Globalizing Responsible Research and Innovation: Experiences in international collaboration for RRI

• In Event: Global Perspectives on Responsible Innovation: Widening the Gaze I

Abstract

The RRI-Practice project has embarked on an explicit project of globalizing RRI, joining a group of scholars from 12 countries to conduct a set of national and organizational case studies analyzing the state of and promoting responsible research and innovation as defined in combination between the EC, the project partners and the research subjects. The project aims to leverage the national case studies in a coordinated effort between the partners to generate scalable knowledge about best practices for the wider implementation of RRI.

The flexibility of RRI can be read as a definitional weakness or as a strength, in providing opportunities to promote dialogue and reflexive engagement by a diverse array of interested actors across national settings. The contrast between more topical definitions, such as the EC defined “keys,” and process based approaches —such as anticipation, reflection, deliberation, and responsiveness (Owen et. al. 2013)—have been depicted as creating confusion and ambiguity around the aims of RRI. But, in cross-national contexts, the concrete entry point of the keys, and the open invitation to define responsibility in these and other areas, may support the process-based aspects of the project. Interpretive flexibility is indispensable to RRI when working across contexts, and initial research results indicate that creating openings for reflection on the relevance of particular keys and the meaning of responsibility in diverse scientific settings can advance the core RRI process commitments cited above.

Author

• Tess Doezema, Arizona State University