends not only on scientific breakthroughs but also on processes that build trust, legitimacy, and collaboration across organizational boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More broadly, the study demonstrates that sustainability transitions often involve collective interpretation of uncertain futures. New technologies rarely transform healthcare systems on their own. Organizations, policymakers, healthcare professionals, and patients must collectively make sense of emerging opportunities and challenges before meaningful change can occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For scholars and practitioners alike, these findings underscore the importance of communication and stakeholder engagement in healthcare innovation. The future of personalized medicine will depend not only on technological progress but also on the ways organizations help others understand, evaluate, and support new forms of value creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kristina Lepp\u00e4l\u00e4 (kristina.leppala@uef.fi)<\/p>\n\n\n\n