The establishment of responsible innovation requires four key institutional changes. First, innovation must be value-driven. Second, an ethics of co-responsibility among stakeholders must be implemented. Third, innovation should be made directional and manageable. Fourth, market failures need to be addressed to facilitate necessary transformative changes, especially with regard to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research project will take into account the evolution of Living Labs and various specialized Living Labs (e.g., urban labs, social labs, and responsible Living Labs) to assess to what extent they address these institutional requirements. On this basis, the concept of a new dedicated Living Lab: a Responsible Research and Innovation Lab for Engineering Practices will be introduced. Subsequently this dedicated Living Lab will be operationalised on a theme from the engineering sciences. We will consider innovations stemming from digital tech for Health issues, additive manufacturing or other engineering pratices. We will deploy participatory foresight, to enable a form of anticipatory governance of emerging new innovations.

This dedicated ling lab is contextualised in a broader context of a deliberative democracy: Living Labs can be seen as spaces for Organisational Learning and Collective Experimentation:Living Labs: ‘real-life test and experimentation environments that foster co-creation and open innovation among the main actors of the Quadruple Helix Model, namely: Citizens, Governmental Organisations, Industrial organisations and Academia’ (ENoLL 2024)It operationalises an important feature of Responsible Research and Innovation: Making stakeholders co-responsible and mutually responsive to each other by engaging them in an open co-creation/ co-enquiry process. (among other on the basis of participatory foresight of emerging technologies and innovations)The idea of 'openess' and 'mutual reponsiveness' as values of actors and institutions will also be subject of analysis.Science and innovation can be better fostered in an open, democratic society than in other types of societies. The norm of civic participation in a ‘democracy’ is a lived ideal for citizens, just as the norm of ‘communalism’ is a lived ideal for the scientific community. Both norms presuppose the values of ‘openness’ and 'mutual responsiveness' among scientist and citizens.This highlights ‘openness’ not as a prescriptive norm but as a value of the institution of science. Simultaneously, ‘openness’ is also an institutional value of a democracy. However, science and democracy are dependent on the extent to which scientist and citizens engage on the basis of these norms. How can we best encourage and incentivise those?

As a result of the recent pandemic, global value chains have completely transformed. This has raised concerns over the ensuing social, economic and environmental trends and related impact on the way supply chains are organised. In this context, the EU-funded ReSChape project will analyse social, economic and environmental changes and disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluate their impact on supply chains. New supply chain models will be proposed, aiming towards a more streamlined supply chain process to assure humans (workers, consumers and in general citizens) to be at the center of the business also thanks to new digital technologies. It will be studied how to assure a positive social impact and innovative policy scenarios will be developed with recommendations to support the future supply chains.

The aims of this proposal are:
• To analyse social, economic and environmental changes and disruptions (including covid) and evaluate their impact on SCs, identifying related challenges in terms of relationship between countries, configuration of the network, impact on employment.

• To study and propose a set of SC models for the evolution of global SC integrating strategies like resource efficient, closed-loop and humanitarian as a way to increase EU resilience and sustainability. Particular attention will be given to the role of digitalization as a way to establish new paths for social inclusion taking into consideration the needs of urban and rural areas. Some important European sectors like fashion, automotive, medical and machine tools will be analysed with case studies and survey.

• To develop Innovative tools for monitoring and assessing sectoral trade patterns and defining mechanisms to evaluate relationship of disruptions like pandemic and global value chains taking into consideration impact on employment, economic growth, incomes etc also in the long term. Moreover, it will be analysed the impact of different trade patterns, on the EU value added of sectoral and countries with a specific focus on analyzing income inequalities and proposition of decent work and social cohesion. Particular attention will be gives to gender issues and social disparities.

• To develop innovative policy scenarios with recommendations for future global value chains: policy scenarios will be based on Key horizontal issues impacting on several sectors and will provide recommendations for EU, national and sectoral strategies, policy measures and targeted actions aimed at shaping fair, inclusive and sustainable trade patterns, value and supply chains as well as production networks.