Institutional Entrepreneurship for Digital Public Health Promotion: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

This commentary highlights the challenges and opportunities facing institutional entrepreneurship in the digital public health realm. The institutional entrepreneurship of public health researchers concerns the opportunity to improve the norms regulating social media companies by engaging the public and private sectors. Beyond the clarification of concepts, the contribution of the commentary is to demonstrate why public health researchers committed to institutional entrepreneurship should mind the mental model they employ to think about business regulation. The popular Chicago School model negates the legitimacy of corporate policy making that trades profits for public health. Thinking this way obscures the relevance of institutional entrepreneurship by stipulating that corporations should answer to shareholders and government but not civil society. Though digital health communication is consistent with the Chicago School picture, the alternative public–private model reinforces opportunities for digital health communication as well as institutional entrepreneurship. The commentary proposes a toolkit for public health researchers to consciously open up to opportunities for institutional entrepreneurship in digital public health.