RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH AND INNOVATION ACROSS THE CHAIN OF VALUE: RESEARCHERS, CIVIL SOCIETY, INDUSTRY, EDUCATION AND POLICY MAKERS

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), introduced by the European Union, incorporates several concepts with a long historical development under the same umbrella: public engagement, gender equality, ethics, science education, open access and governance. RRI become a relevant issue when it was explicitly incorporated as a ‘cross-cutting issue’ in Horizon 2020 as inter- and transdisciplinary solutions that cut across the multiple specific objectives, thus focusing actions on thematic elements for all projects. The panorama was not very positive, as the analysis of the educational needs regarding to RRI (EnRRICH, HEIRRI, New Horrizon) found that RRI is addressed in HE programmes but not meaningfully, there is a potential for co-creating based on learning communities and the challenge is to link RRI learning activities to real world problems. However, there is no substantial attempt to develop continuous higher education programmes supporting the implementation RRI and the respective reorganisation processes in universities, research centres, research and innovation oriented enterprises and public authorities like cities or regional governments.

In the RRIL (Responsible Research and Innovation Learning) ERASMUS+ project, learning material are developed/under development by the partner universities (Finland, Poland and Spain). One of the key aspects is the public engagement as it goes beyond the comfort zone of researchers activity, involving other relevant stakeholders at local/regional/national level (non-profit organizations, cities, companies, trade-unions…), and include small players (neighbourhoods associations, social actors…). The project pretends to fulfil this gap through the co-creation of higher education modules between different research and innovation actors. The RRIL project focus its activity in three domains: economics, social sciences and energy management. The material will be tested in formal education (BSc, MSc, PhD and/or training of staff) and in non-academic environments (entrepreneurships in start-up incubators). The modules will focus in three of the dimensions of RRI: engagement, gender and ethics, were training is multidisciplinary and transversal.

Each RRI modules developed within the RRIL ERASMUS+ project will use a combination of face-to-face and blended learning methodologies, thus aiming at modularization of the training materials developed so they can be used in a more flexible and efficient way. The mayor part of learning on RRI is informal by nature and depends on the detailed environment of the institution. A key issue is the interchange of experience among stakeholders involved in RRI is the creation of Communities of Practice (CoP). A CoP is set-up among people with similar interest through collective activities interchanging their experience, which in consequence reinforced the professional identity of its members and enrich and fine-tune the day-to-day practice. Within the virtual learning, more open ways of cooperation can be introduced, like, for instance, the Working Out Loud-approach.

We advocate for a combination on transnational and local co-creation of training and learning modules on RRI, as innovation processes are global, but regional and local idiosyncrasy of the innovation systems and processes must be taken into account. The modules will be offered to research and innovation actors capacitating the learners to develop jointly innovative solution for societal problems.