Difficulty and doability enacting responsible innovation

This issue of the Journal of Responsible Innovation offers an engaging set of discussions on the implementation, application, translation and scaling of responsible research and innovation (RI, RRI). Readers will find both retrospective and prospective analyses, considerations of both formal and informal implementation efforts and debates on the value of responsible innovation in guiding and broadening practices across a range contexts. The articles delve into questions of responsibility in research priority setting, emerging technologies research, low-technology development field work, social innovation enterprises and governance of species de-extinction. Recurring themes include RI implementation challenges and strategies, the limited role that personal commitments play in meeting those challenges and the scope and meaning of innovation.

In the first of five research articles, Repo and Matschoss (2019) highlight tensions between expert and public views during research priority setting (in this case at the regional level of the European Union). Noting that inclusion is ‘at the core’ of RRI and is often pursued in the form of public engagement exercises, they turn our attention to potential challenges that can arise when policy experts attempt to translate the results of such exercises ‘into viable options’ for policy recommendations. The authors find that ‘each such stage of translation provides an opportunity for expert takeover of the citizen involvement contribution’ and they reveal how expert treatment of citizen views risks distorting, screening out and redirecting those views. Importantly, expert takeover can occur ‘even when experts are committed to faithfully following the spirit of citizen contributions’. Opportunities for distortion appear especially likely to arise in cases when citizen and expert views rival each other, such as when experts prefer ‘technically oriented, systemic citizen visions over societal and personal ones.’ Repo and Matschoss remind us that citizen involvement is ‘an activity that introduces complexity and diversity’ into established institutional practices and thus that ‘differences in perspectives should not be seen as an unwanted outcome but rather as the essential motivation for engaging both citizens and experts in the first place.’ Accordingly, they argue, including citizens in research prioritization has more benefits than simply enacting RRI ideals of inclusion, transparency and accountability. In addition, they suggest, ‘Citizen involvement could … be used to disrupt traditional agenda setting and thereby contribute to change and diversity as well as accentuate a shift away from technological emphasis.’

Hartley et al. (2019), in the second research article, also seek to disrupt traditional conceptions of technology. Noting that the potential for low-technology research and innovation ‘is often undervalued in the dominant assumption that high-technology innovation will drive economic development,’ the authors explore the role of RI in building capacities for appropriate technology responses to development challenges in the Global South. Given the paucity of studies on ‘RI in the context of low-technology alternatives to addressing global challenges outside Europe and North America,’ however, they point out that ‘there is little guidance on the practical aspects of doing so.’ In order to understand and assess the value of RI concepts (in this case, as formalized by the United Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [cf. Owen 2014]), the authors delve deeply into interdisciplinary negotiations, stakeholder interactions and decision making in a project that examined the lack of large-scale uptake of improved cook-stoves in Southern Africa. Hartley et al. ask whether and how RI concepts were enacted throughout the stages of the scientific research. Their results suggest that ‘an RI framework can structure discussion and create space for anticipation, reflection and engagement with stakeholders’ by helping to ‘identify important socio-technical elements of innovation early on’ and ‘to steer research toward locally-defined social needs.’ Still, the authors find that efforts related to reflexivity, anticipation and engagement were ‘difficult to realize in practice’ and they uncover a number of difficulties in implementing RI. Difficulties arise from a number of sources including lack of resources, stakeholder capacities to conduct qualitative research and pervasive reliance on the ‘deficit model’ of public engagement found throughout stakeholder networks. Echoing Repo and Matschoss, they note that ‘even when researchers are committed to the idea of RI, it is difficult to enact in practice.’

Åm (2019) also looks at project-level implementation of national policies for RRI (in this case, as formulated by the Research Council of Norway [cf. Egeland, Forsberg, and Maximova-Mentzoni 2019]). Observing that in both scholarly frameworks and RRI policies, ‘scientists are ascribed an active role as governance actors,’ Åm asks how scientists conducting biotechnology and nanotechnology research translate such policies. Åm identifies a spectrum of RRI translation and coping strategies – with some scientists performing, others dismissing and still others appropriating science-society language in ways that contest the underlying policies. This latter strategy includes outsourcing RRI work to social scientists. Importantly, Åm finds that when it comes to actually ‘enacting RRI demands in research practices … only research projects with integrated [social science and humanities] scholars attended explicitly to RRI in project work.’ Integrated scholars were found to ‘stimulate … RRI activity’ and ‘create space for reflection’. Such socio-technical collaborations, however, risk allocating labor in ways that reinforce boundaries between science-society integration work and the ‘actual research’ of scientists. Åm recommends that, in addition to ‘encouraging scientists to adopt responsible behaviors,’ RRI ‘policies need to create possible conditions for new practices.’ Thus, instead of creating ‘more tasks’ for scientists, such policies should take into account the ‘epistemic living spaces’ (Felt 2009) that characterize and constrain scientific practices and working conditions. Ultimately, however, Åm calls for RRI policies to go beyond the project-level in order to address the ‘competing logics of the various governing regimes, such as professional, institutional, and funding regimes’ that influence scientists' experiences of having so little ‘room to maneuver’ in the first place.

