Governing beyond the project: Refocusing innovation governance in emerging science and technology funding

This article analyses how a recent idiom of innovation governance, 'responsible innovation', is enacted in practice, how this shapes innovation processes, and what aspects of innovation are left untouched. Within this idiom, funders typically focus on one point in an innovation system: researchers in projects. However, the more transformational aspirations of responsible innovation are circumscribed by this context. Adopting a mode of critique that assembles, this article considers some alternative approaches to governing the shared trajectories of science, technology, and society. Using the idea of institutional invention to focus innovation governance on four inflection points-agendas, calls, spaces, evaluation-would allow funding organizations and researchers to look 'beyond the project', developing new methods to unpack and reflect on assumed purposes of science, technology, and innovation, and to potentially reconfigure the institutions that condition scientific practice.

Automated summary

This article analyzes the implementation of "responsible innovation" in practice and its impact on innovation processes, as well as the aspects of innovation that have been overlooked. By using the concept of institutional invention, it suggests looking beyond individual projects and developing new methods to interpret and reflect on the purposes of science, technology, and innovation, potentially leading to the reconfiguration of institutions that shape scientific practice.