Responsible Innovation

The following sections are included:

• CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION

The following sections are included:

• An Explanation of the Terminology
• Exploring the Notion of Responsibility
  • Permeability between the private and public spheres
  • The imperative of responsibility
  • The responsibility of the citizen/individual
  • Political responsibility
  • Responsibility: Moral standards and ethics
  • The responsibility of a firm
  • The question of stakeholders
  • Managers and responsibility
  • Managers and the multiplicity of responsibilities
• Is Responsible Innovation Derived from CSR?
  • A question of religion
  • The conscience of businessmen
  • The secularization of CSR
  • Sustainable development
• The Understanding of Responsible Innovation
  • Linguistics

The following sections are included:

• Deciding in the Unknown and Unknowable
  • Losing control of innovations
  • An ambiguous life cycle
• Adapting Sustainable Development Concept to Address New Global Issues
• The Axes of Responsible Innovation
  • Question the solutions to develop in response to individual needs
  • Monitor and manage the direct impacts of innovations
  • Consider the indirect consequences of innovations
  • Cases for responsible innovation
  • Constructing and de-constructing the innovation process

The following sections are included:

• Impact of Responsibility on the Innovation Strategy
  • A new model for integrating responsible innovation into organizational strategy
  • Adapting responsible innovation to SME specificities
• Five Stages for Becoming a Responsible and Innovative Organization
  • Stage 1: Comply with the law
  • Stage 2: Anticipate future legal requirements
  • Stage 3: Think the value chain as an ecosystem
  • Stage 4: Develop responsible products and services
  • Stage 5: Lead the change
• An Evaluation of Responsible Innovation
  • Responsible innovation: A product and process dimension
  • Success of responsible innovation
  • Key challenges associated with responsible innovation
• From the Precautionary Principle to a Responsible Innovation Code?

As innovation policy covers a wide range of objectives, both economic (productivity growth, employment and competitiveness) and non-economic ones (cultural, social, environmental and military), governments often intervene in the innovation process to ensure that public policy objectives will be achieved. Before a government intervenes there needs to be a clear rationale for the intervention and an understanding that the intervention will resolve the issue. To date, the primary reason why governments intervene in the economy is market failure. Market failures can occur due to the existence of externalities, spill-overs, imperfect and asymmetric information, network failures and market power. In terms of responsible innovation, one of the most pressing market failures is the existence of externalities, both positive and negative. These externalities are effects of production and consumption that are not properly reflected in market signals. In terms of responsible innovation, a negative externality can be the costs for mitigating pollution that are not incurred by the polluter or reflected in the price of the product in the market. A positive externality can be through the public good benefits of an innovation, e.g. flu vaccinations. System failures are linked to structural, institutional and regulatory deficiencies, which effect innovation activities. The system failures argument justifies interventions that address structural and institutional deficiencies. Although they can be seen as complementary, economists differentiate between market failures and system failures. The systems perspectives emphasize the importance of interaction and interactive learning among all actors in the system. In the case of systems failure, the processes of intervention are similar in the case of market failure although the process is not focused on recreating market conditions or optimum economic efficiency. Some of the key characteristics of systems failure interventions include increased collaboration and interactivity, a focus on learning and tacit knowledge, innovation capacity building, flexible and responsive policy frameworks and increased policy coherence…

The preceding chapters have demonstrated the importance of responsible innovation as a management approach to the innovation process and the organization as a whole, in order to achieve positive results. These concern both the organization's performance as well as its impact on society. In some cases, a successful responsible innovation strategy can also contribute towards addressing some of the grand challenges of society. In order to overcome the problems facing us today, a new approach and perspective is needed, taking us beyond existing frameworks. Emerging technologies and entrepreneurial behavior are critical factors for exploring potential solutions, while remaining aware of the direct and indirect impacts which resulting innovations can have…

Highlighting the importance of responsibility within innovation strategies is one thing, proving that it offers a competitive advantage in terms of creating value is another. Yet, the latter is a crucial argument in convincing companies to adopt such an approach. It is in itself relatively easy to justify a position of responsibility in an innovation context, just as it is to justify a position of sustainable development in an economic or organizational context. There is no opposition, nor are there opponents, nothing in fact can really harm such a project. Moreover, in light of the current context, everyone has their own speech prepared on the subject. Who is not responsible nowadays, if only through a couple of lines included into the annual activities report? What company do not have, even a snippet of facts on sustainable development in their presentation brochures? It has become an essential, if not expected, part of corporate communication. In the present day and age, we need to be responsible. Willingly or not, a company must have a responsible discourse ready. Ever since the recent financial crisis, everything has gained a responsible “coating.” Advertisements are over-flowing with the term: “responsible” credit offers, “responsible” cars, nuclear energy has now become “responsible,” yoghurts are “responsible,” and so on. The message has been clearly received and understood by communication bodies: we must be responsible…

There is an obvious contradiction between one's concern to act responsibly, thereby anticipating and calculating potential impacts of an innovation and the need to let unbridled creativity run freely, to step beyond existing frameworks, to think of the impossible. In his book “The Wisdom of the Physicist,” Yves Quéré claims that the physicist is, above all, an unreasonable human being. In the same way that it is necessary to be insane for believing that a seemingly solid material actually consists of void and moving atoms, a similar unreasonable state of mind is required to explore the boundaries of what is possible and to go down the road of the unknown, leading to true innovations. However, the need to be unreasonable to innovate in this way does not absolve the innovator of all responsibility in relation to the consequences of his or her actions. It is therefore up to the innovator, to apply the criteria of responsible choices and decisions as he or she is progressing through the path of uncertainty, that is, the innovation setting. Therefore, one can only progress if discovery is determined by the curiosity and exploration of the extreme unknown. The innovation which actually results from such discovery however, is constrained by ethics…

The following sections are included:

• APPENDIX
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX