“Conscientious” innovation
[ C H R O N I C L E ]
The Brundtland report “Our Common Future”, published in 1987, helped to define and raise awareness of the concept of sustainable development as it is termed today; development that can reconcile economic and social progress with preservation of the environment. The spread of these precepts has led to a change in corporate practices to improve their impact on the planet, on the economy and on society as a whole. The 1980s saw research into curative measures for pollution caused by production processes; the 1990s heralded eco-design, a preventive approach. According to Afnor, this consists of integrating the environmental impact of a product or a service throughout its life cycle, via analyses such as “eco-balance”, “cradle-to-grave” or “life-cycle”. In the early 2000s, Nike developed its environmental apparel design tool in this spirit, designing to help creators make real-time design choices to reduce their products’ environmental impact.
The approach has indeed produced benefits. Materials used per unit manufactured and energy consumed during product use have dropped, polluting raw materials have been replaced and recycling is easier. Yet, while this policy widens the scope of responsibility and field of intervention in the product’s life cycle, it favours economic and ecological aspects, as proven by the eco-efficiency indicator, leaving the social dimension and the issue of the meaning of innovation in the shadows.
Designed to offer a framework for companies wishing to invest in sustainable development, the European Union’s green paper on the social responsibility of companies led in 2001 to institutionalisation of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Some would suggest that it has today become a banal utilitarian phenomenon, enabling car manufacturers for example to obtain CSR certification and create new 4x4 models. Others like Xavier Pavie, professor at Essec, regret the confusion in France between responsible innovation and social innovation - harmful, as it limits the issue of responsibility to a sort of innovation, which is indeed social. Xavier Pavie also deplores the fact that the issue of responsibility is seen as an objective in responsible innovation. Other than the fact that this means forgetting that innovation deemed responsible in itself can have a disastrous ecological footprint or be carried out in deplorable working conditions. It also means forgetting that there are, by nature, no responsible innovations. They have become so following a process whereby the ability to anticipate all risks was the primary concern. And is that not precisely where the problem lies?
When the 1978 winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, Herbert Simon, substituted in 1947 the concept of limited rationality for that of perfect rationality, CSR returned to the idea of the all-knowing actor able to anticipate everything. Failed technical culture is at the origin of this modern myth, as history abounds with examples showing how impossible it is to plan how an innovation will spread or be adopted. Who would have imagined the success of text messaging when, in France in 1997, 4 out of 5 people saw no interest in it - telephones were for speaking, not writing! The very idea of full anticipation removes any meaning from the term innovation; if everything can be known in advance, where is the innovation? Because responsibility starts by knowing one’s own limits, it seems more reasonable to adopt a humbler position; rather than produce “responsible innovations”, it leads to “conscientious innovation”, taking the term innovation to mean the dual viewpoint of both direction and meaning.
> AUTHOR
Joëlle Forest
Doctor in Production Economics
Joëlle Forest is a university lecturer at INSA Lyon, where she teaches innovation. She is scientific head of the Gaston Berger Institute’s “Ingenious Engineers Chair” program, funded by Saint-Gobain.
