Ethics and Innovation

Innovation and politics By Piero Bassetti http://www.fondazionebassetti.org/en/focus/2007/05/innovation_and_politics.html

“ Innovation is the ability to achieve the improbable” http://www.fondazionebassetti.org/en/focus/2007/05/innovation_is_the_ability_to_a.html Milan, November the 24th 2007 Convention of AIDP-ATE (Associazione Italiana per la Direzione del Personale) e AIF (Associazione Italiana Formatori) LEARNING between human resource and person - between training and development The reason for which we are interested in innovation is that currently our way of life is not actually decided by politics or economics, but by science and technology.

…“ But those who make innovation are almost always unaware that they are also making politics”. “ those who make innovation make history and, as a result, make politics” . The myth of Daedalus: offering mankind simultaneously the roads to perdition (the labyrinth) and salvation (the thread)

Bassetti: “In practical terms, when the problem is one of introducing innovation (be it a product or a process, a hospital or new ventilating machine or brain enhancing drug), researchers, technologists, and holders of financial, organisational, entrepreneurial or political power tend to work together”. Callahan: "Once ideas or innovation technologies are out in society they often, very often, move beyond the control of their inventor"

the market also makes choices - if we accept the argument that it dictates the success or failure of any innovation that is put to the market test But… the market is not political. At least, it is not political in the same way that institutional bodies are.

For instance: The market disregards non-financial risk assessments: externalities are not considered.

Some problems for the role of politics in Innovation: II a) Innovation poses decision-making problems that contrast sharply with the modus operandi of democratic, institutional decision-making – issues of transparency, participation, consent, as well as regulations, protectionism, majority principle, precaution etc. are not easily matched with the difficulties of indeterminacy, risk and uncertainty

b) politics has chosen to ignore the chiefly political content of innovation. The market is seen as the best place for creative freedom and for testing new productive combinations

used as they are to choose between uncertain value judgements on the basis of certain facts , politicians have difficulty creating an epistemology that enable them to choose between uncertain facts in the face of uncertain values c) our democratic institutions are not yet equipped to face the challenges posed by science and new forms of capitalism.

But real politics consists precisely in deciding where society should go, and not just in political gamesmanship The expert must work with the politician and assume joint responsibility for what, even together, the two of them cannot know

How should researchers, physicians and clinicians act when politics feels it necessary to involve them in decision making? they should ask for clarity : this is not a refusal of co-responsibility In their ignorance, all too often politicians assume that to solve this problem all they require is a consultant . In so doing, the politician transfers the role of decision-maker to the consultant. This is absurd. your ordinary politician is almost always convinced that the supremacy of politics means supremacy of the politician

Politicians will be forced to stop thinking that they can choose without knowing, or that they can choose knowing only general values, grounding them in facts (including facts about values…) the scientist, clinician or technologist as honest brokers… who must participate actively in policy debate and discard the idea that science can be separate from policy and politics

Ethics and Innovation

by Fondazione Giannino Bassetti on Jul 21, 2009

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