No responsible innovation without multidisciplinary people

Does one have to be multidisciplinary to do multidisciplinary research? A ‘yes’ was in the air at the event about ‘responsible innovation’ organized by NWO (the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) today. The research being funded by their unique grant program ‘Responsible Innovation’ should have the following four features: (1) a ‘design’ or ‘make’ perspective, (2) multidisciplinarity, ideally between ethicists, social scientists and engineers, (3) an international perspective and (4) intensive stakeholder involvement. All of them were addressed and discussed during the day, in several sessions.

As it turned out, all participants (but one) in one of the workshops on multidisciplinary research were very much multidisciplinary themselves, holding degrees in several fields or having changed fields during their career. And amongst them were - including myself - four people successful applicants in the first round of this grant program. In one of the plenary sessions a grant winner, being asked by someone from the audience how she managed to integrate the disciplines involved in her project, answered that she was lucky to have found two very multidisciplinary PhD students to do the work. To be honest, I think the ideal candidate for the remaining vacancy in our project is also one with a mixed background.

This made me think about a recent plan in Dutch university education policy, about which Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published an article two days ago. Apparently our minister of education, Ronald Plasterk, intends to make it ten times more expensive for people to enroll for a second degree. Bad idea to discourage this. Those students would become exactly the kind of excellent academics that are able to build creative bridges between more mono-disciplinary researchers and make responsible innovation a common thing instead of a novelty. And Plasterk’s own ministry is one of the six ministries that invested money in this NWO program because they realized that responsible innovation is direly needed!

If you are not yet convinced about the idea of responsible innovation: read this interview with 3TU.Ethics scientific director Jeroen van den Hoven, one of the driving forces behind NWO’s responsible innovation grant program.