Anna Essén

Anna Essén is an Associate Professor with the Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology at the Stockholm School of Economics. She is committed to the study of how digital technology is shaped by and shapes what individuals, organizations, and societies focus their attention on, find it worthwhile to aim for and feel capable of achieving. Her current projects concern the co-evolution of digital infrastructures, business models among firms and public organizations, and institutions, including longitudinal studies of digital innovations driven by tech-entrepreneurs, patient networks, and professional organizations in healthcare. Other projects concern the emergence of cross-sectoral collaborations in relation to autonomous transport markets and smart cities, and the design of ecosystems aiming for prevention (the elimination of cancer as a cause of death. Her studies cover topics such as the dynamics of distributed digital innovation, how algorithms conceal and make voices visible, the art of ignoring of public performance data, how biodata can become unaccumulated, unusable, and unused, and how technology use at the microlevel can generate institutional change at the macrolevel.

Selected Publications

Essén, A., Knudsen, M., & Alvesson, M. 2021. Explaining Ignoring – Working with Information that Nobody Uses. Organization Studies, 017084062199872.

Essén, A. (2020). Four perspectives on quantitative data. Data. Fyra perspektiv på mätningar i hälso- och sjukvården. Moderna POlicies. Report, Leading healthcare, p. 38-56.

Essén. A. (2020). Digital innovation platforms in healthcare. SNS report.

Video of the presentation of the report about digital innovation platforms in healthcare

In Swedish: Essén, A. (2020). Digitala innovationsplattformar I vården – lärdomar från ett kvalitetsregister. SNS rapport.

Essén, A. & Ekholm, A. (2019). Centralization vs. decentralization on the blockchain in a health information exchange context. In "Digital Transformation and Public Services: Societal Impacts and beyond", Larsson, A. & Teigland, R. Eds. pp 58-82. Routledge.

Essén, A & WInterstorm, S. (2019). How technology-afforded practices can generate institutional change at field-level: Identifying a recursive mechanism. MISQ. 43:4,1155-1176

Essén A & Winterstorm, S. (2019). How Materiality Enables and Constrains Framing Practices: Affordances of a Rheumatology E-Service, Journal of Management Inquiry, 28,4: 458–471,

Essén, A., Scandurra, I., Johansen, MA., et al (2018). Patient Accessible Health Records: Differences across 10 countries. Health Policy and Technology. Vol 7, 1. 44-56.

Essén, A, Oborn, E. (2017). The performativity of numbers in chronic care: the case of Swedish rheumatology. Social Science & Medicine, Vol 184, July, 134-143

Essén, A., Winterstorm, S., Vold, K. (2016). Co-production in Chronic Care: Exploitation and Empowerment. European Journal of Marketing 50, 5/6, 724-751 (ABS 4)

Essén, A. & Lindblad, S. 2013. Innovation as emergence in healthcare: Unpacking change from within. Social Science & Medicine. Vol 93:203-11 (ABS: 4, cited by 51).