Technical change is advancing at a breakneck speed while the
institutions that govern innovative activity slog forward trying to keep pace.
The lag has created a need for reform in the governance of innovation.
Reformers who focus primarily on the social benefits of innovation propose to
unmoor the innovative forces of the market. Conversely, those who deal mostly
with innovation’s social costs wish to constrain it by introducing regulations
in advance of technological developments. In this paper,Walter Valdivia and
David Guston argue for a different approach to reform the governance of
innovation that they call "Responsible Innovation" because it seeks
to imbue in the actors of the innovation system a more robust sense of
individual and collective responsibility.
Responsible innovation
appreciates the power of free markets in organizing innovation and realizing
social expectations but is self-conscious about the social costs that markets
do not internalize. At the same time, the actions it recommends do not seek to
slow down innovation because they do not constrain the set of options for
researchers and businesses, they expand it. Responsible innovation is not a
doctrine of regulation and much less an instantiation of the precautionary
principle. Innovation and society can evolve down several paths and the path
forward is to some extent open to collective choice. The aim of a responsible
governance of innovation is to make that choice more consonant with democratic
principles.
Valdivia and Guston
illustrate how responsible innovation can be implemented with three practical
initiatives:
1. Industry: Incorporating
values and motivations to innovation decisions that go beyond the profit motive
could help industry take on a long-view of those decisions and better manage
its own costs associated with liability and regulation, while reducing the
social cost of negative externalities. Consequently, responsible innovation
should be an integral part of corporate social responsibility, considering that
the latter has already become part of the language of business, from the
classroom to the board room, and that is effectively shaping, in some quarters,
corporate policies and decisions.
2. Universities and National
Laboratories: Centers for Responsible Innovation, fashioned after the
institutional reform of Internal Review Boards to protect human subjects in
research and the Offices of Technology Transfer created to commercialize
academic research, could organize existing responsible innovation efforts at
university and laboratory campuses. These Centers would formalize the
consideration of impacts of research proposals on legal and regulatory
frameworks, economic opportunity and inequality, sustainable development and
the environment, as well as ethical questions beyond the integrity of research
subjects.
3. Federal Government:
Federal policy should improve its protections and support of scientific
research while providing mechanisms of public accountability for research
funding agencies and their contractors. Demanding a return on investment for
every research grant is a misguided approach that devalues research and
undermines trust between Congress and the scientific community. At the same
time, scientific institutions and their advocates should improve public
engagement and demonstrate their willingness and ability to be responsive to
societal concerns and expectations about the public research agenda. Second, if
scientific research is a public good, by definition, markets are not effective
commercializing it. New mechanisms to develop practical applications from
federal research with little market appeal should be introduced to
counterbalance the emphasis the current technology transfer system places on
research ready for the market. Third, federal innovation policy needs to be
better coordinated with other federal policy, including tax, industrial, and
trade policy as well as regulatory regimes. It should also improve coordination
with initiatives at the local and state level to improve the outcomes of innovation
for each region, state, and metro area.
-Brookings
No comments:
Post a Comment