The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's commitment to a framework for responsible innovation

Abstract

In October 2013, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) made a formal policy commitment to a framework for responsible innovation. I describe the development of this framework over a four-year period since 2009 and key inputs which shaped its evolution and framing. I conclude with some thoughts about future directions, as EPSRC itself transitions from understanding what RI means, to how it could be meaningfully implemented.

Keywords:

• responsible innovation
• framework
• UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
• policy

In October 2013, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK formally announced its commitment to a framework for responsible innovation (RI) (EPSRC 2013). As one of the largest public funders of research in the UK, the EPSRC's placing of RI at the heart of its research policy is a significant development. Having been intimately involved in these developments, I provide brief reflections on the process and consider some future directions.

1. Foundations for a RI approach at EPSRC

I and others have commented elsewhere (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012; Fisher and Rip 2013; Owen et al. 2013; von Schomberg 2013; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013) on the broader foundations for RI (e.g. anticipatory governance, technology assessment in its various forms, socio-technical integration and deliberative engagement) and cognates (e.g. responsible development) which I will not repeat here. While RI is strongly evolutionary in this respect, in research policy terms, it is a more recent idea, one that feels right in sentiment and few argue against. It is not surprising that RI was something that EPSRC intuitively felt comfortable in supporting. The commitment to a RI framework was the culmination of a four-year process of collective sense making in which ESPRC, working with myself and others, progressed from sentiment to addressing important questions of framing, conceptualisation and pathways to implementation. This process is far from over.

Although the thinking behind the framework began in earnest in 2009, EPSRC had already undertaken exploratory experiments that one would recognise as being relevant to RI, even if these were not explicitly described as such. Jones (2008) had, for example, undertaken a series of public dialogues that identified the relative priorities of six potential application areas in the field of nanosciences for healthcare, which were used to frame the subsequent call for research proposals. The dialogues showed strong support for nanosciences research that empowered people to take control of their health, and less support for research on approaches such as theranostics, which were perceived as being disempowering. Concepts of participatory agenda setting leading to concrete actions would later be reflected in two key dimensions of the RI framework – inclusive deliberation and responsiveness – and the articulation of a key question – ‘what kind of future do we want science and innovation to bring into the world’(Owen et al. 2013) – as the departure point for RI. Here, the first role for RI is to create spaces for an inclusive discussion of envisioned applications and impacts, opening these up to broader deliberation in the context of values, empowering social agency in technological choices (Stirling 2008), which are in turn made more publically accountable (Jasanoff 2003). Why do it? How is it framed? What future could it bring? Is this desirable? What are the motivations? Who will benefit? They involve considerations of purpose, motivation and intent, and how we make decisions in democratic societies as these relate to science and innovation. They compel us to engage with the politics of science, technologies and innovation (Winner 1980) and frame RI as being far more than a discussion of safety, risks and regulation, important though these are. They challenge us to create spaces to identify opportunities for innovation undertaken in the public interest, a discussion of not just acceptability but desirability. Of course, this challenge also raises tensions concerning long-standing traditions of scientific autonomy (Guston 2012), the principle of market choice as a primary mechanism to direct goods and services to their most desirable end use (Lee and Petts 2013), the established role responsibilities of scientists and innovators (Douglas 2003; Mitcham 2003), and the division of labour between the undertaking of science and innovation on one hand and the understanding of their social, political and environmental aspects on the other.

I have long felt that Research Councils have an important potential role to play in RI. Since EPSRC had begun to reposition itself less as a ‘funder’ and more as a ‘sponsor’ and ‘shaper’ of research in the engineering and physical sciences, a discussion of its potential role in promoting RI was one they seemed willing to engage with. In 2009, I began to work with them to consider what would become the second key question underpinning the RI framework: ‘How should we proceed under conditions of ignorance, uncertainty and ambiguity?’ This question acknowledges the fact that science and innovation are inherently unpredictable, that there are profound limits to knowledge, foresight and regulation, and that they present a well-known dilemma of control (Collingridge 1980). RI acknowledges that these are issues that cannot be ignored in governance terms. I had been invited to scope a funding call on nanosciences for carbon capture from the atmosphere, and as part of this process I worked with EPSRC to introduce into the call document an RI funding criterion (Owen and Goldberg 2010). Its framing was distinctly narrow: applicants were required to submit a risk register identifying any environmental, health or societal impacts either within the research or the envisaged application(s), qualitatively provide an appraisal of risk for each identified impact, and an estimate of uncertainty, and identify who in the project team would be accountable for managing any risks identified. Needless to say the responses to this call were by and large equally narrow, demonstrating the limits of an approach based solely on risk assessment. There were no reflections on purpose and motivations. But, for the first time for EPSRC, it prompted applicants to think about the broader impacts and implications of their proposed research, a useful and manageable entry point for the applicants and EPSRC itself. It surfaced two further dimensions that would eventually support the RI framework: reflection and anticipation. And in some cases, applicants went beyond risk assessment to propose mechanisms of public engagement, life cycle analysis and technology assessment, collaborating with experts from other disciplines in an integrated approach.

Both of these pilot studies placed a premium on the idea of responsiveness: there would be a tangible outcome to anticipation, reflection and deliberation – how decisions were made and how science and innovation might look different in response. I learned that RI should not assume a deficit model of engagement with the science community, and that flexibility should be a key feature of any process in which those from (and beyond) various disciplines are supported to work together in imaginative and creative ways. A tick box approach would never work, however attractive and easy it may be for some. RI would need to be a broadly configured cultural change, one ambitious in its goals.

