Abstract
The UK Industrial Biotechnology (IB) Strategy presents a consistent plan to develop the IB sector but fails to endorse an innovation process that allows for input from multiple publics. This could be disadvantageous for the bioeconomy: there are notable cases where negligence to address societal dimensions has caused innovation failure.
Highlights
We ask: In what ways, and to what extent, does the report address the societal, ethical, and environmental implications of industrial biotech innovations? And does it engage with ideas of RRI and associated practices of stakeholder engagement and systematic anticipation of downstream consequences? (Box 2)
A key feature of the UK National Industrial Biotechnology (IB) Strategy is that RRI is mentioned, albeit minimally
The location of the term is at the end of the document, in a sentence that states: ‘Public commitment by academia and industry to the principles of RRI in conjunction with development of public awareness of IB will help to foster positive social attitudes [.] and drive the market pull for responsibly developed IB products.’ (p. 52) [2]
Summary
The UK Industrial Biotechnology (IB) Strategy presents a consistent plan to develop the IB sector but fails to endorse an innovation process that allows for input from multiple publics. The National IB Strategy has set out a comprehensive plan to develop the IB sector, it lacks a consistent commitment to RRI and does not provide a plan for integrating relevant principles into actual research, innovation, and commercialisation practices RRI RRI is an action-oriented policy concept that aims to connect research and innovation with the values, needs, and expectations of society It seeks to anticipate the environmental, societal, and economic consequences of new inventions and technology applications, and encourages broad, early-stage public engagement and continuous collaboration between societal actors during the whole of the research and innovation process [7,8]. Reliance on claims of improved sustainability alone is not enough
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