ABSTRACT
The dark side of innovation is an emerging applied research stream in the field and societal issue, and it’s long overdue. This is a welcome turn of attention to the ethics and welfare economic view of the innovation process. On July 25, 2019, it was announced by the Justice Department that Facebook has been fined a record $5 billion for data privacy violations including data from more than 50 million Facebook user profiles that were accessed by an analysis company according to Social Media Today. This is just one case example of the dark side of the innovation process presented in this chapter. This outcome could actually have been predicted by people familiar with the applied research on the subject of this Chapter and the book. The theory of organizational lag predicts that the impact of a new-to-the-world product or service cannot be predicted by definition because there is no precedent. Many outcomes result from a truly new product or service and there is actually evidence that the negative outcomes out-number the positive outcomes. The real issue is how long will it take an organization or society to counter act the negative outcomes of a new product or service like Uber or Airbnb or autonomous vehicles. This Chapter uniquely focuses on these issues related to cultural lag.
