OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD

It is difficult to find a common language and common ground, without patronising each other. Collaboration in a balanced way is hard, we need ways to adopt attitudes, develop trust; we need holistic understanding when we need to dialogue among disciplines, experiences, and life experiences; we need to find a common way to look at the challenge; moral reflection and anticipation of the impact of technology are often too abstract for practice.

Many society-centered and responsible innovation approaches share our focus on responsible design, incorporating theories and frameworks from the philosophy of technology. However, those approaches do not focus on including stakeholders as partners in the design process, but rather as informants. Many researchers already embrace transdisciplinary practices, but in the most projects, researchers retain the role of facilitator and provider of knowledge.

We believe that the expertise of citizens, industry, government, scientists, and designers should be valued equally. We should promote partnership in the design process: mindful of differences and capitalising on the knowledge that each stakeholder can bring in the collaboration.

Other approaches and frameworks share our transdisciplinary focus, but they do not enable fully critical co-creation, co-design, co-imagination focusing on decision-making processes rather than shaping processes.

Responsible Futuring offers a combination of transdisciplinary practices, responsible design and co-design with societal stakeholders that makes it stand out in the current state of the art.

What transdisciplinarity means

Transdisciplinarity is a term to define practices in which people work without firm barriers among disciplines to tackle societal challenges. In Transdisciplinarity, scientists and societal actors work together beyond the academic scope to tackle societal challenges and generate impact. We intend transdisciplinarity as a way to go beyond not only disciplines but also expertise. We believe society and science should work hand-in-hand and establish knowledge flows to generate a positive impact. We believe that scientists and stakeholders alike should become agents of change, hence empowering each other in the process. Involving all the stakeholders to the table means finding ways to learn from each other and comprehend each other. It entails being aware of each other worldviews, perspectives, and positions.