Innovation Parliaments? Real-World Experiments and the Call for Constituting Social Settings Accordingly

• In Event: Real-World Experiments for Knowledge Production

Abstract

Typically, processes of participation are seen as the best mean to solve both problems of efficiency as well as legitimacy of knowledge production for innovation and transformation. Open innovation, living labs, transformation labs, test beds or participatory Technology Assessment are practices evolving in this context (cf. Evans/Karvonen 2014; Hyysalo et al. 2016; Engels/Rogge 2018). But, most of the real-world laboratories seems to be very restricted places with regard to the creation of new scientific knowledge. Moreover, questions of legitimacy are becoming highly relevant, as in experiments there is an asymmetry between experimenters and the “things” (perhaps yourself or your best friend) experimented with. The thesis of this paper is that real-world experiments for knowledge production are highly depending on trust issues. To conduct real-world experiments it is decisive to build networks of trust whereby a prerequisite is to make explicit and sensitively contextualize the goals and implications of the process. This will be underpinned by empirical findings out of two third-party funded projects researching on participation of civil society actors in research. Methods were case study research and expert interviews as well as workshop formats. These findings show that creating facilities of real-world experimentation would profit not only by looking precisely at the form of problem-solving processes (cf. Hurlbert/Gupta 2015), but also by implementing new institutionalized spaces of social coordination. They should allow working on a specific constitution for locally territorialized innovation processes. Therefore, these might be coined as “Innovation Parliaments”.

Author

• Stefan Boeschen, Chair of Society and Technology RWTH Aachen University