With innovation comes responsibility

Technology assessment & responsible research and innovation

Technological innovations spring from an inventive and, at the same time, rational approach to reality. But the world in which they are implemented is a messy place: a complex system of competing societal needs, values, ambitions and forces. Responsibility has thus always been a central element of Technology Assessment (TA), since its rationale is both to anticipate the implications and consequences of technological developments, and to provide the sort of reliable knowledge that is needed to inform accountable policy decisions. As of late, TA is not alone in this approach to innovation management and governance. Indeed, the buzzword of the moment is ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI), not the least, at the level of the European Commission and its current research funding programme and innovation platform Horizon 2020.

As expected, the 6th annual conference of the German language network of TA institutions (Netzwerk Technologiefolgenabschätzung, NTA), held in June 2014 in Vienna, was entirely dedicated to RRI. The conference addressed the issue of how TA could and should contribute to shaping innovation dynamics in a responsible way. The conference’s 34 contributors provided a complex comparative analysis of differing and overlapping conceptual approaches, of objectives to pursue, possibilities to explore, and obstacles to overcome.

Old wine in new wineskins?

The volume presenting the conference proceedings bears the same title as the conference itself: ‘Responsible innovation – a new impetus for Technology Assessment?’ This question, and the various answers presented deal with the ambiguities surrounding the line of fracture between TA and RRI, of their similarities, differences and possible competition and to which the editors of the journal volume, Alexander Bogner, Michael Decker and Mashid Sotoudeh, proved a reconciliatory note. The main concern, they conclude, is not to give a final judgement of the relation between TA and RRI, but to consider the present ‘RRI boom’ in research policy issues as a clear, albeit indirect, acknowledgement of TA. Moreover, they see it as a valuable contribution to a constructive discussion on how TA can avail itself of a pivotal role in the responsible and knowledge-based governance of innovation processes. Succinctly, by building on the foundations of different facets of TA – including an elaboration of a broad expert-knowledge base or stakeholder and public engagement – RRI reframes, redefines and re-values the kind of knowledge-based policy advice TA has been providing since its beginnings in the 1970s.

In the definition of the European Commission, RRI is

an inclusive approach to research and innovation (R&I), to ensure that societal actors work together during the whole research and innovation process. It aims to better align both the process and outcomes of R&I, with values, needs and expectations of European society. In general terms, R&I imply anticipating and assessing potential implications and societal expectations with regard to research and innovation.

If in fact, this is what TA with its combined approach of expert, stakeholder and citizen assessments is all about, Is there something TA needs to learn from RRI, or would it be better advised to keep its distance, pointing out that there is more impartiality to its own approach, since in its anticipation of the implications and consequences of technological developments it looks beyond what society deems to be ‘responsible’ at a given moment in history?

These are the questions the contributions assembled in this volume pursued. The volume is divided into seven sections, the first, consisting of the three major keynotes that provide the premises of the questions subsequently addressed by the following parts. In this first section, Renate Mayntz aptly points out the factors limiting the influenceability of political decisions by a classical TA approach, while Rene von Schomberg explains why RRI is seen as a necessary and timely paradigm shift for science, technology and innovation policy: ‘implying a broader foresight and impact assessment of new technologies beyond their anticipated market benefits and risks’ and requiring a ‘organized collective co-responsibility’. Europe being faced by a number of ‘Grand Challenges’, the European Commission expects RRI to significantly contribute to find solutions in areas such as global warming, dwindling supplies of energy, water and food, ageing societies, public health, pandemics and security. More actively maybe than TA, RRI presupposes ‘a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other regarding the ethical acceptability, sustainability and social desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products’.

The future is in the eye of the beholder

Geraldine Fitzgerald explored two concrete cases of innovation governance: (i) designing for older people and health care agendas, and (ii) designing for eco-behaviour change agendas. The two examples highlighted the way different conceptual approaches influence the shaping of possible solutions and questioned the responsibility conferred to practitioners by this power to define possible technological futures. For Fitzgerald, the cases also illustrated the need to find a new middle-ground: ‘Neither a top-down approach, driven by governmental or policy agendas, nor a bottom-up approach that focuses on the individual is creating technologies that really work.’

This need to reflect, rethink and redefine conceptual approaches in order to cover new ground is explored throughout the next six parts of the book which correspond to the different conference sessions. The first part presents different takes on RRI in the European context, be it in with respect to European projects such as Res-AGorA (Responsible Research and Innovation in a Distributed Anticipatory Governance Frame) or Engage 2020 – which explores different methods to encourage public engagement in research and innovation processes – or by analysing the role RRI could or should play in a democracy, or might be better advised not to. Jessica Longen, Sebastian Hoffmann and Johannes Weyer provocatively argued that the best solution for societal problems sometimes does not lay in the implementation, but simply in the ‘responsible discontinuation’ of a technology.

