Responsible Innovation: Building Tomorrow’s Responsible Firms

Responsible business practices are widely recognized as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In this course we aim to extend these practices to the Research and Development (R&D) and innovation processes of companies. This is called Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI enables companies to anticipate social and ethical issues and integrate them into the innovation and design processes and business strategy right from the start. This course demonstrates how RRI, as a key element of CSR, can help firms to be innovative, more profitable and at the same time have positive societal and environmental impact. In this course we analyze the relevance of RRI, including drivers and barriers, for firms of different sizes and in different sectors, and the implications for corporate governance. We show the results and lessons learned from eight pilot studies in innovative businesses across Europe working in different areas (such as nanotechnology, data and automotive) when they integrated RRI in their innovation process and business strategy. You will learn how organizations can evaluate their current position within RRI, rethink their strategies and develop a plan to embed RRI within their CSR and corporate citizenship strategic policies. We will provide you with a toolkit and explain how to make the RRI approach feasible within your own organization taking into consideration stakeholder engagement, value sensitive design, sustainability, safety as well as current international standards. After the course you will be able to design a roadmap to embed RRI in the strategic policies of companies and assess which key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you measure the success of your CSR/RRI policies. Let’s work together to create the responsibly innovative and successful enterprises of tomorrow! This MOOC is financially supported by the EU (grant agreement No 710059) and is a joint effort of TU Delft, Warwick University (UK), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and Environment and the Italian Association for Industrial Research.