The ambitious goal of this call is that of initiating an exploration of possible ways of reflecting on the concepts of responsibility and innovation, without losing sight of the social, political and economic contexts that grant a concrete and pragmatic scope to the mission of the Bassetti Foundation. When we mention the responsibility of innovation, we do not mean it only in a technocratic sense, but in a political sense, since “innovators make history, and those who make history always make politics” (Piero Bassetti). The problem is rather to determine “how and how consciously innovators take upon themselves the consequences that innovation brings about in history” (idem).

The following questions have been devised as a guideline to invite all interlocutors and readers of this web site to help us reflect on the issue of responsibility in innovation. This call for comments also wishes to serve a pragmatic purpose, calling on all readers to make us aware of other web sites, research centres, institutions, agencies and think tanks that are reflecting in similar or related ways on the double issue of innovation and responsibility together.

One of the most fundamental turning points in the evolution of the Foundation’s philosophy today, regarding the issue of responsibility of innovation, is the realisation that the notion of “expert” has been gradually deconstructed. This is not only the result of the fact that globalization makes us all “technological actors”. It is also a theoretical and practical issue that deals with the problematisation of the very idea of “responsible innovation” across the realms of science, politics and communication.

In order to investigate concrete ways of locating innovation within the relationship between knowledge and power, the Bassetti Foundation has recently sponsored an experiment of participatory democracy (see the project “Public Participation and the Governance of Innovation”). Following such an experiment, and following further reflections on concepts such as that of “audit cultures” and of “communities of practice” in this web space (see the interview to Grasseni and Ronzon), the Foundation has come to the following question: “have we stopped thinking in terms of responsibility, and are we bound to adopt instead a philosophy of governance of innovation?” In other words, we are asking if it is possible to understand the responsibility of innovation in terms of a self-organizing complex system, instead of trying to plan and govern innovation. This also means renouncing to evaluate the responsibility of innovation in terms of individual will.

This latter perspective is not free from both theoretical and practical problems, especially because, in the “risk society”, it tends to become something of a common sense perspective that lifts both individuals and institutions from any responsibility, preventing any kind of critical analysis.

Posing the problem of the responsibility of innovation means taking a lay stand in the face of the problems of fate and of risk, and maintaining as a given the idea of the autonomy of the person. But in the new scenarios of potentially more and more irresponsible global innovation, where can we locate critical analysis? Quoting Piero Bassetti’s lecture again, “Should we appeal to ethics? Whose ethics? If the subject of an innovation is not an individual, a person, but a techno-structure which holds no responsibility to anyone, who will be responsible? … Who will be responsible for the unsustainable innovations made possible by refusing the Kyoto treatise? And finally, “who, which power, is legitimated to determine the goals that innovation is called to pursue?”

A new challenge emerges, between a purely functional concept of responsibility, which supersedes the idea of moral value in order to substitute it with the force of an efficient procedure (but this can cause a number of problems and dangers, as explained for instance in Audit Cultures ), and a new, deeper concept of responsibility which still has to be defined. In other words, is it really “probable that procedures apt to incentive a sense of responsibility in the innovators can increase the quality and the political acceptability of innovations”? Or is it, after all, still in the wider realm of politics that one should establish the direction of innovation and the common responsibility for it?

The following questions are aimed at making the many doubts and issues about the idea of responsibility in innovation explicit, under the different aspects of its communication , of its political implementation and of its observability. Finally, we pose the problem of defining subjects and scenarios for responsibility, and of defining what a governance of innovation may consist of.

– Are you aware of agencies or research centres that work towards increasing awareness about responsibility in innovation? What are their cultural policies? What do you think should be the cultural policy of such an agency?
– How do you think one can evoke and promote the concept of responsibility of innovation in the public opinion (as well as amongst operators)?

– How can one observe innovation in such a way as to foresee its effects and to act in a responsible way?
– With which tools can one measure the presence of responsibility in innovation? In other words, is it only possible to establish it ex post facto, on the basis of a historical review of the facts? or can we devise criteria and tools that help anticipating possible scenarios for responsibility in innovation, and evaluate its impact?
– How can one measure and/or implement an innovator’s responsibility?

– To what degree is an innovator responsible as a subject of action (and of innovative action)? To what degree do the consequences of her innovations depend instead from complex interactions with political, cultural, economic, historical scenarios? Shall we say that, since these transcend her will, they also supersede her responsibility?
– To what degree is responsibility in innovation defined from context, and in particular by the various actors that interact in it? Are you aware of examples of plans to keep the various stakeholders involved in possible scenarios for responsible innovation?

– By which criteria would you define “sustainable” innovation? Is it possible to talk about responsibility without expressing a judgement of sustainability?
– Can we say that the idea and the practice of a governance of innovation is superseding the idea and practice of the innovator’s responsibility? (By governance we mean, not “governing” or “steering” but a self-governing phenomenon, akin to an orchestra without a conductor).
– To which degree is this already true of innovation? Can you quote examples?