René von Schomberg

Please find attached an open accessible link where you can download updated PPT presentations, and locate some literature to which participants referred to during the workshop (see for workshop overview, and participants, post further below)

Andoni Ibarra and myself worked on an overall document which gives an conceptual overview and introduction to the topics of Responsible Innovation, Open Science and Anticipatory Governance in their interrelationship. Thie document can also be downloaded at the same link.

Here’s the link: https://rwth-aachen.sciebo.de/s/K8DABYiZhxzFWWr. 

Jonny Hankins (Bassetti Foundation) did make a nice overview of the discussion of the worksho[, which is hosted at the Bassetti Foundation’s website: https://www.fondazionebassetti.org/en/focus/2022/07/open_scholarship_responsible_i.html

The reality of today’s global challenges has paved the way for Responsible Innovation (RI), which aims to steer innovation processes towards societally desirable outcomes. Under the sway of ‘science with and for society’, the hypothesis is that innovation can only really respond to the needs and ambitions of society by including all its actors in the process.  However, frameworks and policies of RI mainly focus on regulating innovation processes (e.g. through applying ethical keys and integrating normative dimensions), while little thought is dedicated to what innovation itself means conceptually.

To this end, the contribution of this dissertation is twofold. First, through an extensive analysis of both the policy and academic discourse on RI, it exposes a techno-economic concept of innovation. Parallel to Martin Heidegger’s idea of ‘Enframing’, it argues that in the attempt to regulate a techno-economic concept of innovation, the RI discourse remains subject to its overall dominance. Second, it articulates a shift towards a political concept of innovation which genuinely serves the public good beyond mainstream economic incentive. Inspired by the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, it proposes a vision of RI which actualizes the human capacity for speech and action, inspires radical novelty, and empowers the public sphere.

As such, this book politicizes the RI discourse precisely in the way it was originally envisioned, that is, through conceptualizing innovation as a fundamentally political matter. In this view, politics is not merely an extension of RI but is itself the condition of RI; it is what enables innovation to genuinely serve the public good

PDF free download:

https://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/fulltext/560519

Announcement: I will leave the European Commission and I will become a Senior Research Fellow at the new Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research which is an international center for advanced studies at the at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. I am looking forward to start on 1 January 2022

I will continue publishing on Responsible Innovation, Open Scholarship and Governance of Science and Tech as well as promote and work on concepts of deliberative democracy with a view on responsible governance of Science, Technology and Innovation. In Aachen, I will do ‘RRI’ research on research values central to research cultures and their implication for responsible governance.

More on the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research , Aachen University https://www.humtec.rwth-aachen.de/cms/HUMTEC/Das-Projekthaus/~nngmk/Kaete-Hamburger-Kolleg/?lidx=1

I gave rather similar key note presentations at the final conferences of the H2020 funded projects SeeRRI (https://conference.seerri.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Programa-conferencia-SeeRRI-15.09.21-2.pdf) and IAMRRI (https://www.iamrri.eu/iamrri/events/default-title/programm) on respectively 30 and 8 September 2021

The power point presentation can be downloaded here:

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AiGzvqBrWeivuEiI7umzXbcA86QG?e=BqB9cb

I can recommend to take a look at the respective project websites which showcase important advances on implementing RRI in regional planning (SeeRRI) and RRI for additive manufacturing (IAMRRI). In the former conference a range of coordinators of ‘sister’ projects in the field of regional employment of RRI participated, allowing for sensible ‘cross-fertilisation’ (among others Territoria Project, tetRRIS, WBC-RRI.NET, DigiteRRI, Transform etc.) Check them all out! They are all good!