This course will cover three thematic areas:

(1) Basics of Responsible Innovation: Innovations have a massive impact on competitiveness and fundamentally shape the way we live. Scholars have discussed different aspects of the responsibility of research and innovation since the 1970s framed by similar but substantially different concepts, such as sustainability-oriented innovation (Gallego‐Álvarez et al., 2011), responsible innovation (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013) and Responsible Research and Innovation (Von Schomberg and Hankins 2019). They have in common that they try to balance societal concerns and needs with business interests.

(2) How to apply Co-Creation and Design Thinking: Responsible and sustainable innovations must consider societal acceptability and desirability and therefore have to be addressed by participation of stakeholders and the wider public throughout the innovation process (Brand & Blok 2019). While in the business sector a broad variety of Open Innovation approaches are implemented (e.g. Lead User Innovation, UX Design), co-creation puts societal needs central in innovation processes, involves a broad range of people and designs innovation processes in a truly inclusive manner. However, tensions might arise when co-creating is abused for greenwashing, gaining legitimacy or exploiting participants without sharing profits (Ivanova et al., 2023).

(3) How to assess the societal impacts of AI: While individual corporations highlight the multiple benefits of AI deployments and publish a broad variety of success stories, critical voices raise concerns about potential negative effects and argue for a better regulation and governance of AI. AI impact assessments aim to boost AI’s potential to improve human activities while addressing the challenges and risks posed by this powerful technology. AI impact assessments use a wide range of tools and methods to analyse the diverse effects (e.g. Li & Chignell 2022; Shevlane et al. 2023).

After attending this course, students will be able to:

• explain the basics of responsible and sustainable innovation
• understand the tensions between societal and business interests
• apply selected tools and methods of co-creation and design thinking
• identify the key challenges of responsible and sustainable AI

deploy foresight and impact mapping as assessment methods

You have to attend at least 80% of the course blocks.

The course is organized in six modular sessions, with a high degree of interactive, participatory and experience based learning. The working language and all written materials will be in English.

In the first two block of this course, students will familiarize with theories, principles and ideas of responsible and sustainable innovation, gain insights into tensions between societal and business interests and experience responsible and sustainable innovation from different perspectives, e.g. by exercises, role-plays or staged policy debates.

In block three and four of this course, students will gain insights into a diversity of design-thinking and co-creation methods and apply them in different cases, e.g. by design sprints, hackatons, foresight exercises or responsible futuring.

In the fifth and sixth block of this course, students will develop a sound background knowledge on the application case of AI, familiarize with impact mapping (a method for identifying and analyzing direct and indirect impacts of a specific technology) and apply it in a diversity of real-world cases (such as AI in security, agriculture, energy, media or law).

Successful completion of this course requires attendance of at least 80% of the sessions and of all the assignments. Grade evaluation will be based on

1. active and qualified participation during the course blocks (30%)

2. three small assignments between the blocks (45%, i.e. 15% each assignment):

2a. a literature mind-map on responsible and sustainable innovation (group work)
2b. an innovation blueprint showing the outcomes of the co-creation exercises (group work)
2c. an impact map on a specific AI case (group work)

3. a presentation of the lessons learned during the course, which will take the form of an individual guideline to apply responsible and sustainable innovation in businesses. This should be about 20 slides and should be submitted four weeks after the last block (25%)

n this course, the use of any AI-based software (e.g., ChatGPT, Bard, DeepL, etc.) as well as platforms for sharing academic papers (e.g., Studydrive) is considered an unauthorized aid under the examination regulations of WU. Such misconduct will be reported and may result in legal consequences.

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Andre Martinuzzi, an experienced coordinator of EU-wide projects in a broad variety of disciplines and head of the WU Institute for Managing Sustainability, will hold this course in collaboration with Svetlana Ivanova, who worked for more than six years in the area of responsible and sustainable innovation and also writes her PhD thesis about this topic.