From a land ‘down under’: the potential role of responsible innovation as practice during the bottom-up development of mission arenas in Australia

Abstract

This perspective paper integrates theories of responsible innovation (RI) with the nascent development of the concept of mission-oriented innovation to address wicked socio-institutional challenges. Theoretically, steering a Mission-oriented Innovation System (MIS) and associated ‘mission arena' toward activities that create virtuous cycles of RI practice will lead to cumulative impacts on the evolution of innovation system cultures. We explore this claim using nascent future-oriented ‘missions' developing within the competitive industry setting of Australian agri-food research and development ventures and aligned training exercises (short courses) in RI practice. This example highlights attempts to stimulate the practice of RI from the bottom up through the Australian (national) innovation system, as agri-food ‘missions’ come to be. Such reporting provides a conceptual grounding to foster a cycle (see graphical abstract) of relevance for comparison to other ex-ante MIS as mission-orientation is popularized as a potential solution to intractable and urgent problems throughout the developed world. A mission-oriented innovation cycle where clockwise from left: 1) people and organizations with ‘responsible innovation’ potential contribute as actors to an innovation system (technological, sectoral, regional, national or mission-oriented) that works to… 2) determine and prioritize a ‘challenge’ (‘grand societal’ or more mundane) then. 3) develops a ‘mission/s’ to overcome the ‘challenge’ leading to… 4) results of mission-oriented activities (that are either successful or not given the mission aims) over a given timeframe, circling back to… 5) the cumulative learning and development of language, discourse and practice (or not) of people, organizations, and innovation systems because of the mission-oriented innovation investment.