A Method for Rapid Ethical Deliberation in Research and Innovation Projects

Introduction

There is a need for better ethical deliberation within the domain of research and innovation. In the past year, for example, we have seen haphazard efforts to develop mobile apps and data dashboards in countries around the globe to monitor and combat the spread of Covid-19, trying to balance various and often conflicting values, needs and interests; we have seen further misuse of social media to monitor and influence people’s behaviours in democratic processes; we have seen increased usage of surveillance and face recognition, sometimes with publics that seem to be largely unaware of the enormous impacts. In such a world, we do need ethical deliberation in research and innovation.

Fortunately, there are many and diverse methods available for ‘including, integrating or incorporating ethics’ in research and innovation projects (Reijers et al., 2018: 1438). Reijers et al. (2018) distinguish between three categories: 1) ex ante methods, which are used before projects start or in the early of research an innovation, 2) intra methods, which are used during research, design, development and implementation, and 3) ex post methods, which are typically used after projects have delivered results.

We (the authors) work at TNO, a Research and Technology Organization of some 2600 people with a mission ‘to create innovations that boost the sustainable competitive strength of industry and well-being of society’¹. TNO has a societal mission and is funded in part by the national government, in part by industry, and in part by international research funding. We view innovation as a process of bringing about positive change in society through the application of new ideas or technologies, and distinguish between four phases: 1) research, 2) design and development, 3) implementation and application, and 4) usage. TNO employees mostly work in the early phases (research, design and development), but some are also active in later phases (implementation, application and usage). Many projects of TNO are organized in a quadruple helix (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009) (i.e. they involve government, industry, knowledge and civil society organizations). Many projects of TNO deliver demonstrators or prototypes to other parties, which they can further develop and integrate in their systems, services or products. Therefore, TNO and its research and innovation efforts are often part of a larger innovation eco-system (Granstrand & Holgersson, 2020) since its outputs are inputs for other parties’ innovations.

We set ourselves the goal to develop and test a method that would support colleagues in improving their capabilities to integrate ethics in their projects, especially regarding their projects’ results and outcomes, and their impacts in society². We are therefore particularly interested in what Reijers et al. referred to as intra methods (2018: 1450-1452)³; methods that researchers and designers can use themselves and which can help them to steer their projects.

We believe that many researchers and designers would be willing and able to integrate ethics in their projects, but are currently lacking methods that are easy to use and that deliver practical results. From years of informal observation we get the impression that many people in research and innovation find the idea of ‘doing ethics’ challenging; they expect that ethics is time-consuming without it offering measurable impact. Additionally, they perceive ethics as fuzzy, complex or abstract. Moreover, they expect that integrating ethics in their projects will limit, hinder, or obstruct creativity and innovation.