Turn Your Commitment into Daily Action | Professor Dr. Ibo van de Poel
In this episode of Future Up Close, we discuss with Professor Ibo van de Poel about “PRISMA”, an EU Horizon 2020 project designed to integrate responsible innovation into commercial businesses.
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Professor Dr. Ibo van de Poel is an Anthoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor in Ethics and Technology of the Department of Values, Technology and Innovation in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at TU Delft, the Netherlands. Ibo has published various research papers and is the editor of books covering engineering ethics, moral acceptability of technological risks, design for values, responsible innovation, moral responsibility in research networks, ethics of newly emerging technologies, and the idea of new technology as social experiment. For three years (2016- 2019), Ibo led a Horizon 2020 project called PRISMA where he worked with eight businesses to integrate responsible innovation into daily business innovation activities. He currently holds an ERC Advanced grant for "Design for Changing Values: A Theory Of Value Change in Sociotechnical Systems”.
Topics covered:
PRISMA project - purpose, preparation activities & key learnings
The biggest gap between responsible innovation theory and practice
Importance of building trust: why providing RI tools only is not enough for RI success
Responsible innovation: benefits for businesses (RI vs CSR, for example, Hub of All Things)
What would Ibo do differently with new business projects?
Four core capability pillars of a "responsible innovation-fied" company
Measuring and improving RI capabilities: Start-up vs large organisations
How to avoid adverse effects of responsible innovation KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Biggest challenges of applying RI for businesses & how to overcome these
Responsible Innovation VS Pledge1% (and other "$ Give Back" business models)
Key career learning from Ibo: the importance of understanding motivations
“...innovation is not just a technical process and therefore doesn’t just require technical knowledge but also insight into what is important in society. And, interestingly, this might also deliver you new products or services.”
PRIMSA Project: Start with Business Reality
PRISMA was a three-year European Union Horizon 2020 project, designed to drive responsible innovation in the business setting. The project involved running responsible innovation pilots with eight different companies across Europe including Italy, the UK and the Netherlands. Deliverables included “good practice” case studies, a toolkit, KPIs (key performance indicators) and a roadmap aimed at helping businesses practice responsible innovation in daily practice.
Key Learnings:
1. Start with business reality:
Ibo van de Poel suggests introducing responsible innovation as simply something like corporate social responsibility applied to the innovation process. Instead of heading into a project with a preconceived, one-size-fits-all idea of what “responsible innovation” should look like, a RI leader should build on what a company is already doing:
“…one thing that worked quite well is actually starting with what these companies were already doing and then adding elements to it. So, for example, some of these companies already do risk assessments or life cycle assessments - and some of these issues they are very similar to the issues you address in responsible innovation. But we found out in the case of life cycle, for example, what happened is that they first developed the product and then they did the life cycle analysis. At that stage you couldn't change the product anymore. So, one simple thing they could do better is doing this lifecycle analysis earlier on in the innovation process so that insights can actually feed into the innovation process. Similarly for risk assessment, you might want to look at financial risk but you might also want to look at the broader range of societal risks. So I think one of the main lessons for us was that, actually, we shouldn't have too much of an ideal idea of what responsible innovation should be for these companies but rather to discuss this with them and to start with what they're doing and to see how you can add, easily, responsible innovation elements to that”
2. Executive commitment is crucial:
Another key lesson for responsible innovation practitioners is the importance of securing an executive-level commitment from the company you are working with before a project begins. This is because driving responsible innovation requires the participation of the entire company and, therefore, leadership commitment and endorsement of RI are critical for increasing employee acceptance and collaboration on, for example, the identification of innovation issues and process improvement opportunities.
“…it was a nice learning process not only for us but also for the companies because they learned a lot of new things. And actually, they also found out that some things were much easier to do than they sought in terms of responsible innovation…”
3. RI tools alone are not enough:
Today, we are fortunate to have available hundreds of RRI tools for driving responsible innovation. However, Ibo says simply providing businesses with these tools only is not enough:
“You need this conversation from both sides. I need to understand what's going on in the company and they need to understand what is responsible innovation.
This suggests that in order to properly practice responsible innovation, some consultancy or at least some conversations between the RI leader and the innovator at the beginning of the process is needed. These conversations help build trust - central to both parties being able to properly understand each other, and the value they can co-develop together.
Responsible Innovation - Benefits?
Early innovation adopters of responsible innovation report a range of benefits including:
1. RI Strengthens Strategic Intent
Responsible innovation encourages companies to question their business purpose and align their innovation capabilities in support of that purpose. A bank may be encouraged to ask a higher-level question e.g. “what is the purpose of a bank/financial institution?” in addition to a more tactical question e.g. “should we introduce this product?”. This way, a company is not only considering commercial interests and risks but also putting social utility at the core of boosting innovation impact:
“I think responsible innovation really adds a dimension to strategic planning, namely looking broader, at the whole society. This actually is, the end, in the commercial interest of the company.”
2. RI Helps Discover “Unthought of” Innovations
Innovation is not just a technical process but a product that emerges when technology converges with society, creating new values, processes and opportunities. This means innovation doesn’t just require technical knowledge but also insight into what is important in society. The process of learning about society can, often, deliver businesses with new product and service ideas that were not envisioned.
