The world we live in is becoming increasingly fast-paced, and the pressure on companies to compete and innovate is growing. Therefore, also innovation decisions are becoming more and more complex and have to be made faster and faster. At the same time, social pressure is increasing for companies to create value within society. This is the case because innovations are not only positive, but often also have negative (external) effects, e.g., for climate change. This paper aims to analyze this area of tension for companies in a global context. It will be shown that, above all, the combination of approaches from innovation quality and theories of responsible innovation (RI) helps to resolve the area of tension and to integrate innovations into a (holistic) approach to social value creation. Accordingly, the approaches help with the question of innovation processes in companies. This is particularly the case with regard to the special circumstances in developing countries, since negative (external) effects not only transfer here, but also intensify in a dual dimension (directly and indirectly).