Shifting the implementation context of responsible innovation from research policy and performance to business, Lubberink et al. (2019) add to the growing literature on responsible innovation in business settings, by seeking to understand ‘the value that can be created’ when social entrepreneurs integrate ‘normative values’ into their innovations. In focusing on social innovation, rather than on science-based technological innovation per se, Lubbernick et al. recall the appeals by Repo and Matschoss and by Hartley et al. for widening the ‘narrow scope’ of innovation that currently characterizes most efforts aimed at theorizing, implementing and assessing responsible innovation. After reviewing the literature on why responsible innovation is ‘questionable to implement’ in business contexts, the authors investigate ‘de facto responsible innovation practices’ that occur without formal mandates or frameworks and ‘that are already taking place in a business context.’ Lubbernick et al. examine the value of integration work in social entreprises that operate throughout the Global North and that seek to ‘develop solutions for grand challenges that create direct socio-ethical value for the target beneficiaries, which are predominantly vulnerable and marginalized communities in society.’ The authors find solidarity, freedom and equality to be the value categories ‘most often addressed in the solutions of the social enterprises.’ Additionally, however, they argue that ‘strategies to develop, implement and scale socio-ethical innovations’ should be part and parcel of de facto responsible innovation. Without glossing over the ‘ethical tensions that can come with scaling,’ Lubbernick et al. mount a spirited call for expanding ‘the concept of responsible innovation by not only focusing on socio-ethical considerations for the development of innovation, but also to prove its value by informing’ scholarly understandings of ‘how implementing and scaling innovation can be done in a responsible manner.’

In the final research article, Valdez et al. (2019) anticipate outcomes, ethical issues and governance needs in potential cases of de-extinction, namely, the ‘re-creation of extinct species using methods from synthetic biology, cloning, genetic engineering, reproduction technologies, and stem cell research.’ While some guidelines for de-extinction have been proposed and address ‘many of the ecological risks involved in wildlife reintroduction efforts,’ these guidelines ‘assume opposition based on ethical principles will not matter, and that conservation policy will not inhibit de-extinction efforts.’ Nor do they ‘fully address issues associated with unique biotechnologies, higher uncertainty related to environmental risks, and more conflict between stakeholder groups compared to decision-making groups in traditional wildlife reintroduction efforts.’ In a ‘first step in anticipatory governance,’ the authors identify potential ramifications and needs through a survey of experts from multiple disciplines who have been active in technology and policy development around genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Overall, Valdez et al. find that participating experts ‘perceived de-extinction as more likely to harm, not benefit, human health and the environment.’ The authors note that they ‘might have expected experts in the natural sciences, including some biotechnology developers, to be more optimistic about de-extinction, compared to scholars from the social sciences and humanities, who often criticized the hype surrounding biotechnology development.’ By contrast, they find that ‘both groups doubted the potential benefits, and perceived hazards to be more likely than benefits.’ Thus, while emerging biotechnologies often proceed under a glow of technological optimism, the authors suggest that ‘de-extinction presents a novel case in which the technology faces pronounced pessimism.’

This issue of JRI is rounded out with three perspectives and a book review. In the first perspective, Cuppen, Klievink, and Doorn (2019) take up the rapid ‘emergence of crowd-based platforms for the production, exchange and delivery of goods and services throughout all domains of society.’ Despite – or rather because of – their increasing prevalence, crowd-based innovations challenge institutional arrangements since ‘they do not fit or align with the institutions in place.’ They thus ‘create an “institutional void”’ and create the need to ‘safeguard public values such as accountability, welfare, legitimacy, efficiency and fairness.’ Accordingly, Cuppen et al. develop an integrated research agenda that draws from both normative and empirical disciplines in order that it might equitably and effectively address the rapidly evolving ‘interplay between public values and institutions.’

In response to the ‘intensive media and U.S. governmental scrutiny’ that major social media companies – Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter – have come under beginning in 2018 with respect to ‘a range of troubling issues,’ Hemphill (2019) notes that prominent industry advisors are recommending industry-level adoption of ‘workable principles for responsible innovation.’ One form of responsible innovation being proposed is the self-regulatory organization (SRO). Accordingly, Hemphill considers the merits of SROs, whether in place of or in combination with public regulation and new legislation. The author concludes that

whether a proposed tech industry SRO will continue to operate in the so-called ‘public interest’, rather than the interests of the established tech industry, will require an intense level of organizational transparency and accountability – specifically, as it pertains to the broader inclusion of the civil society.

Lastly, observing that efforts to make Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines more inclusive are themselves based on exclusive practices that require those who belong to underrepresented populations ‘to gain representation via metrics which assess progress in an institutionalized or university setting,’ Lusk (2019) calls for more diverse avenues through which members of underrepresented communities can gain access to and participate in scientific research, ultimately contributing to the democratic exchange of cultural values among ‘scientists, STEM practitioners, and members of underrepresented communities.’

In an advance review of the forthcoming International Handbook on Responsible Innovation (Von Schomberg and Hankins, forthcoming), Frodeman (2019) situates RI and RRI within a long tradition of ‘societal efforts to construct institutions that check self-interest for the common good.’ With responsible innovation, Frodeman discerns a shift in this tradition from a concern with ‘the dangers of capitalism’ to those associated with ‘the ever-accelerating rates of technoscientific innovation.’ In keeping with this insight, Frodeman takes issue with what he sees in the volume as a heavy reliance on ‘social technique’ that is geared more towards ‘providing answers and expertise’ than to ‘asking questions.’ Similarly, he laments what he senses is a relatively uncritical stance towards the value innovation in the Handbook. Frodeman’s review thus encourages scholars and practitioners of responsible innovation alike ‘to breach the walls between academia and society’ but to do so in a more humanistic spirit.