“…one of the companies we worked with is called "HAT" it means "Hub of All Things". It is a small company, it started off from research and they came up with quite an innovative product based on values like privacy and data governance. They built an environment that allows internet service users share their own data…This is a very innovative product that has market potential but probably would have never come up if you hadn't thought of social values…So, responsible innovation is not just about making sure you will not get criticised but also creating new opportunities for companies…”
Living Labs, Lead Users and Regulatory-Free Zones
A living lab is an environment (can be part of society, private terrain, a section of a city) where one can pilot or test innovation in a “smaller scaled” environment. This environment should ideally resemble as closely as possible the “real environment” within which the new innovation will be deployed.
Living labs offer innovators a number of benefits:
1) For technologies that must deal with complex environments such as autonomous cars, living labs are great for testing how well they function in situ. Information can then be used by innovation teams to improve their products and services and reduce overall risk before further development or launch
2) For technologies that do not have many precedents, living labs provide the ideal environment for innovators to test their ideas or “proof” their concept. This is especially important for technologies that may require government or industry approval due to sensitive issues such as privacy and security e.g. drones
“…drone technology is a particularly good example because regulators didn't want to allow these drones in city centres for understandable reasons. But the company argued that the risk are actually not that big. They are doing a trial for example if a city is willing to allow it for a month to operate under certain conditions and also stop the trail if something with the experiment goes wrong. The company could then show “okay this works” or it could be that they found out “okay there is this unexpected issue now we need to address it” and that's of course responsible innovation. This also very much makes clear that responsive innovation is not so much about constraining technology. It is very much about allowing the technology to be developed, but in a responsible way. You have the same thing with autonomous cars. It's different in different countries but there are several countries that allow some form of experimentation. For technical reasons this is also necessary because otherwise you cannot improve them enough to make them work. So that's the idea of living labs and very much the idea of responsible innovation.”
3) Lead users - people who would like to use the innovation before target customers or the general public - can help discover not only potential unintended uses of your innovations but also provide attitudinal information (e.g. perception, emotions) about your product and services. The latter is particularly important for gauging the level of social acceptance of your innovation, which affects your overall launch programme and market success.
Technical universities are great places for hosting living labs due to their connection to companies, technologies and broader social functions. Delft TU where Ibo works, for example, has a regulatory-free zone called "The Green Village” - an area on campus where individuals can test technologies that can not be tested in public spaces in a responsible way. As of June 2021, various organisations in Australia are also running living labs including Swinburne University (Future Self Living Lab), Melbourne University (Fishermans Bend), Western Sydney University (sustainability-oriented), The University of Western Australia (social care and ageing oriented), Australia Living Labs Network & CSIRO (Urban Living Lab).
“Responsible innovation really translates this commitment to do good into something you’re doing on the ground.”
Responsible Innovation Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - A Learning Mechanism
Companies looking to introduce responsible innovation KPIs should keep in mind two considerations:
All KPIs risk encouraging strategic behaviour. For this reason, it is important for companies to really consider which responsible innovation KPIs are necessary
Responsible innovation means different things for different organisations. For example, a startup may score high on “responsiveness” but low on “anticipatory” while a larger organisation may score high on “anticipatory” but low on “responsiveness” due to differences in resources and size of operations. For this reason, KPIs should be used to learn and improve internal innovation processes over time, rather than a tool for comparison and self-promotion
“…if you use them as an accountability mechanism, you just show them to yourself or to the outside world as “well I’m doing so good!” - that is very much an incentive for employees to just score well on them even if your underlying process doesn't really represent responsible innovation…You are very much in danger of strategic behaviour. I would say, in general, think very deeply about which ones you want to have and to use them to improve yourself and to learn rather than simply as an accountability mechanism…”
Responsible Innovation VS Pledge1% and Other "Give Back" Business Models
Innovators and businesses leaders are increasingly looking for ways to "give back" to the community - such as dedicating a percentage of their profit to a social cause. Responsible innovation provides a structured and holistic approach to achieving positive impact:
“I think many of these programs are laudable. I think it is good to do something for the community and I think it's good that companies have this responsibility. But, to be honest with you, I’m also sometimes a bit sceptical about these programs in the sense that sometimes…you have this company who makes a lot of profit in a, say, irresponsible way and then at the end of the day gives back some of the revenues that they have gained in an irresponsible way to the community. And then I would say “okay, well, it's not bad that they give something back to the community but it's much more important that they start to do business and to innovate responsibly from the start…What you really should do is make responsibility part of your business proposition and your proposition to society…I think this is a much better way, a much more structural way, to do responsible business and responsible innovation than just first to make profit and then to give back to the community.”
Responsible Innovavtion: Tools & Roadmaps for Social Innovators
Responsible innovation provides purpose-lead innovators with the tools and frameworks to translate their commitment to "do good", into concrete strategic plans and daily actions.
“Responsible innovation is not only about intentions and the desire to do good but also having the knowledge and competence to do it in practice - and this might not be something that social enterprises necessarily are able to do.”
Similar to expertise in accounting, programming, design, governance or marking, responsible innovation is a field of practice where trained practitioners use a variety of tools to analyse and strategise ways to make your innovation processes more anticipatory, inclusive, reflexive and responsive. These innovation capacities are crucial for those aiming to generate innovations that are aligned with and can adapt to changing social demands and expectations.
For more information on Ibo’s current project: Design for Changing Values. For more information on PRISMA: PRISMA Interview with Ibo van de Poel Project and Responsible Research and Innovation in Industry: From pilots to a new standard. To watch this full interview: Turn Your Commitment into Daily Action.
