Towards Responsible Innovation Ecosystems through Social Labs: Lessons from the field

• Innovation ecosystems must be responsible and anticipate their potential outcomes. • There is a need to anticipate the social implications of disruptive technologies. • We assess the potentialities of social for transforming innovation ecosystems. • Social labs can facilitate the development of responsible innovation ecosystems. • Emerging technologies can help to embrace alternative values around innovation. A new wave of digital technologies is restructuring traditional configurations of innovation ecosystems and redefining collaborations, networks, and partnerships. Usually framed as Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) in the European landscape, and more recently as “deep tech”, these disruptive technologies are intertwined with different societal implications and responsibility demands that are not usually considered by their promoters. In this contribution, we aim to explore and assess the potentialities and possibilities of Social Labs for transforming innovation ecosystems into responsible innovation ecosystems (RIEs). In particular, we explore through six case studies how societal engagement processes can be structurally encouraged for facilitating more “responsible innovation ecosystems” around KETs. The paper is built up on a dataset that gathered empirical evidence from six case studies (Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Serbia and Spain) where different Social Labs were operationalized in different innovation ecosystems (circular economy, e-health and industrial automation) engaging more than 200 participants in the process. We argue that Social Labs offer a safe and transformative space for promoting critical engagements around emerging technologies such as KETs which can host a significant plethora of stakeholders, contributing at the same time to broadening current configurations of innovation ecosystems and promoting a democratization of them.