RRI Tools: towards an RRI working definition
Background Summary
Developing better technology and innovation processes and outcomes that reflect both
excellent science and the incorporation of societal values and needs is increasingly framed as
Responsible Research and Innovation, or RRI in short. Although this notion is quickly gaining
popularity in the domain of policy and innovation studies, it is far from entirely new. RRI is
much rather an umbrella term, including a wide range of notions in the academic literature
and policy reports that vary from theories on good governance or upstream public
engagement to techniques such as future scenarios, focus group consultations and value
sensitive design, and from codes of conduct to mechanisms like open access. We might even
say that the variety of concepts that could be labelled as a responsible R&I practice is as wide
as the variety of ideas about how R&I practices can become responsible. But what these
notions have in common -more than anything- is their strong ethical component. They all
strive to create responsible practices in research and innovation.
As illustrated in the background note, RRI can be understood as a shift in responsibility: the
shift from thinking in terms of individualist and consequentialist notions of responsibility to
thinking in terms of collective and distributed responsibility and processes. Therefore, we
suggest developing a working definition of RRI that specifies both outcomes and process
requirements of the responsible research and innovation process.
We have studied the literature on RRI to get a first impression on what frameworks and
definitions are already developed and noticed that several outcomes and process
requirements can be distilled from those definitions. We have explored two currently
dominant definitions of RRI, the first one being by René von Schomberg: “Responsible
Research and Innovation is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and
innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability,
sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in
order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society)” 1.
The second one being by Jack Stilgoe et al.: “Responsible innovation means taking care of the
future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present” 2. In the first
definition, transparency and interactivity are important characteristics of a responsible
research and innovation process. Furthermore, the actors involved should become responsive
to each other. The purpose of the process and thus the outcome of RRI will then be an
1
Von Schomberg, R. (2011) ‘Prospects for Technology Assessment in a framework of responsible
research and innovation’ in: Technikfolgen abschätzen lehren: Bildungspotenziale transdisziplinärer
Methode, P.39-61, Wiesbaden: Springer VS
2
Stilgoe, J., R. Owen, P. Macnaghten (2013) ‘Developing a framework for responsible Innovation’ in
Research Policy, Vol. 42, Issue 9, P. 1568–1580
acceptable and socially desirable process and products. With this definition, a number of
outcome and process characteristics are thus already given, albeit not yet precisely defined.
The second definition of RRI takes the academic literature as well as exercises with public
engagement as a starting point and therefore emphasizes the collective responsibility and the
future aspect to a successful RRI process. It outlines four dimensions (or characteristics) of
responsible research and innovation (process): anticipation, reflection, inclusion and
responsiveness. Stilgoe et al. (2013) develop these dimensions based on questions that, in
their experience, are often asked in public dialogues on science and technology, and to use the
dimensions as a framework for raising questions about research and innovation processes and
products.
In our understanding, the framework of RRI from Stilgoe et al. (2013), the definition of von
Schomberg (2012) and the EU ‘grand challenges’ introduce a number of characteristics of RRI
that can be categorized as outcome and process requirements of RRI.
The outcomes can be separated into learning outcomes (engaged publics, responsible actors
and responsible institutions), research & innovation outcomes (ethically acceptable research
and innovation, sustainable research and innovation and societally desirable research and
innovation) and societal outcomes (solutions to grand challenges). The latter two categories
have been based on the three impacts discussed by Von Schomberg (2011). The first category
is based on a variety of literature in the field of RRI. Also here, we purposely chose to create a
longer list of outcomes to support discussion within the project.
As far as process requirements for RRI are concerned, we agree that RRI should at least have
the four integrated dimensions as described by Stilgoe et al. (2013): anticipation (envisioning
the future and understanding how present dynamics of promising shape the future), reflexivity
(which occurs as first-, second- and third-order learning), inclusion (the involvement of a wide
range of stakeholders, such as users, NGOs, etc. in the early development of science and
technology) and mutual responsiveness (responding to emerging knowledge, perspectives,
views and norms). In addition, we suggest adding another three process requirements in our
conceptualization of RRI: diversity, meaningful openness (instead of previously proposed
transparency) and adaptive change. Stilgoe et al. (2013) name these requirements in their
article but place them under one of their main four dimensions. We suggest keeping them as
separate requirements (for now) 3. Diversity has been argued is a key criterion for the
evaluation of interactive policy-making processes. Transparency is an often-mentioned
criterion for policy-making processes involving multiple stakeholders. We propose to rephrase
transparency as ‘meaningful openness’, since insight into process structure, agenda-setting
and outcomes also needs to make sense in the context of the content and the process at hand.
Adaptive change describes how an RRI process, must not only allow for learning on content
and procedures, but must leave room for actors and organizations to adapt in accordance with
such learning.
3
In addition to the literature, discussion in a March 2014 expert workshop between WP1 and WP2 member and the
brochure for the RESPONSIBILITY project has served as inspiration for separately focusing on these three additional
aspects.
Finally, we then present the six key dimensions - or policy agendas as we renamed them which have been defined by the European Commission: ethics, governance, public
engagement, science education, gender and open access. In our view, it is necessary to identify
the RRI potential per policy agenda in order to be able to search for RRI best practices.
Our working definition, by the character of RRI, remains open to further inquiry and
deliberation. After the April workshop, we aim to have refined and improved our RRI working
definition together with the partners of the RRI Tools project and the members of the Advisory
Board.