Paper long abstract:

The concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) aims to advance the technological innovation system as a whole by including and strengthening novel as well as already existing normative and procedural elements. Such an advanced innovation system should be able to deal better with the grand societal challenges of the 21st Century without neglecting possible negative side effects of emerging technologies. In this paper RRI itself is treated as an innovation. Drawing on STS concepts of institutional innovation and recent transition and diffusion of innovations approaches relevant conditions for the success of RRI will be discussed. Taking this perspective, RRI appears as a socially constructed approach eventually aiming at long-term fundamental reform of the dominant innovation regime that is heavily based on economics of techno-scientific promises. However, RRI still is in an early formative stage of development, characterised by conceptual variation, limited actor-networks and a small number of practical experiments. Based on the state-of-the-art of RRI the paper will explore pathways for the further development of this institutional innovation (invention). In particular, we will discuss upcoming challenges and structural requirements for learning and experimentation in the field of Technology Assessment, which is treated as one of the main pillars of RRI.