Responsible innovation and societal challenges: The multi-scalarity dilemma

Societal challenges tend to be characterized by their multi-scalarity as problems emerge and co-evolve on multiple scales. Resolving these challenges requires innovators to navigate often conflicting considerations between multiple scales when dealing with complexity, uncertainty, and contestation. Innovators need to ground resolutions in local...

The presence of Responsible Research and Innovation in the perspectives of Dutch policy officers regarding innovation with quantum technology

The European Union strives to align research and innovation to the values, needs and expectations of society to address societal challenges. To support this alignment the European Union endeavours to make Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) part of the governmental policies on science and technology of its member states. If the European...

The Societal Readiness Thinking Tool: A Practical Resource for Maturing the Societal Readiness of Research Projects

In this paper, we introduce the Societal Readiness (SR) Thinking Tool to aid researchers and innovators in developing research projects with greater responsiveness to societal values, needs, and expectations. The need for societally-focused approaches to research and innovation—complementary to Technology Readiness (TR) frameworks—is presented....

A comprehensive appraisal of responsible research and innovation: From roots to leaves

Responsible Research and Innovation and Responsible Innovation, as academic endeavours, have grown substantially since their birth in the previous decades. They have been used as synonyms on a structural basis, and both concepts have been studied from various disciplinary backgrounds. This paper identifies Responsible Research and Innovation...

Safe-by-design in engineering: An overview and comparative analysis of engineering disciplines

In this paper, we provide an overview of how Safe-by-Design is conceived and applied in practice in a large number of engineering disciplines. We discuss the differences, commonalities, and possibilities for mutual learning found in those practices and identify several ways of putting those disciplinary outlooks in perspective. The considered...

Responsible research and innovation in practice: an exploratory assessment of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a Nanomedicine Project

While originally intended to transform research and innovation practice, the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has largely remained a theoretical, policy-oriented construct, thereby engendering a perception that RRI indicators are very different from organizational or business indicators. As there is currently limited...

Just Energy? Designing for Ethical Acceptability in Smart Grids

Smart grids within the transition to sustainable energy systems Smart grid systems are widely considered as crucial in the energy transition, because they allow for greater flexibility in bridging temporal gaps between electricity supply and demand in renewable energy systems. To do so, the systems make use of information and communication...

The role of participation in the responsible innovation framework for biofuels projects: Can it be assessed?

The growth in biofuels’ investment brings with it concerns about the social and environmental impacts of the sector. Several tools and frameworks have been used to address these concerns, including the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework. This paper analyzes whether this framework can be applied in contexts where local culture...

Meta-responsibility in corporate research and innovation: A bioeconomic case study

The term "responsibility" embodies many meanings, also in the context of corporate research and innovation (R&I). The approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has emerged as a promoter for responsible conduct of innovation but so far lacks a systematic framework for describing, inventorying, and eventually managing different...

Synthesizing value sensitive design, responsible research and innovation, and energy justice: A conceptual review

Many academic approaches that claim to consider the broad set of social and ethical issues relevant to energy systems sit side-by-side without conversation. This paper considers three such literatures: Value Sensitive Design, Responsible Research and Innovation and the Energy Justice framework. We argue that whilst definitions of these...

Applying an RRI filter in key learning on urban living labs' performance

Urban living labs is a practical methodology in improving sustainability in cities by facilitating collaborative learning and innovation in a real-life environment, thereby mainly responding to the needs of users (citizens). The paper aims to filter a list of key learnings on urban living labs through the lens of Responsible Research and...

Societal and Ethical Issues in Industrial Biotechnology

In this chapter we aim to give an overview of the main societal and ethical issues that are currently voiced around industrial biotechnology. We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin, synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae. We show that current societal and...

Responsible research and innovation in contrasting innovation environments: Socio-Technical Integration Research in Hungary and the Netherlands

Recently, the notion of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has been gaining momentum in policy and practice. The main claim of RRI is that social, ethical and environmental aspects should be taken into consideration in scientific research and innovation activities. Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) is one of the first tools...

The responsible research and innovation (RRI) maturity model: Linking theory and practice

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is an approach to research and innovation governance aiming to ensure that research purpose, process and outcomes are acceptable, sustainable and even desirable. In order to achieve this ambitious aim, RRI must be relevant to research and innovation in industry. In this paper, we discuss a way of...

Creative tensions: mutual responsiveness adapted to private sector research and development

The concept of mutual responsiveness is currently based on little empirical data in the literature of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). This paper explores RRI’s idea of mutual responsiveness in the light of recent RRI case studies on private sector research and development (R&D). In RRI, responsible innovation is understood as a...

The societal impact of the emerging quantum technologies: a renewed urgency to make quantum theory understandable

This paper introduces the special issue The societal impact of the emerging quantum technologies as a contribution to a more inclusive societal debate on quantum technologies. It brings together five contributions. Three are authored by quantum technology researchers who give explorations of the possible impacts of quantum technologies on...

Ethics and the UN Sustainable Development Goals: The Case for Comprehensive Engineering: Commentary on “Using Student Engagement to Relocate Ethics to the Core of the Engineering Curriculum”

In the twenty-first century, the urgent problems the world is facing (the UN Sustainable Development Goals) are increasingly related to vast and intricate ‘systems of systems’, which comprise both socio-technical and eco-systems. In order for engineers to adequately and responsibly respond to these problems, they cannot focus on only one...