Reader interview, Anne Goldberg: “Building bridges with all actors in society in order to accelerate the transition”

FROM OUR JUNIOR TEAM /

“Setting up contexts conducive to transition means putting responsible innovation into practice by engaging in dialogues with all components of society. It is up to public authorities to organise them, it is up to companies, universities, civil society and citizens to mobilise, and it is up to sustainable finance to fuel them.”

Anne Goldberg, a physicist by training, has spent her entire career in the field of innovation, working for a Belgian chemical company. Since her early retirement in 2019, she has been teaching two courses on innovation and the history of scientific thought at the University of Mons. She also works on the notion of responsible innovation and on the promotion of scientific studies among young people at the end of secondary school, in particular young girls.

How would you define the concept of responsible innovation?

It is a notion which does not have a fixed definition. It appeared about ten years ago, within the framework of the European Commission’s (EC) multiannual research programme, “Horizon2020”. The EC defined a series of criteria to be fulfilled in order to apply for funding, under the label “Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI)”.