COVID-19 has brought to the forefront of academic debates the consequences of pandemics and their appropriate policy responses. Using the PRISMA methodology, we provide a comprehensive review of the economic and historical analysis of the long-term economic consequences of pandemics. Mainstream economists focus on the impact of pandemics on production factors, finding a rich but contrasting set of mechanisms with overall negative or insignificant effects. Historians focus on the institutional impact, finding positive effects of pandemics when they trigger new socioeconomic arrangements. Evolutionary economists can integrate into the economic debate both historical elements and the complex biological characteristics of pandemics. We argue that the evolutionary approach provides new and fertile theoretical foundations to understand the phenomenon and develop effective policies.

Declining public trust in science and innovation triggered the emergence and development of the responsible research and innovation (RRI) concept among policymakers and academics. Engaging stakeholders in the early phases of innovation processes has been identified as a major driver of inclusive, responsible, and sustainable development. Firms however have often adopted practices entirely opposite to those being advocated within the RRI framework, namely, reducing external interaction with stakeholders, focusing on exclusive communication with the scientific community and legal authorities while avoiding the social spotlight. We illustrate these practices, their causes and consequences using the case of the Aquadvantage salmon, the first genetically modified (GM) animal approved to petition for the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for human consumption. We find that such practices heighten the risk of social backlash, being undesirable from the perspective of both the organizations involved and society at large. Stakeholder engagement remains necessary in order to gain the minimum social acceptance required for contentious innovative products to enter the market. However, stakeholder engagement must be selective, focused on pragmatic organizations whose aims and interests are sufficiently broad to potentially align with corporate interests. Strategic stakeholder engagement offers a meeting point between the transformative aspirations of RRI framework proponents and legitimate business interests.

Recent developments in digital technologies have challenged the ways in which service firms create, deliver, and capture value. Although research and practice suggest business model innovation as an effective response to digitalization, many firms are not willing to make radical changes in the architecture of the firm’s activities. In this study, we take an in-depth look at which factors influence the firm’s capability for technology-driven business model innovation in the legal industry context. As our empirical context, we have chosen the legal industry, notorious for its risk aversion and for practices that inhibit innovation, but where the focus on digitalization is increasing due to external pressures. We interviewed nine law firms in Norway, representing together the largest share of the country’s legal services market, four of them being traditional law firms and the rest being newly established yet large digital New Law organizations. We find that profitability acts both as an inhibitor of business model innovation for established firms and as a driver for New Law firms. However, the relatively high job satisfaction of Norwegian lawyers in comparison to their US-based counterparts dampens the pull of technological opportunities on business model innovation by making human capital more difficult to acquire by new entrants. Barring an unexpected profitability crisis, digitalization of the Norwegian law sector will not disrupt traditional law firms’ business models. However, New Law firms are accumulating the competences required to compete with the incumbents.