RAISING THE SAIL OF INNOVATION. Philosophical Explorations on Responsible Innovation

Summary

The reality of today’s global challenges has paved the way for Responsible Innovation (RI), which aims to steer innovation towards the ‘right’ direction. However, frameworks and policies of RI mainly focus on regulating innovation processes, while little thought is dedicated to what innovation itself means conceptually. To this end, the contribution of this dissertation is threefold. First, it exposes a commercial concept of innovation inherent in the RI discourse. Second, it accounts for what implications this commercial concept of innovation has for achieving the societal ideal of RI. Third, it articulates a shift towards a political concept of innovation which genuinely serves the public good beyond mainstream economic incentive.