The responsible innovation in health tool and the need to reconcile formative and summative ends in RRI tools for business

Abstract

ABSTRACT Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) scholars have explored how businesses perceive the goals and processes of RRI and have developed tools to enable entrepreneurs to integrate such principles into their practices. While these tools often adopt a formative approach and may include measurable self-assessment indicators, external assessment approaches have so far received little attention. This study addresses this gap by applying the Responsible Innovation in Health (RIH) Tool, which adopts an external assessment approach, to 16 health innovations from Canada and Brazil. Combining publicly available information sources and interviews, our findings show the extent to which the nine attributes of the Tool are fulfilled and shed light on how entrepreneurs materialize these responsibility considerations. Such an external assessment increases transparency and makes more explicit the responsibility trade-offs entrepreneurs face. In view of the RRI tools available, reconciling formative and summative ends in their development could make RRI's expectations towards businesses more actionable.