86 TOURISM INNOVATION – Contributions by Isabel Rodriguez
86 TOURISM INNOVATION – Contributions by Isabel Rodriguez
Even though I made some modest contributions to tourism planning in the topic of tourism destinations’ life cycle and the need for renovation and diversification of mature destinations, I believe that my most relevant contributions are made within the topic of tourism innovation. My interest for this started with my PhD. It was a radically new direction to take but it meant the beginning of my research autonomy and leadership. At that moment innovation was a trendy word everywhere and especially in political discourses which captivated my attention. What was really behind this fuzzy word and how could you measure it with tangible results? My initial interest was from a policy perspective by documenting innovation in tourism policies and innovation policies outcomes (Rodriguez, Williams & Hall, 2014). Soon I moved to the business/entrepreneurial side trying to understand innovation as a risky and uncertain process rather than as a simple successful output (Rodriguez, Williams & Brotons, 2017; Rodriguez, Williams & Skokic, 2020). I found that customers’ behaviours and responses to the innovation were key to understanding most of the innovation endings: success or failure (Rodriguez, Williams & Andreu, 2019). This opened a new research avenue pointing out to the field of behavioural economics which is within my current work and future interest. A longitudinal observation that most innovation companies I had approached ended up failing introduced me to the concept of failure and the possibility of observing this from a different dimension: what if ‘commercial failure’ or activity cessation is only the beginning of new ideas in the longer-term trajectory of ‘failed’ entrepreneurs? This is my current interest and work in progress: the investigation and conceptualisation of innovation post-failure knowledge mobility.
At some point in my innovation journey, I wanted to export the innovation process concept to the field of scientific research and this is how with my usual innovation colleagues (Allan Williams and Teemu Makkonen) started this spin-off research in the field of originality in tourism research (Rodriguez, Makkonen, & Williams, 2019; Rodriguez et al., 2021). With them (Williams, Rodriguez & Makkonen, 2020) we also ventured into a conceptual piece bringing selected issues from the innovation literature to offer insightful perspectives to smart destinations (another fuzzy concept!).
Most of my work in tourism innovation aimed to have an impact in policy making and society. I have produced policy briefings and a policy recommendations report based on co-production of knowledge with policymakers and entrepreneurs’ survey consultation. Besides policymakers, entrepreneurs have also been potential users of my research thanks to the incorporation of stories in the production of case study videos.
In summary, I believe that these are my most noteworthy contributions to this field:
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