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Promoting responsible innovation: constructive technology assessment and the Dutch experience

This article discusses responsible innovation and its implications in the context of technology development, focusing on the Dutch experience and the role of Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA). It explores different narratives and ethical considerations, as well as the multi-level nature and governance of responsible innovation. The article concludes by discussing the potential impact of responsible innovation on public engagement.

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Promoting responsible innovation: constructive technology assessment and the Dutch experience

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  1. Promoting responsible innovation: constructive technology assessment and the Dutch experience Arie Rip (University of Twente) Excerpts fromContribution to the Franco-British workshop on responsible innovation, From concepts to practice, London, 23-24 May 2011

  2. Responsible innovation RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION often not about innovation, but about development of ST • An open, unspecific term (concept) -- but forceful, exactly because it is open ended (sounds good, can be referred to, no immediate implications) • But tensions which can lead to contestation: • Responsible innovation vs. responsible innovation • Research Councils UK, Grand Challenges: Ageing: life-long health and wellbeing, vs. NanoScience through Engineering to Application. • Refer to different “grand narratives”: “responding to societal needs” vs. “competing by exploiting technoscientific opportunities” • The latter is ‘responsible’ when attention is paid to HES and ELSA?

  3. National Research Council (2006), A Matter of Size. Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, p. 73 • Responsible development of nanotechnology can be characterized as the balancing of efforts to maximize the technology’s positive contributions and minimize its negative consequences. (..) • It implies a commitment to develop and use technology to help meet the most pressing human and societal needs, while making every reasonable effort to anticipate and mitigate adverse implications or unintended consequences. Consequentialist ethics Two different narratives

  4. European Commission’s proposed Code of Conduct • Code of Conduct for Responsible Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies Research (Feb. 2008) • Requires openness and transparency; research activities must be comprehensible to the public • Scientific integrity and good (laboratory) practice • Sustainability and UN Millenium Goals • Precautionary: anticipating potential impacts • Combines consequentialist ethics, ‘good life’ ethics, and process requirements

  5. A multi-level phenomenon • An umbrella term; a variety of governance arrangements and practices underneath it • So different levels:- policy and societal discourse; - institutions and arrangements;- ongoing/evolving practices (of scientists, industrialists, also civil society actors) • Interaction between levels, • Broader contexts (recontextualization of science in society; unwillingness to accept every new technology)

  6. Responsible innovation, at different levels

  7. Shaping responsible development • Nanotechnology – exploiting technoscientific opportunities while being ‘responsible’ (whatever that may mean) • Pressure from policy level to do so, but also initiatives from nanoscience consortia (TA in Dutch NanoNed – my experience) • May be impression management, but this can/will have implications • Nano-labs start presenting themselves as responsible

  8. TA subprogram in national-level R&D consortium • NanoNed, 2003-2010 (funded from knowledge infrastucture money, not from a dedicated nanotechnology program) • Director invited me to do a TA subprogram (7 PhD students, a postdoc); I chose to do CTA • NanoNextNL, 2011-2015 (same funding) • Has TA as well as Risk Analysis subprograms • Strong expectation of interaction with other, nanoscience&technology focused subprograms

  9. By way of conclusion • Our approach does not make an appeal to moral responsibilities (of enactors/innovators) • But offers interactive tools:- strategic intelligence about possible embedding in society (co-production of impacts)- opportunities to “probe” the worlds of other actors • So enactors/innovators can “do” responsible innovation if they want to, can’t say they don’t know how • Enabling (and indirectly constraining) them

  10. Afterthought about the new discourse of ‘responsible innovation’: • Would the practice make public engagement superfluous, or give it a new role? • For example: present burgeoning interest in Codes of Conduct (etc) would imply that public engagement shifts to monitoring and vigilance • (happens already: watchdogs of various kinds)

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