Adaptive Governance for Responsible Innovation

Responsible Innovation and the Innovation of Responsibility: Governing Sustainable Development in a Globalized World

“…However, unforeseen developments, as well as the possible unintended consequences and long-term negative effects of innovations cannot always be determined or accurately estimated a priori (Lee and Petts, 2013). In addition, such frameworks are relatively inflexible as sanctions need to be tailored to predetermined offenses and thus cannot easily accommodate new offenses that may arise from unforeseen harmful consequences of innovations.…”

“…However, the governance of innovation involves particular challenges: first, due to the globalization of businesses operations, business innovations also become increasingly global in scope. The "propensity of products to have global reach […] poses one of the greatest regulatory difficulties," because the regulation of innovation is "strongly national in focus and sensibilities" (Lee and Petts, 2013). The regulatory difficulties arise because multinational organizations can relocate their value-creating activities to avoid legal constraints, which, in most cases are confined to national jurisdiction (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011).…”

“…These include, for instance, devising standardized procedures for the clinical testing of new medications or establishing ethics committees at universities. These mechanisms are complemented by regulations on the governmental or inter-governmental level (Lee and Petts, 2013). In Europe, for instance, there are 'general liability regimes' in place to ensure that innovations do not cause any harm, such as the General Product Safety Directive or the Product Liability Directive, which apply to all EU member states (EU, 2014a, b).…”

“…In other words, innovations can be beneficial as well as harmful both to people and the environment-nuclear fusion is a prominent example of this double effect. Another consideration is the uncertainty regarding the future uses of a new product or process (Grinbaum and Groves, 2013;Lee and Petts, 2013); that is, there is an information asymmetry between current knowledge and the possible, and usually unintended, negative consequences of innovation and technology in the long run-the originally unforeseen consequences of the pesticide DDT are a poignant example (Sykes and Macnaghten, 2013, p. 86).…”

“…Innovation governance, understood as the process of regulating the creation and implementation of innovation, tries to account for these risks of innovation and technology development (Deschamps, 2012;Lee and Petts, 2013). The dangers of innovation lie in the 'dual use' or 'double effect' of innovation (Grinbaum and Groves, 2013;Kaiser and Moreno, 2012;Stilgoe et al, 2013).…”