Responsible innovation in practice with system dynamics modelling: the case of energy technology adoption

Despite the potential advantages, technology adoption often brings unexpected outcomes and even leads to failures on multiple fronts. The accountability of outcomes and failure of technology is missed out from technology development and adoption process. This issue has increasingly gained attention of researchers and practitioners. Responsible innovation (RI) has emerged as a concept that aims to address such issues through deploying the five dimensions (anticipation, reflexivity, deliberation, responsiveness, participation) in different stages of innovation process. However, the five dimensions lack of well identified and developed methodology. Therefore, the system dynamics (SD) modelling is explored as a method for extending the effectiveness of RI approach in practice. SD models on energy technology adoption dynamics developed here enable the demonstration of its applicability in anticipation and reflexivity. The paper concludes that the use of SD modelling seems useful for improving the capacity of reflexive and anticipatory dimensions of RI approach in practice.