2. Articulating the RI framework

The two questions and four dimensions that were to eventually underpin the RI framework were evolving in this pilot phase, but they had not been specifically articulated. This phase was an important one in which EPSRC, and in particular its Executive, began to engage with the RI agenda. In the Spring and Summer of 2010, I was invited to present at the EPSRC's ‘Special Interests Group’, a multidisciplinary expert advisory group charged with advising the research council on ethical and societal issues. These meetings, which continued through 2012, served as an important venue for discussions on framing, as well as making the case to pursue RI further at EPSRC. The second of these meetings also considered the findings of a public dialogue on synthetic biology (TNS-BMRB 2010) that highlighted a clear desire by the public for scientists to take more responsibility for thinking about the implications of their research, and for research councils to take responsibility to consider the wider dimensions of the research they fund: to ‘re-imagine the whole process of funding’. These findings provided additional impetus for the development of a more generic RI Framework that I had been advocating, and in Autumn 2010, Phil Macnaghten and I submitted a proposal to EPSRC to do this work. In January 2011, having committing in principle to RI in its 2010 Delivery Plan, EPSRC Chief Executive Officer Dave Delpy signalled the intention to develop this framework, stating

The public rightly expect to be able to trust funders to ensure that scientists think about the potential impacts of their research and act responsibly…The researchers we fund should form the first link in an anticipatory and adaptive governance partnership. (Delpy 2011, 43)

During the first six months of 2011, Phil Macnaghten and I began to undertake the critical thinking for the RI framework. That summer we were joined by Jack Stilgoe as the project formally began. During this same period, I was invited to apply this emerging thinking to the governance of a science and engineering project funded by EPSRC in the controversial area of solar radiation management climate engineering. The details of this project have been written about elsewhere (Macnaghten and Owen 2011; Owen et al. 2013; Pidgeon et al. 2013; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013; Owen, forthcoming), but suffice it to say here that it was an important location to help us refine the framing and dimensions of the RI framework, and to consider how it might be translated in a meaningful way within a highly contested example of ‘techno-science in the making’. It was within this case study that we began to explore embedding RI within a stage gating innovation governance architecture, which offers one possible route to implementation (e.g. Asante, Owen, and Williamson 2014). We were nervous about engaging with this project, in part because our thinking was yet complete, but in the end, we took the view that if RI was to be of value it had to work in difficult areas of science and innovation such as this, and that this was an opportunity to move from thinking to doing. I am glad we had this opportunity.

3. The EPSRC statement of commitment to RI

In 2012, set against the backdrop of a growing interest in RI at a European Commission level (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012), we submitted our project report and recommendations to EPSRC. They began to work on a draft statement of commitment in the latter part of 2012, although it would be almost a year before this was published. Key parts of this statement are worth repeating here. It begins by framing RI as a ‘process that seeks to promote creativity and opportunities for science and innovation that are socially desirable and undertaken in the public interest’ (our first question above). It ‘acknowledges that innovation can raise questions and dilemmas and is often ambiguous in terms of purposes and motivations and unpredictable in terms of impacts, beneficial or otherwise’. It continues that RI ‘creates spaces and processes to explore these aspects of innovation in an open, inclusive and timely way’ (our second question above). It stresses that ‘this is a collective responsibility, where funders, researchers, stakeholders and the public all have an important role to play’ and ‘which goes beyond considerations of risk and regulation, important thought these are’. The statement makes it clear that EPSRC has a responsibility to ensure the research it funds is aligned with a framework based on the dimensions discussed above. In fact, EPSRC itself felt more comfortable with the words anticipate, reflect, engage and act, but the substance and meaning of these terms are consistent with the dimensions we developed. I now feel that there may be a case for a specific additional dimension of openness and transparency, even though the language of opening up has been a prevalent theme throughout.

The statement describes how in some cases detailed consideration may be premature or even unwarranted, but that in others, it will be recommended or even required, and as such all the EPSRC research community and its partners should be familiar with and committed to RI, reflecting an overarching commitment by EPSRC's across all its investments where ‘RI is prominent in our strategic thinking and funding plans, including proposal assessment’. In doing so, EPSRC states that it (and others it works with such as universities) will need to promote partnerships with other disciplines and spheres of expertise, and support programmes of training, integrated approaches and collaborative research across disciplines and beyond to enable a meaningful commitment to RI to be taken forward. Importantly, the statement recognises that RI must itself be a deliberative and responsive process of development, shaped by the research community and stakeholder base.

4. Future directions

In our report to EPSRC, we made a number of recommendations that included the need to make an explicit policy commitment to an RI framework; EPSRC has now made this commitment (EPSRC 2013). We also recommended that RI become embedded within its training investments (e.g. Centres for Doctoral Training), that guidance documents be developed, that EPSRC work with others to make RI an integrated and embedded part of cross thematic programmes such as energy, food security and the digital economy, and that new channels of communication be developed to advise others on emerging technologies and their governance – particularly central government and learned societies. Many of these steps will necessarily take the form of exploratory experiments in implementation as an iterative process of learning. While I have had little push back in terms of the framing or dimensions of the RI framework, there are important questions of doing that must now be addressed. The area of synthetic biology is already proving to be an important location to explore just this, as ESPRC, and others it works with such as the UK's Technology Strategy Board, begin to work out the doing of RI. EPSRC has made an important statement of framing, commitment and intent. But in reality, the hard work has only just begun.

Notes on contributor

Richard Owen is a Professor of Strategic Innovation Management at the University of Exeter Business School where he holds the Chair in Responsible Innovation.