FoTRRIS - Fostering a Transition towards Responsible Research and Innovation Systems

The main objective of FoTRRIS is to develop and introduce new governance practices to foster Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in research and innovation systems. FoTRRIS will, more specifically, focus on new governance practices to co‐design transdiciplinary RRI‐projects that are attuned to societal needs, values and opportunities and that connect and mobilise relevant stakeholders.

Client

European Commission: Horizon 2020, Framework Programme for research and innovation 

Contact
Duration

2015-2018

Partner
  • Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium (coordination)
  • European Centre of Studies and Initiatives (CESIE), Italy
  • European Regions Research and Innovation Network (ERRIN), Belgium
  • European innovation-driven business consultancy (LGI), France
  • Environmental Social Science Research Group (ESSRG), Hungary
  • Universität Complutense Madrid (UCM), Spain

The main objective of FoTRRIS is to develop and introduce new governance practices to foster Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in research and innovation systems. FoTRRIS will, more specifically, focus on new governance practices to co‐design transdiciplinary RRI‐projects that are attuned to societal needs, values and opportunities and that connect and mobilise relevant stakeholders.

In order to stress that responsible research and innovation is a collaborative activity from the very beginning—collaboration starts ‘upstream’, from the definition of the problem or challenge, continues with the analysis of the problem, the projection of potential solutions, the design of a research and innovation project that aims at realising a solution, and goes on during its performance and monitoring—FoTRRIS adds the prefix ‘co’ to the acronym RRI. Moreover, because important present‐day challenges are (at least partially) of a global nature, but manifest in ways that are influenced by local conditions, FoTRRIS focuses on ‘glocal’ challenges, i.e. local/regional manifestations of global challenges and on ‘local’ opportunities for solving them.

FoTRRIS will perform a transition experiment to support the transformation of present‐day research and innovation strategies into co‐RRI‐strategies. It will design, test and validate the organisation, operation and funding of a co‐RRI‐knowledge‐arena. This knowledge arena is conceived as a small organisational unit that will function as a local one‐stop innovation platform that encourages various knowledge actors from science, policy, industry and civil society to co‐design, ‐perform, and –monitor co‐RRI‐projects that are attuned to local manifestations of global sustainability challenges. The co‐design of co‐RRI‐projects, facilitated by the proposed knowledge arenas, will be tested and evaluated in 5 member states (Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy and Spain), and policy recommendations to implement co‐RRI will be provided.

 
Research Topic