‘If we can do better by innovation tomorrow, we have an obligation to innovate today.’ That motto from the NWO-MVI movie clip shown during 'Connecting practices' is the leading principle for the MVI-approach, illustrated member of the NWO-MVI Committee and Professor at Delft University of Technology Jeroen Van den Hoven during the closing debate.

In this debate about the importance of MVI for the Digital Society, Jeroen Van den Hoven formed a panel together with Françoise Rost van Tonningen from Rabobank and Maarten-Jan Kallen, Managing Director from BeDataDriven. Kallen nicely illustrated how societal needs can be translated into valid business models by presenting his product ActivityInfo, an information management system for humanitarian organisations in areas of crisis. ‘We made some contrarian decisions for this product. For example, we made the software freely available for small NGO’s, we decided not to use any venture capital for it, and we store very little data and do not track the use. In the end, because of our decent approach, larger humanitarian organisations decided to join and pay us a subscription fee, so now we have a viable and futureproof business model.’

Thinking about our future society

The benefit for society of thinking about human facets – such as ethical, psychological, juridical and economical aspects – of an innovation in the early phase immediately becomes apparent from the variety of innovations that could shape our future which were presented at the conference. These varied from bedside production of biopharmaceuticals and translation of animal experimental data for clinical use, via smart urban energy systems, automated driving systems  and crowd based innovation, to the transition from a fossil based to a biobased economy. Lotte Asveld from Delft University for example, shared her fascination for the question how to motivate farmers to make the switch and start growing crops for the biobased economy. Shona Kalkman from UMC Utrecht confronted her audience during the gathering of MVI-researchers on Thursday January 18th with the possible downsides of bedside production of biopharmaceuticals: ‘This Bionespresso-idea is very promising: it could potentially lead to more tailor-made medicines at lower costs. But who is responsible for the quality of the medicine?’. And María José Galeano Galván from Delft University of Technology wonders about: ‘Who provides the safety in a crowd-based service such as Uber or Airbnb?’

No barriers, but requirements

‘The trick is to not perceive the results of ethical and societal debate as barriers, but as extra requirements, ensuring the success of an innovation,’ summarized Jeroen van den Hoven the use of studying the ethical and societal consequences of an innovation already in the design phase. Wim van den Doel, chair of the NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities, sees much potential in the MVI-approach to aim for multidisciplinary teams, who are thinking about all possible implications of an innovation at a very early stage: ‘NWO is very proud of the MVI-program. It is an excellent example of the added value of involving social sciences and humanities in innovation right from the start.’

Bright future ahead

Van den Hoven: ‘Different ministries are looking at us with a new eye, to see if the MVI-platform can help in addressing the challenges society faces. One hopeful sign is that in the Horizon 2020 program, 500 million euros have been reserved for research into responsible innovation, inspired by the Dutch MVI-approach.’

Photography: Wil van der Voort (Beelding)