Experimenting with co-design in STI policy making

Alessandro Deserti,Francesca Rizzo,Melanie Smallman

doi:10.1080/25741292.2020.1764692

Alessandro Deserti, Francesca Rizzo + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2020.1764692

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Abstract

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has emerged in recent years, in Europe and across the world, as a model of scientific and technological advancement that is the result of the cooperation of actors that traditionally worked in an autonomous way. Advanced perspectives on RRI suggest how knowledge and solutions should be co-produced by diverse actors working in synergy, including civil society and citizens. This article introduces the notion of co-creation as a framework to operationalize RRI. The article discusses insights coming from ten labs across Europe, where experiments in co-design processes and tools are designing and testing solutions to societal challenges under diverse science, technology and innovation (STI) policies. Furthermore, it compares empirical insights with the debate on experimentation of co-creation practices in STI policy making and on the potentialities and limitations of design for policy. Moreover, the article discusses the restricted focus of RRI, which has primarily concentrated on scientific and technological research and science-based innovation, highlighting the need to include other forms of innovation (like social and human centered innovation) and perspectives to sustain the concrete uptake of RRI in diverse contexts.

Highlights

Co-creation in Research and Innovation (RRI) and STI policy makingIn the late 20th Century, public policy controversies on issues from nuclear power and vaccination to urban development and climate change, shone the spotlight on the insufficiency of traditional models of policy making to take account of the uncertainty, contingency and complexity that are increasingly features of modern life
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has emerged in recent years, in Europe and across the world, as a model of scientific and technological advancement that is the result of the cooperation of actors that traditionally worked in an autonomous way
Filling the accountability gap between what citizens and concerned groups of people need or demand, and what the governments do has become one of the main challenges concerning policy making in our contemporary societies (Dalton 2008). Both scholars and policy makers have emphasized how engaging with stakeholders and citizens in co-creation for policy making, allowing citizens to assume a legitimate pro-active public role as collaborators and creators, not mere passive policy targets (Benington 2010), can produce policies to be defined that are more consistent, sustainable and appropriate to the specific situated context in which a policy measure will be implemented (Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015). As part of this move to “open up” decision making to wider citizen perspectives – in science and innovation – the term RRI emerged from the European Commission (2014) with the specific aim of enabling societal actors to work together during the research and innovation process, in order to better align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society and to engage citizens and end users in the co-creation of the solutions they wish and need

Summary

Co-creation in RRI and STI policy making

In the late 20th Century, public policy controversies on issues from nuclear power and vaccination to urban development and climate change, shone the spotlight on the insufficiency of traditional models of policy making to take account of the uncertainty, contingency and complexity that are increasingly features of modern life. Filling the accountability gap between what citizens and concerned groups of people need or demand, and what the governments do has become one of the main challenges concerning policy making in our contemporary societies (Dalton 2008) Both scholars and policy makers have emphasized how engaging with stakeholders and citizens in co-creation for policy making, allowing citizens to assume a legitimate pro-active public role as collaborators and creators, not mere passive policy targets (Benington 2010), can produce policies to be defined that are more consistent, sustainable and appropriate to the specific situated context in which a policy measure will be implemented (Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015). By applying codesign processes to develop local RRI projects, the experimentation introduces a context based and bottom up approach to problem framing; opens up the development of solutions to citizens as active experts; engages policy makers as co-producers of the solutions and support them to directly experiment with co-creation

Policies as objects of design

Ongoing experimentation

Monitoring and assessment methodology

Findings and lessons learnt

The reality of “policy cycles”

Conclusions and future work