Voice from the Beehive: structuring and recording responsible innovation for novel technologies

Societal trust in research and innovation is predicated on factors such as governance, safety, and responsible development. These are often thought of as regulatory matters, but regulation is not well-adapted to fast-moving technologies, nor to operate at the granular level of projects or small companies. Anticipatory governance, potentially in the form of responsible innovation (RI), can help to provide this adaptivity and granularity. However, RI remains new to many fields, and can be difficult to apply. This paper analyses the literature to identify both challenges for RI and lessons from other domain frameworks, synthesising this with empirical evidence from field studies to develop a Framework in response. It develops an approach that meets some of the identified challenges to create a tool that is straightforward to use and translatable across different domains. The resulting Beehive Framework is a scaffold with accompanying guidance for mapping and recording RI within projects of various scales and types. Its iterative process model approach to RI contains elements of project management methodology, and captures information gathered during the ‘opening up’, reflecting, and responding processes of RI. It records these processes for further iteration, and also comparison between projects. The Framework is made available here for wider testing and evaluation.