Foresight and responsible innovation: Openness and closure in anticipatory heuristics

• Published in: Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies Vol. 134; p. 102852
• Main Authors: Urueña, Sergio, Rodríguez, Hannot, Ibarra, Andoni
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2021; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Anticipation; Epistemology; Foresight; Heuristic; Heuristics; Innovations; Monitoring; Responsibilities; Responsibility; Responsible innovation; Anticipation; Epistemology; Responsibility; Heuristics; Foresight; Responsible innovation
• ISSN: 0016-3287; 1873-6378
• DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2021.102852

•Foresight can provide valuable anticipatory heuristics for responsible innovation.•Foresight heuristics can acquire different “openness/closure” gradients.•The degree of “openness/closure” is progressively settled by foresight dynamics.•In order to act as an “instrument for” responsibilisation, foresight must be a “subject of” responsibility.•Responsibilising foresight requires monitoring its constitutive dynamics. The heuristic versatility of foresight is increasingly positioning this anticipatory instrument as a key resource to promote more responsible research and innovation practices. In a context where foresight’s multiple heuristic potential is sometimes wrapped up in a promissory rhetoric that could lead to its being taken for granted, this article underlines the need to understand the emergence of these heuristics as being dependent on how foresight’s dynamics unfold. By acknowledging the existence of more “open” or “closed” forms of foresight (which in turn can articulate more “open” or “closed” anticipations), the article argues that the degree of “openness/closure” of foresight activities is constituted during the ex-ante, ex-dure and ex-post processes, and according to the relations underlying their constructive dynamics. The main conclusion reached is that a pre-condition for foresight practices to become “instruments for” responsible innovation is to make them “subjects of” responsibility simultaneously. This involves monitoring the socio-epistemic relations whereby foresight practices are designed and executed, as well as monitoring how their emergent heuristics are translated into action.