5 - Innovation for Social Needs

Summary

In the framework of responsible stagnation (RS), innovation is defined more broadly than bringing new or improved goods to the market or as the major means to increase productivity and growth following the Schumpeterian tradition. This means that innovations can take place within the market or they may directly challenge the market by promoting RS in consumption, in this case by encouraging people not to buy new goods but to try to develop other ways to meet their needs. In this sense, innovation is not pursued for its own sake, and is not primarily targeting economic growth. Nor is it only a science-and technologydriven endeavour, but rather it is oriented primarily at addressing societal problems using the best possible means, some of which may not involve technological solutions at all.

At the same time, responsibility in RS also reflects the value of engaging the public in science, technology and innovation (STI), as in other responsible innovation (RI) frameworks. Because innovation in RS is seen as inclusive and participatory regardless of purpose, it can even seek to give voice and power to those with no market shares, while at the same time being socially, environmentally and ethically more responsible. Thus, as previously argued, RS can be thought of as a further innovation on the RI frameworks which have arisen in the context of the failure of globalized free-markets to adequately address social needs.

Several innovation types already exist that encompass some of the a-growth orientation of RS. Take for example the ‘one laptop per child (OLPC)’ project. The OLPC project is a nonprofit initiative that was initiated by Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in 2005. The main aim was to transform education by enabling children in low-income countries to have access to content, media and computer-programming environments at affordable costs, thus bringing them into equity with the tools available to pupils in richer countries. Although the OLPC project has been criticized in terms of cost-efficiency, low focus on maintainability and training, and has had limited success thus far, it has also been praised for inspiring later variants of lowcost, low-power laptops such as Eee PCs and Chromebooks, for making computer literacy a basic part of education globally, and for creating interfaces that work in any language.