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Short abstract:

The EC promoted the concept of RRI during Horizon 2020, paying special attention during the last years to its adoption at territorial level. This contribution aims to explore how RRI ideals and values are transferred and adopted from the ambitious and generic EU policy strategy to regional contexts.

Long abstract:

The European Commission (EC) deployed an ambitious strategy around the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) during the 8th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, also known as “Horizon 2020”. The promotion of RRI across the European Research Area, stressed a particular vision of research and innovation (R&I) aligned to societal expectations and needs. But this strategy was discontinued in the subsequent “Horizon Europe” and the idea of RRI seem to have disappeared from the policy strategy of the EC. This impetus for RRI in Horizon 2020 showed a particular interest in the later stages of the programme for the adoption of the RRI concept at territorial level, as the EC funded a significant number of projects around this topic, and in a variety of fields, during the last stages of Horizon 2020.

This contribution aims to explore how RRI ideals and values are transferred and adopted from the ambitious and generic EU policy strategy to particular regional contexts and particularities. For doing so, we analyze the findings from an EU funded project that aimed to operationalize the concept of RRI into four territories. We argue that the adoption and implementation of RRI demands from different process of contextualization, experimentation and operationalization that can go beyond project lifespans and cannot be captured through quantitative indicators. We explore how notions of responsibility around R&I also deal with directionality of innovation policies.