Make innovation responsible before it even takes place

The second part of the book takes a closer look at how (new) normative governance approaches and (new) partnerships among stakeholders, researchers and policy-makers RRI influence knowledge production, innovation and policy. An opening interview with Petra Ahrlweiler, Director of the European Academy of Technology and Innovation Assessment, reveals through examples taken from nanotechnology, electromobility, or the governance of critical infrastructures, that broad stakeholder participation can become an obstacle to the finding of practicable solutions. This part further questions whether there can be freedom in scientific research when RRI seeks to instil a responsible approach from the very beginnings of the innovation processes.

The conflict of knowledge and value – as reflected in the context of recent technological controversies, such as the final storage of nuclear waste, fracking, climate engineering or video surveillance – is the unifying idea for each of the contributions in the third part. The contributors provide examples where the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders is apt to clash with the equally pressing need of consensus-building. In such situations, the accessibility to scientific information as well as the successful implementation of a transparent and interactive dialogue between science, policy-makers and civil society are key, but their perceived legitimacy can be hampered by different sets of normative concepts underlying conflicting value systems.

Participation will (maybe) save us

RRI aims to create research and innovation practices striving towards sustainable, ethically acceptable, and socially desirable outcomes. Typically this responsibility is shared by all people and institutions involved and affected. This attempt at democratic legitimacy means that in RRI, participation based TA methods – originating from the rejection of a perceived dominance of expert-knowledge by the grassroots movements of the 1970s and refuelled by the participatory turn of the late 1990s – are likely to gain more momentum still. It also means that the pitfalls, limitations, and problems inherent to some of the available participatory tools, such as the question as to whether political institutions are actually capable of integrating the results of citizen involvement into their processes, risk to be perpetuated. This particular issue is raised in the fourth part of the book which presents possible ways of rethinking effective participatory procedures for strategic technology policy-making, as well as a number of methodological innovations (e.g. online consultations in the context of the CIVISTI method developed by the Institute of Technology Assessment in Vienna).

The fifth part of the book looks at what responsible innovation could actually look like in an industrial context and how private corporations could conduct their research and innovation activities responsibly. Here it is examined by looking at the way that participatory TA could ease the implementation of Industry 4.0, or tackle the problem of an equitable access to expensive pharmaceutical products. With its ‘Responsible Industry’-project, the European Commission is exploring the same subject. ‘RRI Tools’, another EU-funded project, is assembling instruments and comparing resources needed to implement RRI in different contexts. An altogether different toolset, finally, is needed to maintain public interest in emerging technologies, and the complex questions surrounding them: here it is a matter of communication tools capable not only of grabbing, but also of holding the public’s attention, thus informing public opinion and mobilizing citizens into taking part in policy-making processes.

Back to the future

The last part of this volume looks at the role of TA with regard to ‘visionary technologies’ such as neuro-enhancement or synthetic biology. This section questions whether the speculative images of possible technological futures often underlying the attempt to analyse the social implications of a new technological development, actually contributes to clarify the debate or, instead, leads to further misunderstandings between groups of stakeholders. More specifically: one contributions casts TA in the role of the ‘sober broker’ in knowledge governance, another advocates initiating ‘communities of practice’ while a third, citing the case-study of a stakeholder workshop generating visions of possible futures with regard to assistive technology in a context of ageing societies, points out that in the context of a multidimensional approach, social innovations are deemed as important as technological innovations.

A new impetus for TA? Absolutely

Science that does not shut itself away in the haughty and solitary heights of its ivory tower, and innovation that does not purport to know best (without even asking) while kowtowing to the economy are developments that need to be supported. This does not change the fact that RRI is both old and new, and that, to a certain extent, the difference between RRI and TA comes down to a simple question of labels. But there are clear distinctions also: RRI with its vision of ‘science with and for society’ demands a broader involvement of citizens and stakeholders at different and, more importantly, earlier stages of the research and innovation process. And in doing so, it certainly gives TA valuable reference points to revisit its own conceptual groundwork.

But there is more: There is an ethical dimension to RRI’s quest of mobilizing all of societies resources in order to find inclusive and sustainable solutions for the Grand Challenges of our time, a claim of being entitled to define what ‘responsible’ means. At the same time, RRI’s attempt to manage innovation and research for the greater social good inevitably involves a degree of normative intervention that can be questionable – and must be questioned. This might be at the root of a certain sense of lingering unease popping up throughout the different parts of the volume. In their introduction, the Editors also put their finger on it, expressing certain misgivings towards an approach that, freight with high expectations and moral demands, might back-fire by politicizing science and end up doing more harm than good to society.

RRI is still an ambiguous term and its approach is hardly consolidated. With its energy and purposefulness, this promising newcomer in the landscape of science and innovation governance can, without doubt, be an inspiring sparring partner and sounding board for TA. But the role of TA, having been around the block a bit longer, might also entail another kind of ‘responsibility’: that of steering RRI clear of the perils and (populist) pitfalls that lay in wait for a science and innovation governance mainly based on the anticipation of societal concerns and preferences.

All this, the Editors convincingly argue, must now be the object of a constructive and informed debate. The volume they present, with its rich array of carefully edited contributions, offers policy-makers, researchers as well as an interested public the knowledge they need to take part in it.