Promoting responsible innovation:
constructive technology assessment
and the Dutch experience
Arie Rip (University of Twente)
Excerpts from
Contribution to the Franco-British workshop
on responsible innovation,
From concepts to practice,
London, 23-24 May 2011
Responsible innovation
• An open, unspecific term (concept)
-but
forceful,
RESPONSIBLE
exactly because it is open ended
(sounds
INNOVATION
oftengood,
not aboutimplications)
innovation,
can be referred to, no immediate
but about
• But tensions which can lead
to contestation:
development
of ST
• 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?
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
Consequentialist
contributions and minimize its negative
ethics
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 unintendedTwo different
narratives
consequences.
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
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)
Responsible innovation,
at different levels
Macro-level: societal
discourse
policy
Ideas about future world; division of moral
labour
EU Code of Conduct for Responsible NanoST
Research
Meso-level:
funding agencies
branch organzations
consortia
[New roles/repertoires]
Dutch MVI; extended impact statements
code of conduct etc
ELSA as integral part; Constructive Techn. Ass’t
Micro-level:
scientists (in the lab)
Industrialists/firms
“relevance”, ‘fictive script’
Corp. Social Resp., transparency
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
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
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
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)