With the rise of responsible innovation initiatives in firms that commercialize innovation in recent years, experts have argued that in order for RI to succeed, practical issues must be considered. Accordingly, this paper explores RI from the perspective of Korean emerging technology development firms. Although social benefits are expected from RI, which aims to reduce the side effects of innovations for society, the implementation of RI requires changing firms’ existing rules and routines. Therefore, predicting benefits and costs from the firm’s (...) perspective can shed light on the likelihood that RI will succeed. In this study, through an expert survey, the relative weights of RI-related benefit criteria and cost criteria were analyzed. On this basis, trends in priorities for RI levels were evaluated from present and future perspectives. Unexpectedly, firms recognized that even if constraints such as RI impose greater costs, they will eventually bring greater benefits. This finding indicates that innovation induced by RI overcomes obstacles, offsets costs, and then finally increases firms’ competitiveness, and that firms are willing to do good for society through RI. In the long term, a firm’s ethical activities may eventually result in improved performance by its management. Therefore, it can be concluded that, even if RI is enforced in a compulsory manner, it is highly likely that it can be well established and promoted even in firms that consider profit first. (shrink)

This master thesis studies to what degree Responsible Research & Innovation can be applied to the concept of the Digital Self. In order to examine this properly, it focuses on aspects of privacy, ownership and democracy. This work is inspired by the digital health domain, where a growing number of patients become enabled to benefit from AI-powered clinical decision sup port. Aim of this study is to provide insight into what cases can be considered for exploring new design requirements for (...) digital health applications. Increasingly, we use technology to manage our daily digital selves. Our smartphones, being examples of extensions of ourselves, are able to empower us as citizens within a democracy. The decision-making process belongs more and more to the realm of artificial intelligence, powering our extended selves with algorithms. Although the era of the DS has already begun, it remains unnoticed by the paradigm of RRI. Instead of empowering informational self-determination, RRI tends to be overprotective of an outdated concept of what it is like to act as a human within a democracy which is obviously reshaped by digitization. In order to maintain our general understanding of a democracy, there is a need for a concept of the DS in the near future. Not only will the DS-concept have the capacity to empower a democratic citizen, it will also be able to empower patients within a digital health environment. Due to the data hunger of large technology companies and governments, it has already become clear that the rise of digitization comes with a price for our society and our health. Therefore, it is the DS concept that can make a difference in contributing to ethical and social standards. If the future of digital health offers us – additional to human medical stakeholders – AI-powered digital health apps to increase the quality of healthcare, we have the duty to take our values into account when designing such apps. (shrink)

The growth of responsible innovation scholarship has been mirrored by a proliferation of RI definitions and practices, as well as a recognition of the importance of context for RI. This study investigates how researchers in the field of nanotechnology for food and agriculture define and practice RI, as well as what motivations they see for pursuing RI. We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with nano-agrifood researchers from industry and academia in the USA, where we asked them to describe their RI definitions, (...) practices, and motivations. We analyzed the emergent themes from these interviews, including how the themes aligned with four prominent RI principles. We found that nano-agrifood researchers largely focused their descriptions of RI definitions, practices, and motivations around a narrow envisioning of the RI principle of anticipation — emphasizing product safety, efficacy, and efficiency. We also found noteworthy tensions surrounding the less frequently mentioned RI principles. For example, some researchers envisioned inclusion as a way to align products with industry interests while others saw it as a way to align products with the public good. Concerning motivations for RI, some researchers viewed RI as a way to protect one’s reputation and avoid lawsuits while others viewed it as a way to improve human well-being and solve societal problems. Given these findings, future efforts to foster RI within nano-agrifoods should promote discussions among researchers concerning what it means to responsibly innovate and what practices this could entail, particularly beyond ensuring product safety, efficacy, and efficiency. (shrink)