There are several words that are often associated with innovation.  It’s not uncommon to hear people tout innovation as disruptive, user-led or sustaining, but it is far less common to hear responsible. Responsible innovation (RI) is a concept that is gaining more attention. It emphasises recognising the ethical and societal implications of innovation. Alongside understanding if you can do something, RI encourages considering if you should.

Unsurprisingly, RI concepts share some commonalities with systems thinking and sustainability.   

Ethical and Social Considerations

Responsible innovation highlights the importance of integrating ethical and social considerations into the innovation process. This includes addressing issues such as sustainability, equity, privacy, and human rights (hopefully these sound familiar to the ESG people out there) and ensuring that innovations align with societal values and priorities.

Anticipating Potential Impacts

To be think about whether your innovation is ethical it’s important to understand what the potential risks and consequences might be. This aligns with the systems thinking concept of unintended consequences. To understand what might happen you need to take a zoomed-out approach to the innovation. Instead of just looking at your specific objective and how the innovation will impact that, it’s important to see how this works as part of larger systems and understand how this innovation could change them.

Inclusive and Collaborative Approach

Innovation is all about understanding. The best way to do that is through conversation and collaboration. While usually this focus is in regard to user/consumer insights, RI advocates for this to better understand your impact. As with the process of sustainability reporting, engaging with stakeholders, be they community, industry representatives, researchers or policymakers, will give insight into what impacts you might be responsible for. It also opens up the perspective beyond your business, potentially unlocking more insights for innovation and reducing confirmation bias.

Education

Just as stakeholder engagement and systems thinking gets a business out of their silo, so too does education. By ensuring you and your team are continuously developing, you will enhance their knowledge, expose them to new thinking and reinforce innovative thinking and stakeholder engagement. Encouraging a culture of knowledge and responsibility, where the team shares and discusses new information will keep them informed and accountable and drive.

Good Governance

To achieve the aforementioned culture of responsibility, it has to come from the top down. Leaders need to embrace focus on impact, stakeholder engagement and education.This will prompt the development of guidelines and best practices. Governance mechanisms that monitor and respond to the changing impacts and implications of innovations promote accountability and responsible innovation.

By embracing responsible innovation principles, businesses can innovate beyond a specific need and contribute to societal well-being, address pressing challenges, and align with ethical and sustainable development goals.

Need to explore what Responsible Innovation looks like for your organisation? We can help you identify areas of opportunity and facilitate workshops with your team to get the best and most responsible ideas on the table. Give us a shout.

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