Transdisciplinary collaboration for responsible innovation

The primary research question that Steven aims to address is: how can scientists and engineers functionally collaborate with and learn from other actors, while simultaneously embracing responsible innovation principles? His research has two starting points:

Inclusiveness for responsible innovation as a normative starting point

Responsible innovation is not an easy concept to implement in science and engineering practice. From a wider European policy perspective, responsible innovation asks researchers to (1) anticipate the possible outcomes of their research, (2) include the viewpoints of a wide range of academic and non-academic stakeholders, (3) reflect on the socio-ethical and socio-economic context in which they work, and (4) actively take insights based on these three actions into consideration in their current and future innovation activities. Steven aims to study how decisions in innovation development can be broadened to include also considerations from other fields of expertise, including societal, policy-relevant, economic and environmental aspects.

Transdisciplinary collaboration and learning as an object of study

As a social scientist he is working closely with natural scientists, designers and engineers in both industry and academia, to study how decisions are made in collaborations and how these can be inspired to include also viewpoints from other fields. In other words: how transdisciplinary collaboration and learning takes shape. The starting point for this, is a firm belief in the idea that including wider experience and expertise, also from outside the natural scientific and academic field, can positively contribute to innovation development. However, this possible positive is not taken for granted, but another object of study.

• Transdisciplinary collaboration
• Responsible Innovation