RRI Tools is a flagship project funded by the European Commission (EC) under the 7th Framework Program. RRI Tools was set up to foster the development of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) across Europe by means of an ambitious training, advocacy, and dissemination programme. It´s wide European coverage was possible due to the exceptionally large multidisciplinary consortium of RRI Tools, consisting of 26 partner institutions active in 30 countries from all over Europe and led by "la Caixa" Foundation.

The main outcome of the project was the development of an interactive digital platform - the RRI Toolkit - gathering a wealth of resources to help stakeholders across Europe in developing their understanding of, and capacity to put RRI into practice. Designed as an interactive, participatory Toolkit, it is open to the community, so that every actor can showcase their own practices and resources and get inspired by those of others. 

The project officially ended in December 2016, and since then, the project´s coordinator - “la Caixa” Foundation - has brought its commitment to keep the RRI Toolkit updated and running and it´s dissemination channels active beyond expected. 

The RRI Toolkit has become a popular resource for the R&I community in Europe, and beyond. The platform has a loyal community of users that continuously visits and uses it as a proficient and trustworthy repository. In social media, being one of the most followed projects in its field, the RRI Tools channels have brought together a considerable number of followers and community of action. Along these years we improved and expanded contents of the platform. Many new resources have been uploaded into the resource repository and many fruitful collaborations with different EU projects and other international initiatives have taken place.

Now with the arrival of the 9th Framework Programme – Horizon Europe (2021-2027), RRI Tools is entering into a new phase.

Based on more than three years of experience the EU funded project LIVING INNOVATION presents major outcomes in 9 showcase videos. 

Many of them will be the starting point of future exchange and networking, as the project will continue to organize online dialogues and virtual innovation corners (for upcoming events please visit our news section)

This video presents a new and business-oriented narrative on Responsible Innovation based on three elements: 

• Managing Impacts of innovation means to innovate with positive impact and accept responsibility beyond markets. It increases a company’s value and reduces the risks of sunken costs and societal follow up costs.
• Co-creating Innovation refers to a company’s responsibility to put societal needs in the center of innovation processes and to innovate in a truly inclusive manner. It contributes to more and better fitting ideas and tackles grand societal challenges.
• A systemic perspective is a company’s responsibility for future-oriented solutions and drives innovation by understanding interrelationships. It allows individual companies to become an industry game-changer and increases societal resilience and sustainability at the same time.

These three elements link the societal benefits of RRI with concrete business cases and highlight the deriving opportunities for companies. More details can be found in the LIV_IN Policy Brief “A New Narrative For Responsible Innovation”

As part of the LIVING INNOVATION project, we launched a series of webinars to share the diverse experiences, raise awareness of innovative teaching concepts and to encourage teachers to do more than just teach via Zoom and MS Teams. We discovered some truly innovative applications of virtual, augmented and extended reality which have great potential for the future.

In this video we present the advantages of extended reality (XR) in teaching and training and suggest a virtual one-stop shop that documents these benefits and acts as a reference platform for the various applications. It should take stock of already existing solutions, develop innovative applications from early prototypes to market-ready products, and support their dissemination. 

Thanks to this collaboration we reshaped and enriched those sections of the RRI Tools Platform specifically devoted to industry and business - the introductory landing page for industry and the how-to application guidelines - to make them more useful and attractive for this sector. 

Stakeholder landing pages were designed with the aim to provide a “soft” landing for newcomers, introducing the RRI concept to each stakeholder group. These introductory pages outline what RRI means in simple terms, addressing the main benefits, needs and concerns of each group in their own language. Each tailored page contains a selection of recommended resources and links to the How-to application guidelines. We adapted the landing page for business and industry to the new narrative on responsible innovation developed by LIV_IN. The new design outlines key ideas associated with the concept of responsible innovation and provides a schematic overview of the responsible innovation principles

The How-to application guidelines are meant to provide practical guidance on how to address common challenges faced by industry and corporates when trying to put responsible innovation into practice. Thanks to our collaboration with LIVIN, we were able to develop several new how-to guidelines [How to boost creativity and involve people | How to consider future impacts | The business case for Responsible Innovation | Inclusive innovation] based on work and learnings from the project and to enrich with additional contents some of the already existing ones.

(*) Post last updated the 27th of May 2021 - link to the recording of the webinar has been added

The LIVING INNOVATION project brings together 14 partners from all over Europe, including major industry leaders, civil society and research organizations to co-develop more responsible, inclusive and sustainable approaches to innovation in the areas of smart homes and smart health. The participation of "la Caixa" Foundation in the project guarantees the link and efficient transfer of learnings between LIV_IN and RRI Tools. 

LIV_IN has created a virtual community platform and launched different joint actions meant to serve as an interactive space for discussion, knowledge exchange and collaboration, open to experts and practitioners.

In this context Dialogik has launched an online working group on inclusive innovation and is organizing a series of workshops. The fisrt one was focused on co-creation with families. The second one will be taking place on May 25th and will be focused on co-creation with blind and visually impaired people.

Two cases will be presented, the experience by the Siemens Accessibility Competence Center conducting several co-creation workshops with blind and visually impaired people in the context of LIV_IN, and the "Sensory Assistive Technologies for Impaired Persons" project, an initiative by the IIT, which is part of the RRI Tools collection of inspiring practices

How to include blind & visually impaired people in innovation | webinar on May 25th 2021 (16:00 – 17:30 CEST)

(*) Recording of the webinar is now online - see here

Presenting two cases of involving blind and visually impaired people, you can explore how co-creation with experts and citizens works and learn why inclusive innovation is worth considering

(*) Post last updated on June 3rd 2021 - the detailed agenda of the event has been added

CONTEXT

Traditionally the innovation process has been driven by the industry, the public sector and/or research. However, increasingly, it is acknowledged that actors from the sector of civil society may bring valuable knowledge to innovation and it is becoming necessary to include these undervalued actors in order to let innovative solutions flourish.

Models like Open Innovation 2.0, Mode 3 or Quadruple Helix (QH) innovation provide theoretical frames for cross sector collaboration that incorporates civil society. The idea of these inclusive innovation models is the following: by bringing different voices together in new types of collaborations, blind spots are avoided because every actor has specific competences and focus points. Also, it is assumed that with an active co-creation process with civil society it is possible
to find more holistic and appropriate solutions.

The RiConfigure project has been dedicated to empirically investigate such actions and to make cross-sectoral collaborations thrive and overcome the challenges that the actors might face.

ABOUT THE EVENT

The RiConfigure final event is an open online event that serve a double purpose. On the one hand, it brings to the public the main results of the project in gaining a more realistic understanding of real-life Quadruple Helix Collaborations (QHCs).  On the other hand, the final event aims to create a space to discuss the roles QH may have in national and EU Research & Innovation landscapes and particularly for the Horizon Europe (HE) Programme.

All participants will be involved in co-creating an agenda on future research directions, policy improvements and actions to be taken to make QHCs progress from a normative concept to a well-established social practice in the context of the forthcoming HE framework.