Challenge-driven innovation and responsible innovation: dynamics and disconnects explored through the UK’s industrial biotechnology sector

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen the uptake of challenge and mission-oriented innovation policies in Europe, including the UK. These developments have been paralleled by variable support for responsible research and innovation (RRI) policies. This article explores the adoption of challenge-driven innovation strategies in the UK's industrial biotech (IB) sector alongside RRI expectations, examining the effects and implications. Drawing on analysis of IB policy documents and interview data, we argue that the articulation of innovation aims in terms of grand challenges provides innovation stakeholders with new possibilities to re-frame the value and purposes of controversial technologies such as synthetic biology, and to downplay or ignore the anticipation of potential impacts and risks. The conflation of innovation objectives and grand societal challenges has afforded new opportunities to construct representations of societal consensus and alignment, while avoiding the participatory practices on which shared understandings and nuanced exploration of societal expectations would normally be based.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry innovation
• Industrial biotechnology
• Synthetic biology
• Challenge-driven innovation
• Responsible innovation
• Anticipation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous referees and editors of this journal for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://ktn-uk.org/programme/industrial-biotechnology-leadership-forum

2 Under the terms of the initial Brexit agreement, UK participation in H-EI is open but with successful applications being funded by iUK, a UK-based funding agency.

Additional information

Funding

This work is a research output from a grant provided by Innovate UK [grant number 103564]. The time spent by the first author on the revision of this article has in part been financed by funding from the European Union [grant number 945539].

Notes on contributors

Achim Rosemann

Achim Rosemann is a Teaching Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Cambridge. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology of the University of Exeter, and an Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility of De Montfort University. His research explores the intersection between technology innovation, governance, and social change in diverse global contexts, and has been funded by UKRI, the Wellcome Trust, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

Susan Molyneux-Hodgson

Susan Molyneux Hodgson is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. She works in the field of science, technology and innovation studies (STI). Her overarching interest is in the everyday worlds of scientific work and how knowledge is produced through practices. She has received funding from ESRC, NERC, EPSRC, BBSRC and InnovateUK. Research projects often include collaborations with scientists in academia and in industry.